Dr. Pragya Khanna
When radio pro
motes the in
volvement of citizens and defends their interests; when it reflects the tastes of the mainstream and makes good humour and hope its main rationale; when it actually informs; when it helps resolve the thousand and one problems of daily life; when all ideas are debated in its programs and all opinions are respected; when cultural diversity is encouraged over commercial homogeneity; when women are main players in communication and not simply a pretty voice or a publicity gimmick; when no type of dictatorship is tolerated, not even the musical dictatorship of the big recording studios; when everyone's words fly without discrimination or censorship, that is community radio. Radio stations that bear this name do not fit the logic of money or advertising. Their purpose is different; their best efforts are put at the disposal of civil society.
The past philosophy of community radio is to use this medium as the voice of the voiceless, the mouthpiece of oppressed people (be it on radial, gender, or class grounds) and generally as a tool for development. Community radio is defined as having three aspects: non-profit making, community ownership and control, community participation. Community radio is not about doing something for the community but about the community doing something for itself that is, owning and controlling its own means of communication.
Community radio in the commercially dominated media system means radio in the community, for the community, about the community and by the community. There is a wide participation from regular community members with respect to management and production of programs. In short, it is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting.
In India the campaign to legitimise community radio began in the mid-1990s, soon after the Supreme Court of India ruled in its judgment of February 1995 that "airwaves are public property". Following that after a series of experiments, the government of India released the first set of community radio guidelines and also the technology to be used by early 2003, but unfortunately, restricted eligibility to educational institutions only. Marginalized and voiceless communities continued to remain outside the scope of the then released community radio policy guidelines. Anna FM was India's first campus "community" radio station. Launched on 1 February 2004, it is run by the Education and Multimedia Research Centre (EM²RC). The programmes are produced by students as well as community.
On 16 November 2006, the government of India implemented new Community Radio Guidelines, which permitted NGOs, educational institutions and agricultural institutions to own and operate community radio stations. By 30 November 2008, there were 38 operational community radio stations in the country. Of these, two were run by NGOs and the rest by educational institutions still.
Under the 2006 community radio policy, any not-for-profit "legal entity", except individuals, political parties (and their affiliates), criminal and banned organizations can apply for a CR license. The licence entitles them to operate a 100-watt (Effective Radiated Power) radio station, with a coverage area of approximately a 12-km radius. A maximum antenna height of 30 meters is allowed. Community radio stations are expected to produce at least 50 percent of their programmes locally, as much as possible in the local language or dialect. The stress is on developmental programming, although there is no explicit ban on entertainment. News programmes are banned on community radio in India (as they are on commercial FM radio). However, the government has clarified that certain categories of news are permitted on radio, including sports news and commentaries, information on traffic and weather conditions, coverage of cultural events and festivals, information on academic events, public announcements pertaining to utilities such as electricity and the water supply, disaster warnings and health alerts. Five minutes of advertising per hour is allowed on community radio. Sponsored programs are not allowed, except when the program is sponsored by the government at the local or state level.
The idea of Community Radio in India has really proved to be a boon. Imagine a country which has 18 officially-recognized languages and a total of 1652 mother tongues; given its diversity and expanse, one could well understand the problems that tribal, under-privileged, or minority cultures face in getting their voices heard.
Call it by any name, community radio, rural radio, cooperative radio, or development radio, its proponents feel that radio holds the key that will unite India's linguistic and ethnic diversity and improve the economic disparity and the huge rural-urban divide.
Radio has already proven its relevance to Indians. Recent government studies suggest that radio in India could potentially reach up to 98.5% of the population. There are approximately 104 million homes that have radio-nearly double the number of homes that have TV. According to an estimate, over the last decade, All India Radio has focused more on the rural population and the urban lower middle classes, unlike [TV'S] preoccupation with the urban upper middle classes.
India's 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) talks of challenges emanating from the economy's transition to a higher growth path, the structural changes that come with it and the expectations it generates. An estimated 833 million people in India continue to live in rural areas and a very large proportion of both men and women, are either wholly or significantly still dependent for their livelihood on farm as well as non-farm activities. A plethora of centrally sponsored flagship rural development programs such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) have been given special impetus aimed at building rural infrastructure and providing basic services with the aim of reducing poverty. The Govt. of India is in for a renewed focus on the dynamics of grassroots empowerment that could enable rural communities to access information about their rights and entitlements made available under these programmes, both by law and policy. This consequently also has implications for accountability in the reach and impact of the public delivery system that the poorest approach. The key question, thus is, what kind of an accessible communication medium, amongst today's robust social media, should be utilized during the next four years extensively to sensitize and empower the poorest in rural areas in partnership with civil society? Secondly, what are the governance challenges that need to be identified in the above partnership to make the benefits of the envisaged inclusive growth more transparent, participatory and bottom up? The 2006 Community Radio National Guidelines of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting envision marginalized communities in rural areas to manage, own and operate radio stations with the help of non profit civil society and voluntary organizations.
