[cr-india] Marrying radio with Internet in Nepal

[Frederick Noronha]

Kothmale in Sri Lanka had also reported something on these lines
earlier. Thanks to Ashish Kotamkar for sending this thru. FN

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Marrying Radio with Internet in Nepal
Comments of the jury:

- It is amazing how the guy managed "to browse the Internet throu gh the
radio"! Well done! In my opinion it is a really innovative way of using
ICT as a tool to get information to remote communities, and it deserves
the first place.  

- Information society is key in the developing world and using radio in this
innovative way holds out hop e for many community radio stations the world
over.

The full story: (http://www.iicd.org/base/story_read_y?id=4886)

Marrying Radio with Internet in Nepal
Date added : 2002-04-13 

Radio Sagarmatha is the first community FM radio in the entire south Asia.
Radio Sagarmatha is broadcast on FM 102.4 in the Kathmandu valley.

Nepal was connected to the Internet only in 1995. Yet, the majority of pop
ulation cannot benefit from this new medium due to higher cost, low a
vailability and lack of exposure. It also requires a minimum working
knowledge of English.

But at the same time, there is no question that in urban and rural Nepal
radio is the ubiquitous media. A radio is available at as low as Rs. 60.00
(less than US$ 1), and literacy i s not a barrier. Taking the information
resource of the Internet to p eople through radio was an idea that
originated over cups of coffee a nd the need of IT related program at the
Radio Sagarmatha.

With aim of providing newer means of information to the public at large, th
e Internet radio programme was designed to act as an interface betwee n the
users and the Internet. In early March 2000, a senior producer at the radio
station, sat down and drew the sketch of the program. Th e first broadcast
of the program was made on the 17th of March 2000.  Since then, in the last
two years, we have increased the duration of the program from 15 minutes to
30 minutes, done live transmissions fr om ICT events, done interviews, live
internet browsing and a lot of o ther things that were not conceivable
before. The 113th episode was b roadcast on 10th April, 2002.

The senior producer left the station in July, 2000 to pursue further career
at BBC, and since then the program has gone through ups-and downs, but has
been continuing through my efforts. I now am the producer, presenter as well
as writer. There are a few friends who help in producing periodic contents.
The efforts have been entirely voluntary on my part, for the larger public
good.

In Nepal, people like to talk over cups of tea. In the sh adows of the
mighty Himalayas, the village folks like to gather at th e village centre to
chat and discuss everything under the sky. A step further in this is
community radio. Success of community radio in th e Americas and Canada is
well known, and in Nepal too this revolution began when Radio Sagarmatha
became the first community radio station to be established in the entire
South Asia. Radio Sagarmatha is run by group of environmental journalists,
and the success has spawned mo re than five community stations in different
part of Nepal. Sagarmath a itself means Mount Everest in Nepali, and
continues to be on top of the world for its unique bearing in the field of
community radio.

The open nature of Sagarmatha, as it is fondly referred to, meant c onstant
discussion over continuous cups of teas over new program idea s. Over many
cups of the light brown liquid, in March 2000, we starte d thinking about
doing an Information Communications Technology (ICT) show on the radio.
Public radio was a new concept and there were no rules. Jitendra Raut,
senior producer at Sagarmatha at that time, lik ed the idea and immediately
found a 15 minutes slot on Fridays. We na med it "Sagarmatha Site." It was a
recorded programme, consisting three segments.

The first part consisted of what we call "browsing on the radio" where we
talk about a web-site. Initially, when we start ed, we tried to talk to the
web-site creators about the site. But soo n, we discovered that it is not
possible, as there simply is much mor e information in web-sites created
elsewhere, than sites created from Nepal. The abundance and appropriateness
of the information found in international web sites like apc.org,
oneworld.net, and ELDIS were something we wanted to share about. Thus in
later episodes, we started browsing the Internet over the radio. We recorded
the program in fro nt of the computer, as we browsed the Internet.

In the second part, "Sabdartha" which stands for "meaning" in Nepali, one
technical ja rgon related with the Internet was explained. This was the most
popul ar section, which received more requests for information in specific
topics then any other. We covered topics like Domain Name Service (DN S),
web server, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), streaming audio et c.

In the third part of the program, we talked with an experience d Internet
user to explore tried and tested ways to get valuable info rmation from the
internet and ways to get practical benefits from the information acquired.
We have tried to bring diverse and people from various fronts in this
segment of the program. We already have had s tudents, journalists,
businessmen, engineers and professional from ot her fields share their ideas
with us on the radio.

After five months, in July, fortunately for Jitendra, he got selected for
the BBC's Nepali Service and unfortunately, there was a question of how the
program would continue. So, when he left for London, I decided to take over.
In five months I had enough experience to become a producer. I continued
with the old format of broadcasting recorded programs.

Then suddenly someone at the Computer Association listened to the pro gram
and they decided to provide a grant. The grant meant that the Sa garmatha
could afford to increase the airtime. We got the prime time slot on
Wednesdays. Support from the association meant that the progr am got
popular, and got renamed to "Suchana Prabidhi dot com" which l iterally
means "Information technology dot com".

