Mobile app, website for All India Radio's Balochi service launched

New Delhi: Balochi-speaking people in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and other parts of the world can now tune in to All India Radio (AIR) broadcast in the language through computers and mobile phones as India's public broadcaster on Friday launched multimedia webpage and mobile app of the service.

Prasar Bharati Chairperson A. Surya Prakash, who launched the mobile app and the webpage, said the move is part of India's efforts to reach out to the neighbourhood for better people-to-people contact.

The move to launch AIR's digital platforms in Balochi came after Prime Minister Narendra Modi brought up the issue of Pakistani atrocities on the people of Balochistan and Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) in his Independence Day speech.

India had also raised the issue of atrocities in Balochistan at the meeting of a United Nations body earlier this week.

Prasar Bharati officials said the mobile app and the webpage were just "value addition" as Balochi service of the AIR has been in existence since 1974.

"There are several languages in which services are broadcast by the AIR. Balochi is happening on Friday, it will also happen for other languages," Surya Prakash said.

"As the world's largest democracy, we have the responsibility to disseminate news and information across the world that is factual and correct," he said.

Asked if AIR's services could face obstruction in Pakistan given the prevailing situation, AIR DG F. Shehryar said the radio service is on the short-wave that cannot be blocked.

Responding to queries, Shehryar said that while AIR does not aim at countering any kind of propaganda, it will challenge falsehoods by presenting the correct information.

Shehryar said that, at present, one hour of programming in Balochi language is broadcast daily, but there is a paucity of programmers in the language and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has assured it of support in this regard.

Surya Prakash said AIR's Balochi service had been very popular but it was now facing competition from some other broadcasters.

"But AIR has a lot of goodwill among Balochi people, who have an emotional attachment and consider it an authentic source of information," he said.

Speaking about AIR's External Service Division (ESD), the Prasar Bharati chief said that it broadcasts in several foreign languages and around 14 of these are spoken in the neighbourhood.

Some programmers for Balochi service were also present at the event.

One of them, Maria Rakhshani, who came to India as a refugee, said that she has been working for the ESD since 2009.

The programmes are widely popular, she said, adding that apart from programmes in Balochi, Hindi films songs too find an enthusiastic audience among the Balochi-speaking people.

Shehryar said that there is a system of news gathering from the Af-Pak region and that too is a component in the one-hour capsule which is broadcast daily.