The External Services Division of All India Radio (AIR) has expanded its transmissions in six neighbouring languages – Dari, Pashto, Baluchi, Mandarin Chinese, Nepali and Tibetan – from 3 January.

AIR said the broadcast duration in each of these languages had been doubled from the existing one to 1.5 hours per day to three hours per day.

“The broadcast services in these six languages henceforth will be available every day for one and a half hours each in the morning and evening,” an AIR statement said.

In keeping with its mandate of reaching out to the regions across the globe, the External Services Division of AIR currently broadcasts in 17 languages every day: French, Mandarin Chinese, Tibetan, Sindhi, Indonesian, Nepali, Urdu, Baluchi, Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Persian, Tibetan, Swahili, Punjabi, Saraiki and Bengali.