Sticking to what it had announced last year, BBC World Service has begun its broadcasting in four Indian languages- Marathi, Gujarati, Telugu and Punjabi. With this, the BBC will be available in 40 global languages, English included. The extension of multiple languages is part of BBC's 2020 project, under which BBC aims to reach half a billion people in the world and increase access to news and information. The global news broadcaster plans to create 157 new roles in Delhi in India and expand its bureau. The expansion into Indian languages is set for late 2017 but the BBC does not mention a timeline or dates. To achieve this, BBC World received funding from the British government in November, 2015. It intends to use the funds for enhancing its services in Russia, North Korea and the MENA region. Initially, it received £34 million in 2016-17 and £85 million from 2017-18 for TV and radio. The next review of this funding will be in 2020. News in Indic languages The media organizations operating in India are realizing that it is important to push regional languages to penetrate deeper in the country, as only a fraction of the country’s population is English-friendly. A Google and KPMG report on Indic languages showed that around 180 million Internet users could be added by 2021 for pushing news in local languages. -Last month, Online news portal The Wire announced its launch of Urdu website. The news portal initially launched an English version and then a Hindi version in February 2017. -In January this year, MediaNama reported that The Indian…
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