On Friday, India’s public broadcaster – Prasar Bharati launched multimedia webpage and mobile aap of the service, now Balochi-speaking people in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and other parts of the world can tune in to All India Radio (AIR) broadcast in the language through computers and mobile phones
Chairperson of Prasar Bharati – A. Surya Prakash launched the mobile app and the webpage and said that this move is part of India’s efforts to reach out to the neighbourhood for better people-to-people contact.
India had raised the issue of violation of human rights and genocide in Balochistan at the meeting of a United Nations two days before.
Surya Prakash said that there are several languages in which services are broadcast by the AIR. Balochi is happening on Friday, it will also happen for other languages.
Asked if the service of AIR could face obstruction in Pakistan, DG of AIR – F. Shehryar said that the radio service is on the short-wave which cannot be blocked.
Shehryar said that one hour of programming in Balochi language is broadcast daily, but there is a scarcity of programmers in the Balochi language and the Ministry of External Affairs has assured it of support in this regard.
Surya Prakash said that the Balochi service of AIR had been very popular but it was now facing competition from some other broadcasters.
He said that But AIR has a lot of goodwill among Balochi people, who have an emotional attachment and consider it an authentic source of information.
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.
She said that apart from programmes in Balochi, songs of Hindi films too find an enthusiastic audience among the Balochi-speaking people.
Shehryar said that there is a system of news gathering from the Afghanistan – Pakistan region and they are the component in the one-hour programme which is broadcast daily.
