A year of celebrations has got underway to mark 75 years of All India Radio’s (AIR) regional language broadcasts.

The public broadcaster is paying tribute to the impact made by its news services in Telugu, Tamil, Marathi and Gujarati languages, which began in on October 1 1938.

Until this point, all broadcasts were made in Hindi, English and Bengali.

The regional language services began ahead of the outbreak of World War II.

AIR has organised several events and souvenirs to mark the occasion, .

Today, AIR runs 403 stations around India.

Its programming airs in 23 languages and 146 dialects.