Watching Prime Minister Narendra Modi recount the rich legacy of democracy of the Indian parliament over the decades that cut across partisan divides brought back memories of the early days of television broadcast of Parliament. Most prominent of those memories that Modi recalled is the speech that was delivered by former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee when his 13-day government could not muster sufficient votes to win the confidence of the Lok Sabha.

The live broadcast of the Lok Sabha proceedings that day marked not only the beginning of Parliament finding a place in every home through Doordarshan but also the advent of parliamentary television in India a decade down the road. If the live broadcast of Vajpayee’s speech added imagery to the rhetorical flourish of parliamentary debates in the eyes of the common Indian, it also underscored the power of the mass medium in amplifying parliamentary interventions.

Over the years, live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings has brought home several surreal moments, from the Vajpayee led National Democratic Alliance losing confidence by a single vote to the sad spectacle of the Manmohan Singh-era United Progressive Alliance presiding over the “notes for vote” saga on the floor of the house. While images of the attack on Parliament are fresh in public memory, so are the history-making moments when the goods and services tax was legislated.

Watching that Vajpayee speech in Parliament back in the 1990s as a young engineer, little did I know that exactly 20 years later in 2017 I would get the opportunity to serve the temple of Indian democracy with parliamentary television coming of age in the intervening decades.

As the chief executive officer of Rajya Sabha TV between 2017 and 2019, I was fortunate to have witnessed the powerful role technology is playing in bringing Parliament closer to the citizens. From the early Doordarshan days to the present era of Sansad TV, parliamentary television in India has not only brought debates to the masses but also created a niche genre of content with an ever-growing audience in the millions.

I recall how in 2018 when Rajya Sabha TV had clocked its first million digital subscribers ahead of Doordarshan, it was a poignant moment in the transformation of public service broadcasting to serve audiences in the digital era. It is heartening to see that the head start enjoyed by Rajya Sabha TV in establishing a digital niche has been sustained by Sansad TV with nearly 8 million digital subscribers, way ahead of the public broadcaster.

Over the decades, digital accessibility of parliamentary proceedings has not only aided researchers but also allowed citizens of Bharat to relive historical moments of the Constituent Assembly debates. While the transcripts of the debates had been made digitally accessible for several years now it was a hurrah moment when the archives teams at Prasar Bharati were able to uncover live audio from the Constituent Assembly from the vaults of Akashvani. If the transcripts of the Constituent Assembly proceedings gave valuable insights into the extensive debates that went into the making of the Indian Constitution, these rare audio recordings put a voice to the towering personalities who framed the Constitution. The digitisation efforts at Prasar Bharati of the radio archives also brought to the fore several rare parliamentary debates before the advent of television in Parliament. One such debate ahead of the Bangladesh War of Liberation from the 1970s is perhaps the oldest surviving audio recording of Vajpayee speaking in Parliament.

With digital tools to the aid of parliamentarians and extensive digital archives that can be searched for proceedings, questions and much more, use of technology by Parliament has made democracy far more participatory to citizens unlike in the past. It thus is no surprise that some of the highest viewed live streams on the internet are parliamentary proceedings with large numbers of concurrent viewers tuning in digitally. From the use of robotic cameras to high-definition production, the quality of parliamentary coverages has also seen a significant evolution. The on-demand consumption of video clips from Parliament enriched by meta-data has made the seven decades-old institution social media- and smartphone-friendly, marking the distance travelled since Independence.

As Bharat prepares to conduct the proceedings of its democracy in the new Parliament building equipped with the latest technologies, expectations are high of elevating the quality of debates and the depth of engagement. With the strides being taken by artificial intelligence (AI) it would be imperative for Parliament to break the language barrier in the years to come to make live proceedings available in languages of choice irrespective of the one being spoken.

Recently released AI tools for video translation are not merely able to translate across languages but also lip sync to the language of choice, marking a significant evolution in technology. With direct-to-mobile broadcasting, it should be possible for smartphone users to consume both live proceedings and on-demand debates with an AI enriched convergent experience that can transcend language barriers bringing Parliament ever closer to citizens. With the new Parliament designed to carry forward the world’s largest democracy in its journey to Amrit Kaal, technology is poised to play an even greater participatory role for a developed Bharat by 2047.

The author is former CEO of Prasar Bharati