New Delhi: One in four Indians listen to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s radio show Mann Ki Baat, according to a survey conducted by the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Rohtak.
IIM-Rohtak was tasked by Prasar Bharat, the country’s state-owned public broadcaster, in April last year to track listenership of the radio programme.
Dheeraj P Sharma, director, IIM-Rohtak, said the institute did not consult an earlier survey by Lokniti-Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in 2022, which had noted that only one in 10 Indians, of the 7,000 respondents surveyed, tuned in for the show.
“The data of about 23 crore Indians will translate to one in four people listening to the show regularly…I am not aware of the CSDS report on the listenership, we have not referred to it,” Sharma told ThePrint.
At a press conference in Delhi’s National Media Centre Monday, Sharma and Prasar Bharati CEO Gaurav Dwivedi spoke about the highlights of the IIM study, which is yet to be officially released.
“Why a survey, many people will be wondering. On digital media, on which most of us are more comfortable, real-time sentiment feedback is readily available but on traditional electronic media like the radio and television, there are limitations and is a bit difficult to get dynamic feedback. Therefore, this is the only way to get a well-rounded mechanism to collect such data,” Dwivedi said.
According to data presented by the IIM-Rohtak and Prasar Bharati, a sample size of 10,003 people were polled for the study. The data was collected from North, South, East, and West regions of India, with approximately 2,500 responses per zone. All respondents were over the age of 15 years, with 60 per cent male respondents and 40 per cent female. The survey was conducted between July 2022 and March 2023.
“We have tried to adequately represent all parts of the country and found that 96 per cent of total respondents were aware of the show. Per our calculations, 100 crore people listened to it at least once and 41 crore have scope of converting from occasional audience to regular audience,” said Sharma.
He also said that about 50 per cent people listened to the mass outreach programme because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who sets an “emotional connect with the audience”, is “powerful and decisive”, “has a sympathetic and empathetic approach” and “directly talks to citizens”.
Television preferred over radio
The data presented also showed that about 65 per cent respondents listened to the programme in Hindi, 18 per cent in English, 4 per cent in Urdu and the rest listened in other regional languages. People from the southern and eastern parts of India, the data further noted, mostly preferred to listen to it in English.
The data also revealed that 17.6 per cent Indians preferred to listen to the programme on the radio, while a large section (44.7 per cent) preferred the television. Around 37.6 per cent liked to tune in to the programme on their mobile phones.
Mann Ki Baat, which according to Dwivedi has expanded in its scope over the years with private broadcast channels taking it to a large section of the population, is approaching its 100th episode on 30 April.
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