Entertainment

Music

Indian music includes multiple varieties of folk, popular, pop, and classical music. India's classical music tradition, including Carnatic and Hindustani music, has a history spanning millennia and, developed over several eras, remains fundamental to the lives of Indians today as sources of religious inspiration, cultural expression and pure entertainment. India is made up of several dozen ethnic groups, speaking their own languages and dialects. Alongside distinctly subcontinental forms there are major influences from Persian, Arab and British music. Indian genres like filmi and bhangra have become popular throughout the United Kingdom, South and East Asia, and around the world.

Dance

Main article: Indian classical dance, Indian folk dances Indian classical dance is performed in different styles. Its theory can be traced back to the Natya Shastra of Bharata Muni (400 BC). Its various currents forms include Bharatanatyam, Odissi, Manipuri, Kathakali, Kuchipudi, Mohiniaattam, Kathak and Sattriya

Cinema

India is a major regional center for cinema. The Indian film industry is the largest in the world (1200 movies released in the year 2002). Each of the larger languages supports its own film industry: Urdu/Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam. The Hindi/Urdu film industry, based in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, is called Bollywood (a melding of Hollywood and Bombay). Similar neologisms have been coined for the Kannada (Karnataka State) film industry (Sandalwood) based on Karnataka being known for Sandalwood, Tamil film industry (Kollywood, from the Kodambakkam district of Chennai) and the Telugu film industry (Tollywood). Tollygunge is a metonym for the Bengali film industry, long centered in the Tollygunge district of Kolkata. The Bengali language industry is notable as having nurtured the director Satyajit Ray, an internationally renowned filmmaker and a winner of many awards, among them the Bharat Ratna (India's highest civilian award), the Legion d'honneur (France), and the Lifetime achievement Academy Award. The Bollywood industry is usually the largest in terms of films produced and box office receipts, just as Urdu/Hindi speakers outnumber speakers of other Indian languages within India. (Tollywood is close on Bollywood's heels, and sometimes will turn out more films in a year.)

Radio

Radio broadcasting was, until recently a government monopoly under the Directorate General of All India Radio--established in 1936 and since 1957 also known as Akashvani--a government-owned, semicommercial operation of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. From only six stations at the time of independence, All India Radio's network had expanded by the mid-1990s to 146 AM stations plus a National Channel, the Integrated North-East Service (aimed at tribal groups in northeast India), and the External Service. There are five regional headquarters for All India Radio: the North Zone in New Delhi; the North-East Zone in Guwahati, Assam; the East Zone in Calcutta; the West Zone in Bombay; and the South Zone in Madras. All India Radio covers 99.37% of India's populace.

Television

Television service is available throughout the country. Doordarshan is a government-owned broadcaster established in 1959 and a part of All India Radio until 1976. It operates of one national network and seven regional networks. In 1992 there were sixty-three high-power television transmitters, 369 medium-power transmitters, seventy-six low-power transmitters, and twenty-three transposers. Regular satellite transmissions began in 1982 (the same year color transmission began).

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