JONAI, April 23 - On completion of its glorious 50-year service to the nation, All India Radio (AIR), Pasighat, has celebrated its golden jubilee with elaborate programmes, which has come to a successful end on Friday evening.
The AIR staffs with the help of local people started the golden jubilee celebration on March 6 this year. The centre conducted broadcasting of special programmes incorporating special messages from important personalities, interview with senior citizens, women leaders and legendary artists etc., besides arranging a get-together programme to mark the celebration.
The concluding day event on Friday started with plantation in and around office premise in the morning, followed by a seminar on �Challenges of Akashvani to reached the unreached� and various cultural presentations.
Addressing the seminar, Additional Director General (ADG), ER and NER of AIR (Guwahati), Deven Basumatary, said that the AIR stations set up in Arunachal Pradesh were working with many challenges due to its complex geographical location. The radio centre at Pasighat has completed its 50-year service amid the challenges, which needs introspection to assess its quality of service. He requested the people to share constructive suggestion to achieve their goal in broadcasting profession defying the challenges.
Atukl Gupta (Technical) of ADG office, Guwahati, said that the AIR, running under Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, was taking steps to cover the unreached areas in the country through improvement of their new technologies. He also spoke on the existing radio wave transmission systems in the country.
Addressing the technical session of the seminar, Professor SN Jha of JN College, Pasighat, termed the radio as the most powerful system of communication. He said that the AIR is striving to uphold the unity and integrity of the nation, while it is promoting interest and concern of the nation through all important events.
Explaining the �spoken word format�, Jha said that the AIR was reliable for catering information to optimum level. He also explained different factors of radio programme such as timings, significance, proximity, prominence and human interest through power-point presentation.
Renowned writer-cum-artist of Pasighat, Kaling, discussed various challenges in addressing the issues related to children, women and senior citizens and laid stress on production of �special programme� for the groups in order to attract their attention.
AIR Pasighat was established in 1996. Initially, the power of transmitter was only 1.5 Watt covering Pasighat township. Now, the station serves more than one lakh population covering a larger portion of East Siang district and parts of West Siang, Upper Siang and Dibang Valley districts. It has a very rich collection of folk songs, particularly of the Adi community.
As a testimony of untiring efforts of the AIR staffs, the centre had won two national awards for its continuous effort in production of value-based folklores and mythology of local tribal community. Moreover, it has been organising annual event called �Siang Music Festival� in order to create awareness of the need to preserve indigenous culture.