Besides, according to guidelines, fifty percent of the content should be generated in local dialects with the participation of the local community for which the station has been set up. Thus, with a transmitter having an effective radiated power of 100 Watts, the community radio station is expected to cover a range of 10 kilometres (6 miles). Besides, non-profit organizations are eligible to seek funding from multilateral aid agencies.
The first governance challenge, therefore, is to strengthen the single window clearance mechanism for expeditious approval of applications put in by non profit civil society organizations from remote rural areas on the lines of clearance granted to universities and government educational institutions. The government aims at setting up atleast 4000 community radio stations that were envisaged to be set by civil society organizations during the National Consultation on Community Radio held in 2007.
However, there are a number of debates cropping up with respect to the issue that Why India has only 179 community radio stations instead of the promised 4,000? In the summer of 1923, the Bombay Presidency Radio Club started broadcasting in India over a small radius of less than 500 metres. In 1927, two privately-owned transmitters were set up by Broadcasting Services at Bombay and Calcutta, which got taken over by the government in 1930 and became the Indian Broadcasting Service. It became All India Radio in 1936. This was the beginning of a new era of communication in a country which was waiting for both independence and industrialisation. All India Radio finally came to be known as Akashvani from 1957. Because of its wide reach, it was expected to connect the country.
Almost a hundred years later, India has 245 commercial radio stations spread across 50-odd cities out of a total of 1,600 cities and towns in the country. Some might argue that radio is an ageing technology and shouldn't be revived, but it is dying even faster where it is needed the most: in rural hinterlands and communities.
More than 70% of Indian population lives in villages and a vast majority of them have little to no connectivity to Internet, electricity or telephone lines making radio the only feasible medium for mass communication. However, 13 years after India first opened itself to the idea of having community-run radio stations, only 179 such stations are currently functional in the country, far short of the 4,000 stations the government in 2007 promised would be set up "in a few years".
Even these 179 radios are far from useful as community radio services, experts say. "Community radio in India is a well-cultivated myth," says Shubhranshu Choudhary, the founder of CGNet Swara, an organisation involved with setting up community radio and call centres to relay citizen news in Chhattisgarh. "Out of the existing radios, most are run by educational institutions and others are by non-governmental organisations, so there's no role of a community."
Activists working in the space feel that the policy of only allowing NGOs to set up radios needs a review. "NGOs have their own interests in mind when they apply for community radios,". "Those in the communities speak regional dialects and tongues that NGOs have no intention of broadcasting in because their listener base reduces as soon as they switch from a common tongue to a dialect.
Furthermore, there are other issues as well. In words of Mr. Chaudhary, "For those who might really want to set up a community radio, the process is indeed cumbersome. The process requires an NGO with three years of existence to apply for the license, pay Rs 19,700 in spectrum fee, take permissions from four to five ministries and buy transmitters only from sellers authorised by the government. This process takes at least three years to complete. The guidelines say that the transmission can't go beyond the limit of 12 kilometres, but the equipment we get can't even reach beyond 7 kilometers, limiting the reach to just one village often."
Not all agree, though. Hemant Babu, director of Nomad India, an organisation involved in the manufacture and setting up of community radio stations, feels that it is better to have low intensity radios to prevent the monopoly of a few players. "If the government allows high power broadcast, only a few players would cover whole regions," he says. "We need smaller players but a large number of them so the government should focus on making it easier to set up radios instead of handing over permission to broadcast over long range."
Moreover, Community radio faces the challenges in effective and quality programme production in terms of content, production quality and community involvement: Community Radio derives its strength and popularity from community participation. In practise participation is harder than it seems, because it is labour intensive, requires the right attitude, skills and mobile equipment.
Without proper management skills, as well as some knowledge of financial management and income generation, it is very hard for Community Radio to survive without donor funding, which will always, eventually, dry up.
Community Radio is by definition relatively small and often situated in locations where basic services, like a constant supply of electricity, are lacking. Due to these conditions equipment suffers and needs to be vigorously maintained and/or regularly replaced. Among the various challenges faced by the community radio, the participation from the people is the major one and no community radio can survive without participation of people as it demands 70% participation of the community people. Therefore, if all these factors are looked into and managed effectively, this service can really be a great force in strengthening the rural-urban divide in the country among other benefits that can be derived from it. |
