As a child growing up in the eastern Indian city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) in the 1970s, I remember my mother always had the radio playing in the background as she did the house work.
It was the size of two bricks and the state-run All India Radio was her prime source of entertainment. She got her news from it and heard Bollywood songs on it. On the nights my father would be away travelling on business, my sister and I would get into her bed and the three of us would together listen to Hawa Mahal, a hugely popular programme which aired fictionalised radio dramas.
Though television made its first appearance in India in 1950, it invaded our homes only in the 1980s. We huddled around TV sets watching soaps, Bollywood films and songs; and radio was relegated to the sidelines.
Listen to Kalki Presents: My Indian Life
But over the past two decades, the internet has created yet another shift in how we access content - younger generations consume most of their content digitally.
In the print industry, magazines and newspapers are being displaced by websites, books are being replaced by e-readers, video is being streamed on YouTube, Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime, and audio is being played on music apps.
To get a sense of how plugged-in young Indians are, you need not go far. On the Delhi Metro, thousands of young men and women are glued to their smartphones, with their earphones plugged in. Some are watching videos, but many others are listening to audio content.
And as we launch Kalki Presents: My Indian Life, the new BBC World Service podcast, we are focused on these millennials.
The potential is huge. India is a young country - of its 1.2 billion people, about 600 million (or more than half of the country's population) are under 25 years old; and more than 423 million (or one in every three Indians) are between 15 and 34 years of age. There are 450 million smartphone users and 414 million internet subscribers. And by the end of 2018, about 530 million Indians are expected to own smartphones.
The sheer numbers, says journalist and writer Snigdha Poonam, makes young Indians "important for the futures of their own country and that of the world".
Poonam wrote a book called Dreamers that came out at the start of the year. It's about the challenges the youth face - and present.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45055091
Read more about: Hindi Podcasting
It was the size of two bricks and the state-run All India Radio was her prime source of entertainment. She got her news from it and heard Bollywood songs on it. On the nights my father would be away travelling on business, my sister and I would get into her bed and the three of us would together listen to Hawa Mahal, a hugely popular programme which aired fictionalised radio dramas.
Though television made its first appearance in India in 1950, it invaded our homes only in the 1980s. We huddled around TV sets watching soaps, Bollywood films and songs; and radio was relegated to the sidelines.
Listen to Kalki Presents: My Indian Life
But over the past two decades, the internet has created yet another shift in how we access content - younger generations consume most of their content digitally.
In the print industry, magazines and newspapers are being displaced by websites, books are being replaced by e-readers, video is being streamed on YouTube, Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime, and audio is being played on music apps.
To get a sense of how plugged-in young Indians are, you need not go far. On the Delhi Metro, thousands of young men and women are glued to their smartphones, with their earphones plugged in. Some are watching videos, but many others are listening to audio content.
And as we launch Kalki Presents: My Indian Life, the new BBC World Service podcast, we are focused on these millennials.
The potential is huge. India is a young country - of its 1.2 billion people, about 600 million (or more than half of the country's population) are under 25 years old; and more than 423 million (or one in every three Indians) are between 15 and 34 years of age. There are 450 million smartphone users and 414 million internet subscribers. And by the end of 2018, about 530 million Indians are expected to own smartphones.
The sheer numbers, says journalist and writer Snigdha Poonam, makes young Indians "important for the futures of their own country and that of the world".
Poonam wrote a book called Dreamers that came out at the start of the year. It's about the challenges the youth face - and present.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-45055091
Read more about: Hindi Podcasting
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