A lot of red faces may have been seen in Doordarshan after one of their freelance news reading talents mistook “Xi” for Roman numerals and called the Chinese President “Eleven” Jinping. While we may be accustomed to such gaffes from the government broadcaster, the Chinese supremo may not have taken kindly to it since everyone believes he is bidding to become the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao and Deng. Imagine 11 Jinpings competing for the tag of the world’s most powerful man!
In any case, DD news listeners are getting as rare as hen’s teeth these days when satellite news networks in so many different languages are fighting to grab eyeballs. People might even be wondering why there is such a fuss over mispronouncing a foreign name when DD newscasters often get the names of people and places from the Hindi heartland so wrong, leave alone handling tongue-twisters like Nedunchezhiyan and Kanimozhi, which still beat the best of news readers.
If the latest cataclysm sees the government broadcaster shed its ways and aspire to become an autonomous national broadcaster of merit like the BBC, “Eleven” Jinping may have contributed in some way to a modern miracle. Until then, Doordarshan news will remain an anachronism in an era in which professionalism is seen as the way forward. But then, politicians and bureaucrats must agree to free DD and AIR of government control.
