Origin and history of Radio in India

A combination of a number of discoveries by technicians and scientist from different countries gave rise to the development of wireless telegraphy and later to radio broadcasting. It took ten years for wireless telegraphy, to become a broadcasting system. First, the World War prompted the industrialization of wireless telegraphy, secondly in the United States the radio created a communication environment in which amateurs could operate freely.

Broadcasting began in India with the formation of a private radio service in Madras in 1924. In the same year, the British colonial government granted a license to a private company, the Indian Broadcasting Company, to open Radio stations in Bombay and Calcutta. The company went bankrupt in 1930 but the colonial government took over the two transmitters and the Department of Labor and Industries started operating them as the Indian State Broadcasting Corporation. In 1936, the Corporation was renamed All India Radio AIR) and placed under the Department of Communications. When India became independent in 1947, AIR was made a separate Department under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

The early history of radio broadcasting in independent India is important because it set the parameters for the subsequent role of television in the country. At Independence, the Congress government under Jawaharlal Nehru had three major goals: to achieve political integration, economic development and social modernization. Broadcasting was expected to play an important role in all three areas.

The most important challenge the government faced at independence was that of forging a nation out of the diverse political, religious, geographic and lingual entities that composed independent India. In addition to the territories ruled directly by the British, over 500 hundred "independent" princely states had joined the new nation, some quite reluctantly. The country immediately found itself at war with Pakistan over one of those states--Kashmir. The trauma of the partition of the country into India and Pakistan and the violence between Hindus and Muslims had further weekend the political stability of the country.

Broadcasting was harnessed for the task of political nation building. National integration and the development of a "national consciousness" were among the early objectives of All India Radio. Broadcasting was organized as the sole preserve of the chief architect of this process of political integration for the State. The task of broadcasting was to help in overcoming the immediate crisis of political instability that followed Independence and to foster the long-term process of political modernization and nation building that was the dominant ideology of the newly formed state.

Radio broadcasting is a Government of India monopoly under the Directorate General of All India Radio--established in 1936 and since 1957 also known as Akashvani--a government-owned, semi commercial operation of the Ministry of

Information and Broadcasting. From only six stations at the time of independence, All India Radio's network had expanded by the mid-1990s to 146 AM stations plus a National Channel, the Integrated North-East Service aimed at tribal groups in northeast India), and the External Service. There are five regional headquarters for All India Radio: the North Zone in New Delhi; the North-East Zone in Guwahati, Assam; the East Zone in Calcutta; the West Zone in Bombay; and the South Zone in Madras.

The government-owned network provides both national and local programs in Hindi, English, and sixteen regional languages. Vividh Bharati Service, headquartered in Bombay, provides commercial Radio services in India, which were inaugurated in 1967. Vividh Bharati, which accepts advertisements, broadcasts from thirty-one AM and FM stations in the mid-1990s.

India has an extensive network of medium wave and shortwave stations. In 1994 there were eighty-five FM stations and seventy-three shortwave stations that covered the entire country. The broadcasting equipment is mostly Indian made and reaches special audiences, such as farmers needing agro climatic, plant protection, and other agriculture-related information. The number of radio receivers increased almost fivefold between 1970 and 1994, from around 14 million to nearly 65 million. Most radios are also produced within India.

The foreign broadcast service is a function of the External Services Division of All India Radio. In 1994 seventy hours of news, features, and entertainment programs were broadcast daily in twenty-five languages using thirty-two shortwave transmitters. The principal target audiences are listeners in neighboring countries and the large overseas Indian community.

FM Broadcasts were introduced in Madras in 1977 and later at Jalandhar in 1992, but it was only in 1993 when time slots came to be leased to private companies that FM became synonymous with pop music and youth culture. FM broadcasts ensure reception free from atmospheric noise and electric interference. The AIR stations of Delhi, Bombay, Panaji, Bangalore, Madras, Calcutta, now sell FM slots to private producers such as Times FM, Radio Midday and Radiostar. FM broadcasts in most of the cities are oriented to urban Englishspeaking youth, with western pop music dominating. Besides sponsored hit parades and countdowns, the FM programmes include chat shows, news bulletin, contests, quizzes and plays. Advertising support for the leased slots is naturally on the rise.