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All India Radio

India presents huge challenges to any broadcasting institutionthat aspires to serve the whole nation. All India Radio (AIR),the state-run monopoly, was expected to take these challengeson and help build a modern nation state with an egalitariansocial democracy. More than a billion people, nearly half ofthem living below the poverty line, are spread over a land massof 1.27 million square miles. Although urbanization andindustrialization are the hallmarks of postcolonial India,nearly 75 percent of the population still lives in 55,000 vil-lages, eking out a living from farming. About 10 percent areemployed in industries in urban areas. India’s religious, cul-tural, and regional diversity is striking, with 83 percent of thepopulation claiming Hinduism as their religion and Muslims,Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains accounting for the rest.Fourteen officially recognized languages and hundreds of dia-lects coexist with English. Hindi, the official language of mod-ern India, is slowly gaining a foothold with the masses. Unevendevelopment characterizes India; cities such as Bangalore claima place in the global computer industry as the “Silicon Valleyof India,” whereas villages have extremely bad roads and lackclean drinking water, medical facilities, and schools. Significantadvances have been made in literacy rates since independencein 1947, but a mere 52 percent are functionally literate. Socialinequity such as caste, class, and gender inequality can befound in urban and rural parts of the country. Untouchabilityis still practiced against nearly 170 million people who are castaside in near-apartheid conditions.

Origins

Enthusiasts in India’s big cities pioneered radio by organizingamateur radio clubs in the early 1920s. Their efforts, and thesuccessful growth of radio in Europe and the United States,gave impetus to a group of Indian entrepreneurs who estab-lished the Indian Broadcasting Company on 23 July 1927.Nevertheless, by 1930 their pioneering effort to launch pri-vately owned radio ran into trouble because of lack of reve-nues. Broadcasting from their two stations, located in Bombayand Calcutta, they catered to the small European communityand Westernized Indians while ignoring the masses. The colo-nial government was faced with the rising tide of anti-imperial-ist sentiment in the country; being interested in the propagandapotential of broadcasting, it bought the assets of the IndianBroadcasting Company and renamed it the Indian State Broad-casting Service (ISBS).

In 1935 the colonial government took another decisive stepby inviting the BBC to help develop radio; one of the BBC’ssenior producers, Lionel Fielden, was sent. Fielden is credited

with having the name of the organization changed to All IndiaRadio and for laying the foundations for public service broad-casting with the goal of providing information and education.He returned to England in 1940. By 1947, the year of India’sindependence, the AIR network had grown to 11 stations with248,000 radio licenses.

AIR Today

AIR’s growth and reach have been phenomenal in the last 50years. There are 333 transmitters today, including 146medium wave, 54 shortwave, and 133 FM. Some 210 radiostations cover 90 percent of India and reach 98 percent of thepopulation. AIR claims a listenership of approximately 284million who tune in on 111 million radio sets. Although con-trolled by the central government, AIR introduced advertis-ing in 1967 and earns 808 million rupees a year (US$1 = 48rupees). The government makes up any deficit in its operatingexpenses.

AIR broadcasts in 24 languages and 146 dialects for domes-tic audiences and in 24 languages for international audiences.Approximately 303 news bulletins are aired daily, of which 93are intended for national listeners, whereas regional stationsoriginate 135 news bulletins daily. In addition, there are specialbulletins on sports, youth, and other major events, such as theannual Haj to Mecca by Muslims or the Kumbh Mela in Alla-habad. More than 80 stations in the AIR network broadcastradio dramas in various languages. Forty percent of the broad-cast time, however, is set aside for classical, light, folk, and filmmusic. The External Service, set up to act as a cultural ambas-sador, airs 65 news bulletins in 16 foreign and eight Indian lan-guages. In addition, magazine programs on sports andliterature; talk shows on sociopolitical-economic issues; andclassical, folk, and modern Indian music from different regionsof the country are broadcast.

AIR employs well over 16,000 persons. Approximately13,000 are regular government servants; the rest are contractemployees. They are transferable every three years, and sothese employees seldom come to know the community inwhich they work. Such a huge organization cannot escape ahierarchical structure and the formal nature of appointments,promotions, retirements, and codes of conduct. Instead ofdemanding commitment to listeners, the organization requiresits employees to adhere to the rules and procedures of a largegovernment department. Because the employees have very littlefunctional freedom, creativity and innovation are sacrificed.Lethargy, apathy, and favoritism unfortunately permeate theorganization.

