BBC treated presenter as 'native of the Raj years'

An award-winning radio presenter for the BBC accused her bosses of treating her as if she were an "illiterate native" under the Raj yesterday.

Annand Jasani, 53, who has worked for the BBC for 15 years, is claiming racial discrimination against BBC Wales, which denies the allegation.

The Indian-born presenter, who was appointed MBE in 1998 for being a "cultural ambassador", told an industrial tribunal that a programme controller had dismissed her show as not serving a useful purpose.

"I have been a victim of slow and subtle persecution, and I have been bullied on occasions by my male-dominated superiors who have behaved at times as though I was another example of an illiterate or unintelligent native of the Raj years," Ms Jasani said. "In brief, I have been a victim of unequal treatment, a lack of commitment, promotion and career development, condescension, apathy, and marginalisation."

She said that her husband, a doctor, and their two daughters had worked without payment so that her show, A Voice For All, would be ready for transmission each week.

She said she was paid £267 a week for putting the show together and was told that this figure should be considered as her salary and the budget for her programme. Ms Jasani said she was able to claim an extra £50 a week for volunteers working on the show but spent up to £10,000 of her own money to build up a music catalogue over 15 years.

The tribunal was told that she organised the show from her home in Penarth, Glamorgan, and went into the BBC's studio in the capital only to make the broadcast.

Ms Jasani criticised the BBC for marginalising her programme by failing to publicise it properly. She said she had never been given more than a one-line mention in the Radio Times and that her media profile had been reduced further by the removal of her publicity portraits from the BBC Wales headquarters.

The only occasion in the past decade in which her publicity portraits had been re- instated was during a visit by the BBC's former director general Lord Birt, she said.

In the summer of 1999, a programme controller called her to a meeting at which she was "belittled and bullied" and told that the BBC was not in the business of running an Asian channel for a programme with an audience of 2,000, she said.

Ms Jasani said that during the show's 15 years, she had interviewed celebrities including Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Sir Richard Attenborough and Tony Blair.

She has won several Asian media awards and the show had been shortlisted for the Best Radio Entertainment prize.

Ms Jasani, who moved to Wales 25 years ago, told the tribunal that she had been headhunted by the BBC in the late 1980s to launch her show, which is still broadcast across Wales to the 40,000-strong Asian population in the region. The tribunal continues.