NEW DELHI: “People who controlled the country’s intellectual space for 60 years want everyone to be leftwing. Is it unconstitutional to be right-wing in democratic India?” asks A Surya Prakash, columnist and former journalist who recently took charge as chairman of Prasar Bharti that comprises Doordarshan and All India Radio Prakash is a known critic of Congress and the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and his columns were said to be politically right-leaning. His appointment was cleared by a three-member committee after much delay. He says: “In democratic India, are you permitted only to be left-wing? I am not leftwing but does that make me rightwing? I have always written this way, but the test is the integrity test in our conduct.” His short and long-term goals are clear — first to develop DD News as a world-class news channel and then move towards autonomy for Prasar Bharti. And he is confident that he will achieve both.“There is no way DD can ignore Mohan Bhagwat . In today’s political context, what Mr Bhagwat says constitutes news and that is why not just DD but all channels broadcast it,” he says. Professionalising the functioning of DD News is just the start, he says. “The audience will definitely come to us. Every household is tired of ‘slanging matches’ on prime time during dinner time. They want credible, structured news,” he says.His plans for DD News include deploying the best infrastructure, improving the ‘look and feel’ of news telecast and providing credible reporting, but the challenges are many — the power of recruitment and promotion of employees is with the central government and half of the funding — almost `2,000 crore, every year comes from the government.“We have over 15,000 vacancies, and even in the existing 30,000, over 12,000 will retire in the next 10 years. The PB recruitment board should have come to existence when the PB Act was introduced, but even after 14 years we have no cadre control as most of our staff are from the Centre,” he says.“We need to change the working environment, have more in-house programmes, increase the number of programmes and the budget allotted to programming. We have talented people, but we need to set standards of credible news to grab eyeballs.” He says the recommendations made by the Sam Pitroda Committee to revamp PB need to be implemented.“Many of them are good and worthy of implementation. The more dependent you become, the less autonomous you become. We must see how we can enhance revenues.”