PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

(PTI) news agency cooperatively owned by Indian newspapers, which joined together to take over the management of the Associated Press of India and the Indian outlets of the Reuters news agency of Great Britain. It began operating in February 1949 and is headquartered in Bombay. A national nonprofit enterprise, PTI, which operates primarily in English, as do most of India's large dailies, became one of the Third World's largest cooperative news agencies. It employed some 2,000 writers and other specialists in more than 150 offices, with correspondents in important world population centres. In the 1980s PTI underwent a program of modernization and diversification; it computerized many of its operations, introduced services in Hindi and other languages, and established a television facility (1986) as well as the country's first wire photo service (1987). In 1976 the government declared a state of emergency and required PTI to merge with India's other three major agencies, the English-language United News of India and the multilingual Hindustan Samachar and Samachar Bharati, but in 1978, the four agencies were allowed to start operating independently again.