Lok Sabha puts up historic speeches by PMs, foreign heads, senior leaders on YouTube

The digitization and publishing of recordings will continue for many more months.

India’s eighth Prime Minister Chandrasekhar’s tenure lasted just 233 days, but in a new YouTube channel, his speeches in Parliament, albeit those he delivered after his stint as PM, have grabbed more eyeballs than those of some of his predecessors.

Thus far, 943 videos have been published in the month that the channel has been live. (File)

To be sure, the numbers are still in the hundreds, but the online archive is still in its infancy and not too many people are aware of it.

The channel, Parliament of India Audio Visual Archive, has published, for the first time, important speeches of Prime Ministers, Presidents, senior politicians, and visiting heads of state in Parliament, on YouTube. Historic moments from India’s Parliamentary history—taped in old video cassettes and gathering dust in store rooms—have been digitized and released on You Tube for everyone to see.

Thus far, 943 videos have been published in the month that the channel has been live. More videos will be released in coming days as a part of the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla’s initiative to open Parliament’s rich resources to the public. The videos are also priceless archival material, useful for researchers and academics.

“The Speaker wanted all available parliamentary speeches of Presidents, Prime Ministers and foreign dignitaries published online. He also asked us to put important debates in the public domain,” said a senior Lok Sabha official who asked not to be named.

Video clips of speeches in the current Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha are easily available, but older recordings are nearly impossible to find. Doordarshan started live telecasts of Parliament proceedings in 1992. “That was the partial telecast of important events such as the presentation of the general budget. Two years later, DD started full telecast before the Lok Sabha TV was launched during the 14th Lok Sabha,” a second Lok Sabha official said on condition of anonymity,

“There are no audio-visual recordings of parliamentary proceedings before 1992,” the second person added. Chandrasekhar was PM between November 1990 and June 1991, but remained a member of Parliament till his death in 2007.

The digitization and publishing of recordings will continue for many more months. So far, all speeches of Chandrasekhar available on tape , 183 speeches of PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, 12 speeches of his predecessor Narsimha Rao and all Lok Sabha speeches of Prime Minister Narendra Modi have been uploaded. Among other senior politicians, 280 speeches of the late Mulayam Singh Yadav, the former defence minister and UP CM, are also available in the channel. There’s even a video of a very young Yogi Adityanath taking oath in 1998.

“As the technology has become outdated, a need was felt to digitize all such records. The project was started in February . In the initial phase, digitization of video recordings of Lok Sabha proceedings has been started. Digitization of video recordings of Rajya Sabha proceedings is proposed to be taken up in the second phase,” said a third Lok Sabha official who asked not to be identified.

Speeches by US President Barak Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin to a joint sitting of both Houses are available in the channel. “Upcoming uploads include video records of special sessions on GST, 50th Year of independence, celebration of Constitution Day, discussion on Nuclear Tests in Pokharan and all speeches of PM Modi in Rajya Sabha.,” the third official added.

Among the uploads are debates featuring Inder Kumar Gujral,   PV Narasimha Rao, George Fernandez, Sushma Swaraj, KR Narayanan, Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh and others.

A fourth official said that the digitization process is being done internally and hasn’t involved any substantial cost. The Lok Sabha secretariat is also tracking analytics, although with just a month’s data at hand, it would be premature to draw any inferences.