DD India is the flagship channel of Doordarshan, the government owned television network of India, run by Prasar Bharati Limited. The primary endeavor of DD India has consistently been to ensure that when it comes to foreign individuals – or more specifically individuals who are located overseas such as NRIs or Non Resident Indians, they get quality access to all the television programming that India comes out with from time to time, as created by the government’s own Doordarshan.
The motivation of DD India lays in the fact that Doordarshan as a whole has been India’s oldest and first television network. Long before channels like Star Plus, Sony Entertainment Television (SET) or Zee TV managed to capture the hearts and minds of Indian audiences, Doordarshan had its own channel which beamed programs viewed by millions of Indians all over the country.
Over time no doubt, with the onset of other channels, Doordarshan as a whole lost its clout but that does not in any way mean that people lost interest in Doordarshan and its programming content.
Rather as we saw, the extent of nostalgia with regard to Doordarshan’s own programming was always there. It is just that people simply had not much of programming choice on the channels owned and run by DD while at the same time, they would continuously find ample choice on other channels.
This was a trend which did not go unnoticed in the case of Doordarshan as well. That is when it came out with DD International, which eventually managed to evolve into DD India as we know it today. No doubt, the popularity of DD India has been phenomenal, with networks such as DirecTV also carrying it on it.
Moreover, people around the world seem to be having a rather strong preference for DD India since they know that when it comes to connecting with India as it exists today, there is perhaps no other network which is as strong as Doordarshan.
Moreover, one needs to look at the fact that within India, Doordarshan and its bouquet of channels are one of the very few which are still accessible on a terrestrial basis, without any cost. No doubt, this has made DD such that people all over the country throng its channels, its programs, by the millions.
In turn, this becomes a legacy which people find really very hard to give up in any way.
Keeping that in mind, there is absolutely no doubt that this legacy gets carried forward within Indians even when they leave India such that they have a very strong desire and preference to ensure access to DD’s programs, which happens via DD India as and when they happen to be outside of the country.
In the times to come, we will surely see enhanced access to DD India by a very large cross section of people out there, especially as the quality of programming on the channel improves incrementally.