New Delhi [India], October 19: Some of the most familiar faces of Doordarshan’s golden era shared a stage again on Saturday at the India International Centre (IIC) here, as former Prasar Bharati Chairman Surya Prakash unveiled The Evolution of TV News in India: From Doordarshan to Digital Disruption – An Insider’s Account, a first-hand chronicle of fifty years of Indian television news by veteran broadcaster and pioneering Doordarshan producer Harsaran Bir Kaur Pandey. The book is published by Om Books International.

Surya Prakash released the book along with wildlife filmmaker and three-time Green Oscar winner Mike Pandey; the author’s former colleagues and star Doordarshan news anchors Shammi Narang, Neethi Ravindran and Komal G.B. Singh; and Ajay Mago, Publisher, Om Books International. The audience brought together leading names from India’s television news industry, broadcasting veterans, and the author’s family and friends.

A Ringside View of Five Decades

Spanning roughly fifty years, the book follows Indian television news from the early 1970s, when black-and-white sets, 16mm celluloid film and temperamental transmitters first flickered into the national consciousness, to today’s 24x7 satellite news wars and algorithmic digital echo chambers. Part memoir, part institutional history and part media critique, it offers a rare ringside view of the birth, golden era, commercial boom and present-day crises of broadcast journalism in India.

Pandey joined Doordarshan at Mandi House in the early 1970s as one of a core cohort of 90 professionals recruited to take the broadcaster beyond its nascent Delhi service. After BBC training, she helped set up early television newsrooms in the face of severe technical and logistical constraints. The book recalls the improvisation that kept the evening bulletin on air: producers sprinting across compounds and up five flights of stairs when lift operators had to leave because of bureaucratic transport rules, and outside broadcasts patched together with hand-cranked field phones. When John Lennon was assassinated in 1980, Pandey visualised the story by bringing her own vinyl record covers to the studio to film as close-up stills.

Across fourteen years at Doordarshan, she worked on some of the defining stories of modern India, including:

  • The 1975–77 Emergency and the JP Movement, reporting under pervasive censorship and state control
  • Operation Blue Star in 1984, recording crucial parikrama footage of the Golden Temple and navigating strict military clearances in its aftermath
  • The assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and the 1984 general elections, pioneering live election psephology and studio graphics alongside Dr Prannoy Roy, Ashok Lahiri and Vinod Dua from makeshift outside broadcast vans
  • Encounters with world leaders, including coverage of and interviews with Fidel Castro, Kenneth Kaunda, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Yasser Arafat, and state visits abroad with Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi

The book also gathers first-hand testimony and behind-the-scenes memories from the medium’s early icons, including founding directors P.V. Krishnamoorthy, Shiv Sharma and Shashi Kapoor, and news anchors Salma Sultan, Neethi Ravindran, Shammi Narang, Komal G.B. Singh, Minu Talwar and the late Gitanjali Aiyar.

From Public Trust to TRP Wars

Moving beyond Doordarshan’s public-service monopoly, Pandey examines the satellite television explosion of the 1990s, the cut-throat corporate battle for Television Rating Points (TRPs) and the slide into high-decibel, polarised studio debates. Drawing on her twenty-one years as an international civil servant and communications officer with UNICEF and the World Health Organization (WHO), she analyses how commercial incentives have often hollowed out substantive reporting.

From the “Wag the Dog”-style manufacturing of public sentiment to the dangerous spread of the “infodemic” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the book interrogates what television journalism was meant to achieve, and what it must reclaim to serve Indian democracy.

Praise for the Book

“As someone who helped shape television journalism in its formative decades, she writes with authority and insight about the remarkable transformations in the media.”

— Dr Prannoy Roy, Veteran Journalist and Co-Founder, NDTV

“From the quiet, state-controlled Doordarshan years to the noise of today’s hyper-polarised newsrooms, this is a deeply personal and sharply observed account... an essential read for anyone who wants to understand where we came from – and where we may be headed.”

— Rajdeep Sardesai, Veteran Journalist, News Anchor and Author

“Harsaran Bir Kaur Pandey writes with warmth and clarity about those formative years in Doordarshan, where we learned to value precision, teamwork, and above all, credibility. Her reflections on the present are thoughtful and quietly searching.”

— Salma Sultan, Iconic Doordarshan News Anchor

The Evolution of TV News in India: From Doordarshan to Digital Disruption – An Insider’s Account (Om Books International) is available at major bookstores across India and on leading online retailers.

Media Contact:

XXXX