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Regulation and Autonomy

Broadcasting is a regulated monopoly of the central govern-ment. The Indian Telegraph Act of 1885 was later amended tovest the exclusive right to “establish, maintain and work”wireless apparatus in the Government of India. Consequently,AIR has functioned as an arm of the central government eversince its inception. The Ministry of Information and Broad-casting is the policy-making body for the entire broadcastingsystem. Generalist officers drawn from the civil service managethe ministry. The director general heads the AIR and executespolicy. The government has held that any member of the eliteIndian Administrative Services can function as head of AIRwith equal disinterest. Hence the director general is a bureau-crat who may or may not be interested or qualified in radio.

National television grew under the umbrella of AIR and in1976 was given a separate structure called Doordarshan, liter-ally meaning viewing from a distance. As one would view adeity in a temple, TV audiences regularly gain a glimpse of thepolitical establishment via Doordarshan’s newscasts. With amandate similar to radio’s, television has also seen remarkableexpansion and reach in the country in the last three decades.With the rise of privately controlled satellite delivery services,India now has a mixed system of public and private enterprisesin television, whereas radio has clearly remained a governmentmonopoly.

The credibility of AIR news has always been in question,however, not only because it is a government department butalso because of well-reported instances of interference by theprime minister’s office, irrespective of who is in power. Therehas been considerable pressure from private and public institu-tions as well as from intellectuals in the country to create anarms-length relationship between the government and thebroadcast institutions ever since the National Emergency in1975. Suspending certain articles of the constitution, the primeminister unleashed a reign of terror, which lasted almost 19months. To silence dissent, the government engaged in massarrests of prominent political leaders, trade unionists, humanrights activists, communists, and students. There were wide-spread reports of torture and sterilization, especially of thepoor. While the judiciary was not abolished, the ruling party inthe Parliament passed certain amendments to the constitutionto put the prime minister and her party loyalists above thenation’s laws. The privately controlled press and cinema weresubjected to intense censorship, and journalists at AIR wereinstructed to abandon even the pretense of journalistic fairnessand balance in their coverage of events. Prominent journalistswent underground to avoid arrest. The government restruc-tured the news agencies in the country to “clean out” anyonewho was not favorable to the prime minister and denied adver-tising in newspapers that would not change the tone of cover-age of the regime. A dark moment in the history of the nation,

the national emergency exemplified the extent to which theexecutive branch of the government could misuse its powerover the media.

The debate on autonomy for broadcasting has finallyresulted in Parliament passing the Prasar Bharati Act of 1990,which seeks to free radio and television from the direct controlof the government and place it in the hands of an autonomouscorporation that would be managed by a board. That boardwould be required under the law to be accountable to a broad-casting council and in turn to a statutory parliamentary com-mittee with various powers reserved to the government. Theact has not been implemented, however.

Promises Versus Reality

AIR’s heavily bureaucratic ways have been the major impedi-ment to innovation and creativity. In a highly pluralistic societywith incredible linguistic, caste, and class differences, AIR hasattempted not to offend any group. Controversial social andcommunity welfare issues take a back seat while popular filmmusic dominates. Regional language radio stations beam pro-grams to the whole state in a formal dialect, which renders itstiff and official. As a consequence, most people find AIR bor-ing. Radio, as a mass medium, is particularly suited to commu-nicate in the local dialect and idiom, thereby establishing apersonal connection between the broadcaster and the listener.That has not, however, been achieved in India because of thebureaucratic stranglehold on radio.

The model of a centralized national radio service with manyregional and local stations intended to achieve the vision ofunifying the nation was well intentioned but expensive and dif-ficult to deliver. For development purposes, more localizedmicro radio operations based in community and educationalinstitutions would have been more cost efficient and crediblewith audiences. The distance between the program creatorsand listeners would have been reduced, which in turn wouldhave enhanced radio’s credibility with the rural masses. Per-haps radio might then have met local needs better. Untilrecently, the government has guarded the frequencies asthough they were its property and has only reluctantly allowedprivate program producers some space on the government-controlled stations. This may lead to licensing of private FMstations that will, in all likelihood, be urban-centered. All IndiaRadio’s local outlets around the country often are criticized fortheir low levels of involvement on the part of local groups.Partly in response, the Indian government began to license pri-vate radio stations in 2000, and the first of them came on air inJuly 2001. As of 2002 a few community radio stations hadbegun to appear.

