Mann Ki Baat a super-hit?
Notwithstanding the promotional blitzkrieg ahead of the 100th episode of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s monthly radio talk show, ‘Mann Ki Baat’ on April 30, a study based on a survey carried out by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, published in November 2022, found that three-fifths of the Indian population supposedly had never listened to the programme.
On Sunday, April 30, the prime minister’s monthly radio talk show, ‘Mann Ki Baat’ (MKB) will be aired for the 100th time and so, naturally, the government has been going full throttle in promoting this event.
However, what many may not be aware of, and dare we say, the government too, is that a study published by the well-known think tank Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), with respected social scientists, Sanjay Kumar, Suhas Palshikar and Sandeep Shastri as advisers and released last November, found that at least three-fifths of India has never listened to MKB.
The study, titled ‘MEDIA IN INDIA: Access, Practices, Concerns and Effects’, has a three-page section called ‘PM’s Mann ki Baat: A Reality Check’, which says that the data pointed to a “very low listenership of PM’s Mann ki Baat”.
Though the report was published last November, the data was gleaned from questions asked in 2021, so the numbers would likely have changed a little by now, but even then, most of the figures are surprising.
Access, Practices,
Concerns and Effects’
People across the country were asked about the programme. The representative sample was divided into seven population cohorts, namely, North West, North India, East India, West India, South, Hindi and Non-Hindi, whose data was published in the report. Sixty-three per cent, 54 per cent, 63 per cent, 57 per cent and 75 per cent of the people of these regions, respectively, said they had never listened to the programme.
The average of these numbers comes to 62.4, so roughly, three-fifths of the Indian population has never listened to this monthly radio programme.
Among the exception is Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, who, while addressing a conclave at Vigyan Bhavan recently, said, “I have never let go of a single episode of ‘Mann ki Baat’ ”.
The report also divided the representative sample into two cohorts, ‘Hindi-speaking States’ and ‘Non-Hindi-speaking States’ and studied their listenership patterns: surprisingly, even among the Hindi-speaking people, 50 per cent said they had never listened to MKB and only 20 per cent had listened more than once.
Surprisingly too, over half of those supporting the BJP among those surveyed, 51 per cent to be exact, had never listened to MKB.
