Radio

Radio broadcasting in India began through amateur ‘ham’ broadcasting clubs in Kolkata and Chennai during the 1920s. These early experiments matured into a public broadcasting system in the 1940s, during the Second World War, when radio became a major instrument of propaganda for the Allied forces in South-east Asia.

At the time of independence in 1947, India had only six radio stations, all located in metropolitan cities and catering primarily to an urban audience. The country had 280,000 radio receiver sets for a population of 350 million people. By 1950, the number of radio licences had risen to 5,46,200 across India.

The government saw the media as an active partner in the development of the newly free nation. All India Radio’s (AIR) programmes therefore consisted mainly of news, current affairs, and discussions on development. In the 1960s, when high-yielding varieties of food crops were introduced as part of the Green Revolution, AIR undertook a major countryside campaign on these crops on a sustained day-to-day basis for over ten years, starting in 1967. Special programme units were formed at many AIR stations across the country. These units, manned by subject specialists, undertook field visits, recorded broadcasts there, and aired first-hand accounts from farmers who had started growing the new varieties of paddy and wheat. As Box 7.2 in the textbook notes, AIR’s broadcasts did make a difference.

Apart from AIR’s news and development broadcasts, there was Vividh Bharati — a channel for entertainment that primarily broadcast Hindi film songs on listeners’ request. In 1957, AIR acquired this hugely popular channel, which soon began to carry sponsored programmes and advertisements, growing into a money-spinning channel for AIR.

After independence, the government gave priority to expanding radio broadcasting infrastructure, especially in state capitals and border areas. Over the years, AIR developed a formidable infrastructure. It operates a three-tiered service — national, regional, and local — to cater to India’s geographic, linguistic, and cultural diversity.

The major constraint for the popularisation of radio initially was the cost of the radio set. The transistor revolution in the 1960s made radio more accessible by making sets mobile (battery-operated) and reducing the unit price substantially. By the year 2000, around 110 million households — two-thirds of all Indian households — were listening to radio broadcasts in 24 languages and 146 dialects. More than a third of these listeners were in rural households. …