AIR’s long-held policy of broadcasting classical musicmeant that it should have developed an extensive collection ofrecordings by some of India’s greatest performers. Lacking

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resources and vision, many station directors simply did notsave such precious recordings. For a few rupees more, the art-ists would have let AIR keep the recordings and later releasethem in the burgeoning cassette market. Recently, AIR seemsto have realized its folly, and cassette tapes of speeches by lead-ers such as Gandhi and Nehru are being released to the public.

Competition to radio has grown steadily from film and tele-vision. Doordarshan, with its national reach and through itsregional stations, and the privately controlled satellite TVchannels have stolen radio audiences. They offer similar pro-grams of music, talk, and other shows with the power of visu-als. The enormously popular film music from India’s owngigantic film industry became widely available on cassettes bythe mid 1970s and even penetrated rural areas in the followingdecade. Satellite audio services and on-line radio, operated byprivate companies, will be the next frontier on which AIR willhave to compete.

AIR needs bold new directions in this age of the internetand FM broadcasting. What seems to be in store is an addedlayer of bureaucracy in the name of autonomy and higher pres-sure on AIR to earn more revenues and become self-sufficient.Those signs do not offer much hope for an institution with thenational purpose of employing the power of the medium forsocial change.

MANJUNATH PENDAKUR

See also Developing World

Further ReadingAgrawal, B., “The Meaning of Hinglishness: Liberalisation

and Globalisation in Indian Broadcasting,” in Programming for People: From Cultural Rights to Cultural

Responsibilities, edited by Kevin Robins, United Nations World Television Forum, 1997

Chatterji, Probhat Chandra, Broadcasting in India, New Delhi and Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1987; revised edition, London: Sage, 1991

Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, White Paper on Misuse of Mass Media during the Internal Emergency, August 1977, Delhi: Controller of Publications, 1977

Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Akash Bharati: National Broadcast Trust: Report of the Working Group on Autonomy for Akashvani and Doordarshan, 2 volumes, New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1978

Government of India, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, India 1998, New Delhi: Publications Division, 1998

Hartmann, Paul, B.R. Patil, and Anita Dighe, The Mass Media and Village Life: An Indian Study, New Delhi and London: Sage, 1988; Newbury Park, California: Sage, 1989

Luthra, H.R., Indian Broadcasting, New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1986

Manuel, Peter Lamarche, Cassette Culture: Popular Music and Technology in North India, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993

Masani, Mehra, Broadcasting and the People, New Delhi: National Book Trust, India, 1976

Pasha, A.R., Community Radio: The Voice of the People, Bangalore, India: Voices, 1997

Pendakur, M., “Mass Media during the 1975 National Emergency in India,” Canadian Journal of Communication 13, no. 4 (1988)

All News Format

All news is a programming format that continuously provideslisteners with the latest news, sports, weather, time, and, inmany cases, reports on driving conditions. This format’sappeal is directed to a revolving audience continuously tuningin and out.

Radio news traces its origins to KDKA’s broadcast of the1920 presidential election returns. The station announcerrequested that listeners mail postcards to the station confirm-ing that they had heard the broadcast. By 1930 NBC and CBSwere simultaneously broadcasting Lowell Thomas and theNews, sponsored by Literary Digest. The unusual simulcast, in

which NBC broadcast the program to the eastern half of thecountry and CBS to the western half, became solely the prop-erty of NBC within a year. Americans grew accustomed toturning on their radios for the latest news during the late1930s. By the end of the decade, as social unrest increased inEurope, the voices of radio correspondents William L. Shirer,George Hicks, and Edward R. Murrow became as familiar asthose of friends and neighbors. Radio was establishing itself asthe leader in reporting events as they were occurring. In 1940Americans told pollsters for the first time that they preferredradio to newspapers as their primary news source. Coverage of