The India government will provide additional funding to pubcaster Doordarshan to expand and strengthen its DTH service in the villages located near the country’s borders under a scheme aimed at upping infrastructure and communications projects in sensitive areas bordering China and Pakistan.

The PM Modi government’s initiatives aimed at beefing up infrastructure in border areas in the northern part of India has been named Vibrant Village Programme.

The areas targeted under this scheme have sparse populations, and limited connectivity and infrastructure.

“The activities will include construction of village infrastructure, housing, tourist centres, road connectivity, provisioning of decentralized renewable energy, direct to home access for Doordarshan and educational channels, and support for livelihood generation,” India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Tuesday while presenting the country’s annual Budget for 2022-23.

She added that “additional funding for these activities will be provided” and existing schemes will be “converged”, while the government will define the “outcomes and monitor them” on a constant basis.

It is expected that under this scheme the government will widen the access of DD’s free-to-air DTH platform FreeDish, which carries a mix of entertainment, news and infotainment TV channels, with an aim to effectively counter propaganda that’s regularly broadcasted by both China and Pakistan.

Apart from countering propaganda, FreeDish could also be used to beam educational channels that the FM announced Tuesday, where, under the PM eVidya scheme, educational TV channels would be increased to about 200 from the present number that’s below 50.

However, according to a PTI report on Tuesday, Sitharaman announced a Rs 3,980.77 crore outlay for the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in the 2022-23 fiscal — a decrease of Rs 90 crore from last year.

The allocation to the autonomous national broadcaster body Prasar Bharati — parent of Doordarshan and All India Radio — has been also reduced to Rs 2,555.29 crore from Rs 2,640.11 crore allotted to it in the last fiscal.

Among other autonomous bodies, the budget for only the Press Council of India was increased from Rs 20 crore in the last fiscal to Rs 27 crore for 2022-23.

The Films and Television Institute of India (FTII), Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC), Children’s Film Society of India and the Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute saw reductions in their budget allocation.

For the IIMC, the government has earmarked Rs 52 crore, down from Rs 65 crore allocated during 2021-22. The FTII’s budget was reduced from Rs 58.48 crore last year to Rs 55.39 crore this year.

In the budget, the allocation for broadcasting under the social services head has gone down from Rs 2,921.11 crore to Rs 2,839.29 crore. There was also a reduction in the budget for ‘information and publicity’ from Rs 971.26 crore to Rs 942.04 crore.

‘Information and publicity’ covers establishment expenditure of media units in the country like the Bureau of Outreach and Communication, Press Information Bureau, Publications Division, New Media Wing, Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI), Films Division, National Film Archive of India, Electronic Media Monitoring Centre and others.