[1] The song was composed by Bhimsen Joshi and arranged by Louis Banks, with lyrics by Piyush Pandey (then an account manager and presently the executive chairman and creative head of Ogilvy and Mather, India).
Hindi (Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar's parts, among others), and chronologically, the others were: Kashmiri, Punjabi, Sindhi, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Bangla, Assamese, Odia, Gujarati and Marathi.
It is widely reported that the idea for the song was formed by Rajiv Gandhi, Kona Prabhakar Rao and Jaideep Samarth, who was the brother of actresses Tanuja and Nutan and a senior executive at Ogilvy Bensom & Mather (OBM).
Samarth approached Suresh Mullick with the proposal made by Doordarshan to create a film on the unity of India with a planned release date of 15 August 1988.
Mullick chose Louis Banks and L Vaidyanathan to blend the music correctly and arrange the final score, which was sung by M Balamuralikrishna, Pandit Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar.
This version, titled "Phir Mile Sur Mera Tumhara", features Indian musicians, singers, sportspersons and film personalities from the current generation.
It was also criticized for its failure to capture the soul and essence of the original version, focusing excessively on Bollywood actors, ignoring eminent personalities in other fields.