MAKING WAVES

Remembering how Rita Mukherjee nurtured a radio station Indira Gandhi launched exclusively for and by the youth

- BY RAMU DAMODARAN

JULY'S SECOND HALF, in 1969, was tumultuous. Deputy prime minister Morarji Desai resigned on the 16th, miffed at the finance portfolio being taken away from him. Three days later, the government of prime minister Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 private banks which cumulatively held 70 per cent of the deposits in the country. The split in the Congress had begun its sharp cleave.

That did not deter Indira Gandhi, though preoccupied as she otherwise was, from fulfilling a commitment she had made to herself five years earlier as minister for information and broadcasting in Lal Bahadur Shastri's cabinet. She launched something that had not been attempted in any other part of the world—a radio station exclusively for, by and of the young, for whom, as she said at the inauguration of Yuva Vani on July 21, "your whole life is ahead of you". She went on to list the attributes she felt the young women and men who would power the station should possess—to be forward-looking, while unashamedly proud of their culture and heritage, and to be fearless, "absolutely fearless".

We were. When you first entered the barracks that housed Yuva Vani, skulking between an imperious Broadcasting House and a carefree 24-hour canteen, your immediate sense was files and folders that seared all visible space. Then, two steps later, you were before Rita Mukherjee, the station's founder executive, her uncluttered desk gazing serenely on the chaos without, her uncluttered smile one of warmth and welcome.