Uma Nair writes: The Power Of Voice

In an interview she reflected on the beginning of Yuva Vani: “I still remember July 1, 1969 when Yuva Vani was born. There were programmes on Western music. There was this programme named “Roving Microphone”, which took opinions from people at the grassroots level. Then there were discussions. It was a very novel idea when it came up. Yuva Vani, literally the voice of the youth, soon became a way of life for listeners.”

Picture the scene in the 1970s at the All India Radio in Delhi. A petite bespectacled Rita Mukherjee, Station Director, All India Radio, trained a small group of young college students to be anchors for a programme of a new channel, Yuva Vani. Aired in the morning as well as evening hours, it played Western music for listening pleasure. While Mukherjee prepared the roster for the month, she would regale us with stories and her wry humour as she discussed myriad ways of presentation.

Among these young men were Ramu Damodaran, Bhaskar Bhattacharjee and Preet Kanwar Singh Bedi. The young women included Komal GB Singh, Rema Nair and a few more. Rajiv Mehrotra did a series of brilliant presentations under her eagle eye. One still recalls her happiness when Ramu Damodaran won the cherished Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Prize for a radio feature, “Echoes of a Generation”.

Mukherjee was a stickler for flawless productions, and encouraged us to be accurate about research as well as pronunciation. She was a great believer in the multifaceted gains of broadcasting. She served AIR with the belief that good broadcasting with the right intonation, diction and delivery enriched individuals with knowledge, culture and information about their world. In the manner of training that she imparted to us, she was shining a light on the opportunity of building more cohesive communities, as she believed that great voices engage listening audiences. She made us realise that the sole benefit of broadcasting was service to the public. As youngsters, we chose the songs we would play in the morning and she was fastidious that our narrations should be of the highest quality. But Roving Microphone was her pet project.

Accurate information and engagement were her top priorities. In a subtle way, she was training us in the art of broadcasting, which she believed was a very powerful medium that can change public opinion on a whole range of issues. Mukherjee was a voracious reader, with impeccable vocabulary, spoke British English and could create discourses around multiple subjects. Her range of ideations and wide perspectives taught us to take many a leaf out of the book of life.

I had lost touch with her for several years, but was delighted when she walked into the India International Centre to view iSculpt III — an exhibition of sculptures and installations — last December. The mentor and the academician, Mukherjee looked like a little sage with grace and a love for aesthetics. Her passion for art and sculptures made her a treasure to be with. In a small way, the show I curated was a mirror image of the culture and values she used to speak about more than 50 years ago.

As a features editor and director, she was a significant innovator of broadcasting pedagogy in India and had a reputation for producing honest and balanced research-oriented features. She believed that broadcasting had an important role to play as a watchdog in holding the powerful to account in a democracy, but agreed that cooperation served better than confrontation. Features and broadcasting for Mukherjee were about social stability as well as social change; she believed greatly in youth movements. Public broadcasting, she believed, was vital to democratic life. She once commented with a smile on radio’s high rise in popularity with the advent of so many vehicles on the road and riders listening to both news as well as music of all genres.

This article first appeared in the print edition on June 20, 2022, under the title, ‘The power of voice’.

The writer is a curator and art critic