CDS (I) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 73 of 120

Correct — C, Advanced Research Unit. Prasar Bharati's own account of its archives names the working parts, and an advanced research unit is not among them. The Central Archives in New Delhi runs through two wings, the All India Radio Archives and the Doordarshan Archives, and holds something like 47,000 magnetic tapes. Within it sit a sound archive of recordings and spoken word material, a transcription service whose job is to transcribe and preserve recordings of speeches by Presidents and Prime Ministers, a programme exchange unit that circulates serials, features, community songs, dramas and monthly chain plays among stations across the country, and support units for refurbishing old recordings and for commercial release. Research on broadcasting is done elsewhere in Prasar Bharati, not as a limb of this service.

• (a)Central Archives — The Central Archives is the parent body of the whole arrangement, working through its All India Radio and Doordarshan wings.
• (b)Sound Archives — The sound archive is real and substantial — the largest collection of music recordings in the country, together with interviews and speeches.
• (d)Transcription Unit — The transcription unit is the oldest part of the arrangement; archival work at All India Radio began with the transcription service on 3 April 1954.

All India Radio's Transcription and Programme Exchange Service does two related jobs. It preserves — recording, cataloguing and restoring broadcast material of lasting value, including the voices of national leaders — and it circulates, sending programmes made at one station to others so that a serial or a feature produced in one language region can be broadcast elsewhere. The service is a working library rather than a museum, which is why its units are named for functions such as transcription, exchange and refurbishing.

This is a recall question with a manufactured option, and the way through is to notice which name does not describe a task. Central Archives, Sound Archives and Transcription Unit all name something a broadcaster physically does with tape; Advanced Research Unit names an activity with no obvious product in an archive. That test — does the option name a function of this body, or merely a plausible-sounding office — is the one to apply whenever three options are concrete and the fourth is abstract. Anything asserted here beyond Prasar Bharati's own description of its archives is not worth carrying into the exam hall.

• Archival work at All India Radio began with the transcription service on 3 April 1954.
• The Central Archives in New Delhi works through two wings, the All India Radio Archives and the Doordarshan Archives.
• The transcription service exists to transcribe and preserve recordings of speeches by Presidents and Prime Ministers.
• The programme exchange unit circulates serials, features, community songs, dramas and monthly chain plays among All India Radio stations.
• The Central Archives holds roughly 47,000 magnetic tapes; a refurbishing unit works on the audio quality of archival recordings.

• Assuming any impressive-sounding office must exist; the tell here is that three options name tasks and one names an ambition.
• Mixing up the Central Archives with the National Archives of India, which holds government records rather than broadcast tape.
• Treating the programme exchange function as international; it circulates programmes among All India Radio's own stations.

As an odd-one-out item on the units of a government media body, or inside a statements question on Prasar Bharati and its services.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Transcription and Programme Exchange Service belongs to which one of the following organisations?

  • (a)Press Information Bureau
  • (b)All India Radio
  • (c)National Film Archive of India
  • (d)Films Division

  Answer(b) All India Radio — the service preserves broadcast recordings and circulates programmes among its stations.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Prasar Bharati was established as an autonomous corporation under an Act of which one of the following years?

  • (a)1976
  • (b)1985
  • (c)1990
  • (d)1997

  Answer(c) 1990 — the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act was passed in 1990, and the corporation came into being in 1997.