All India Radio (AIR), officially known since 1956 as Ākāshvāṇī, is India’s national public radio broadcaster.
Established in 1930, it is the sister service of Prasar Bharati's Doordarshan.
AIR covers almost 99% of the Indian population and is the largest radio network in the world.
Today, the External Services Division of All India Radio broadcasts daily in 57 transmissions with almost 72 hours covering over 108 countries in 27 languages, out of which 15 are foreign and 12 Indian.
The foreign languages are Arabic, Baluchi, Burmese, Chinese, Dari, French, Indonesian, Persian, Pushtu, Russian, Sinhala, Swahili, Thai, Tibetan and English (General Overseas Service).
The Indian languages are Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, Kokani, Kashmiri, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Nepali, Punjabi, Saraiki, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
This is a link between India and rest of the world, especially in countries with people of Indian origin.
To know more about radio broadcasting in Hindi outside India, listen to Amit Sarwal’s conversation with Ashwini Tyagi, former broadcaster ARI and BBC, in SBS Hindi’s ‘Mann ka Radio’ series.
Ashwini Tyagi Source: SBS Hindi
