India will soon be largest nation with a TV in every household: Javadekar

Srinagar: Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Prakash Javadekar said on Saturday that India will soon become the largest country in the world where every household has a television set. "There is a new dream that every household will have a TV in the coming years. There are 25 crore households in India and 18 crore have a TV set. There are still 7 crore households without a TV," Javadekar said here.

The Union minister was addressing a function to launch distribution of free Dish TV set top boxes in Kashmir, besides unveiling the signature tune of Doordarshan's satellite channel for Jammu and Kashmir DD Kashir. Javadekar also launched the first news bulletin in Dogri that will be aired on DD Kashir on a daily basis from Saturday evening.

"Today, we are making a small beginning in which we are giving set-top boxes of free Dish TV for people living in far flung areas and to poor people. However, as soon as our economy develops, people will buy a TV as soon as they are able to address the six basic needs of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education and livelihood," the minister said.

He said that in the near future, India will be the largest nation with TV in every household. "This is my belief." Javdekar said television has seen massive expansion over the past three decades with mushrooming of channels in late 1990s while Doordarshan being the only channel in 1970s.

"Today we have more than 700 TV channels on various fields. There was revolution in this field after private channels come up in 1992-93," he said. The minister gave credit for the spread of TV across the country to the introduction of cable TV.

"The cable connected one home to another, then one locality to the next, and it ended up connecting the people as well. Even today, there are 9 crore households where cable TV is watched," he said. He said that the cable spread was fast due to the fact that there was no interference of the government in it.