(26 June 2015) In this article about saving India’s recorded past, Brig (Retd) VAM Hussain considers the sound archives of All India Radio (AIR). From 1954 it has become the home of 53,000 tapes of music and spoken words.
Among the latter are speeches by Mahatma Gandhi from the 1940s, and broadcasts by successive Indian presidents and prime ministers.
Brig (Retd) Hussain notes that AIR has digitized just a fraction of the 72,000 hours of the archival material it curates. He suggests that AIR establish a web presence for archival material which includes a payment gateway to listen to archived programmes.
Further suggestions are on the indiantelevision.com website.
