New Delhi: The Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ranchi will study all the episodes of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s radio show Mann Ki Baat, which is broadcasted every month, the Indian Express reported.
The newspaper reported that IIM-Ranchi will make the data public with an “aim to help policymakers and researchers”.
This comes days after IIM-Rohtak conducted a survey Mann Ki Baat, which said that one in four Indians listen to the show, and that nearly 96% of the country’s population is aware of it.
IIM-Ranchi will analyse all the episodes – the 100th episode, too, that was aired on April 30 – with “topic modelling exercises”, the daily reported, adding that it is a way to analyse large volumes of text.
“The study aims to identify the main themes and keywords discussed in various episodes and ‘create a concise record’, thereby helping governments make more informed decisions about policies,” the report said, citing the team that will conduct the study.
The first episode was aired on October 3, 2014.
A three-member team from IIM-Ranchi will conduct the research, the report added.
The research would help people from across disciplines to access what the prime minister has spoken in the show over the last few years in the form of summary, graphs, tabular forms, Subhro Sarkar, a professor in Marketing at the institute, told the newspaper.
He explained how the research will be carried out: firstly, the team will collect data, or transcribe all 100 episodes; second, it will do a quantitative analysis, but even if some parts are not coherent, it will try to analyse them.
The study is expected to be completed in the next two months, after which it will be put up on public domain.
When asked whether there will be any analysis on what the prime minister did not address in his 100 episodes, Sarkar told IE, “That is not the primary focus of the study. It depends on what he has said.”
Separately, another study titled ‘Media In India: Access, Practices, Concerns and Effects’ published by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, found that at least three-fifths of the Indian population has never listened to the prime minister’s radio address.
The study was conducted with social scientists, Sanjay Kumar, Suhas Palshikar and Sandeep Shastri as advisers. It was released in November last year.