At this time, I became confident enough to change the program format, and
also conduct live shows. I adopted what is called "open-format" in radio
parlance. There was no fixed way in which the program was conducted. This
was necessitated because people requested detailed information on topics
rather then snippets of information that we were feeding on air. Thus, after
the change, if I invited an expert for an interview, he would get the full
half hour, and if it was a web site I was browsing, it too got full
emphasis.

New experiments followed, and we did live browsing of the Internet from the
studio. People would call in with their specific request of information, and
we'd use the internet acce ss in the studio to answers questions on air. We
also did live broadc ast of big IT events taking place in Kathmandu, through
use of teleph ones, and at least in one case the use of mobile phones.

The live browsing experiment, though successful, could not be continued.
First, the studio was not designed to have a telephone line or any form o f
internet access point. It was actually the friendly technician who hacked
the sound cables running into the studio to connect the teleph one lines.
Also, there was loss of air-time, as web-sites took time t o load, and a few
times, we were disconnected abruptly.

But live broadcasts through telephone lines have continued. While on field
vis its to ICT related project outside Kathmandu, I have done various
interviews with pioneers to be broadcast from the radio station. Other
colleagues at Sagarmatha also collect sound bytes on my behalf, when t hey
see an interesting use of ICT.

As the program has progressed, we have received lots of request for specific
information, and have tried to address those issues. We also tried to cover
relevant web-si tes on special days. On the world environment day, we
covered the WWF Nepal web-site. And on the world population day, we covered
the UNFP A web-site.

Increasingly, we have received computer related questions and how to fix
computer hardware and software problems. While th is itself doesn't fit
directly with the initial objectives of the pro gram, we have welcomed such
queries, as increased number of ICT users indirectly helps in meeting the
objectives.

The latest addition to the program has been the radio quiz. Since March 27,
2002 we start ed the radio quiz. The idea was borne in rounds of
brainstorming with friends, again over cups of tea and cookies. There hadn't
been any c hange in the program format for long, and spice was needed to
generat e interests. While there was a constant flow of questions, there was
no way to gauge the amount of listeners' participation. With helps fr om
friends in the IT industry, we managed to get gifts in form of fre e
training for winners, and this probably was catalytic in increasing user
feedback.

The effects of the radio quiz has been tremendous. The number of letters and
e-mails has grown 200%. This week the num ber of letters and e-mails
combined crossed fifty. And I even receive d faxed replies, a first in two
years.

The project continues to evolve, and now a few friends have been regularly
contributing indirec tly through referrals and by sharing expertise. Though
at times, I fe lt I am the only one pulling on with it, I was proved wrong.
At least in one occasion, when the program couldn't be broadcast because I
wa s stuck outside Kathmandu, there was a deluge of letters enquiring wh at
had happened. Another case, in which a previously broadcast record ing was
mistakenly re-broadcast, there were immediate phone calls fro m people and
the correction could be made.

When we started the program, we had never thought it would come so long. I
was actually a mazed that I alone have produced more than 100 radio programs
in the past two years, and I am a network and systems administrator, who
enjoys routers and Linux as much. The results from the program cannot be
measured directly in terms of economic benefits or indicative measures. But,
for us the measure of success has been the letters from list eners. After
the incident when the program was not broadcast, there w ere volunteers who
were willing to help with the program. At least on e listener wrote "If it
is financial problems, we can form a listener s' club to sustain the
program."

Yet, the definite result has been the proof of concept. Taking ICT to people
doesn't necessarily means that you need to put a computer into every
village. What you actually need to take to is the information that can make
a difference. ICT is not an end in itself, rather a tool that needs to be
adapted for local use. The radio show has proven this concept.

A profiling of letters received and general indicative questions have shown
that peo ple are actually interested in use of technology, specially the
young generation. The willingness of these youths to contribute can be used
in greater perspective of using ICT for development.

In a more substantive, there is a collection of almost 50 hours of audio
conten t on issues relating to ICT. More than a fifty experts have shared
their experience on the radio and many budding youths have come to tell
their adventures about the Internet on air. A very interesting reply from a
witty young guest in the program "I like computers, because I have never won
a chess game with it. I will not stop until I get it done."

One of the very visible but indirect impact of the program has been the full
automation of Sagarmatha's broadcast operation. The program actually
de-mystified the technology to producers and technicians at the station.
When the program started, there was a single co mputer, but now there are
almost 10 computers. Many programs are dire ctly recorded in computers in
MP3 format and played on air. The daily archives of the broadcast are also
kept on CD-ROMs in MP3 format. Th e many experts that visited the studio for
interviews and interaction also contributed by providing free consultancy. A
CEO of an local ISP, ITNTI, actually provided free web hosting and e-mail
service for t he radio station after he came to the studio for the
interview.

Other radio stations in the country have also picked up the idea and
replication by at least two stations is flattering for something that had
such humble beginnings over cups of tea.

While people like to chat a lot in Nepal, they seldom pick up their pens to
write letter s to editors or send feed-back. So, it may not always be good
to expe ct immediate feedback from people in Nepal of what you have done.
You need an excitement, like the prize in the quiz, to entice users to w
rite. Or you may stop the work, only to receive complaints.

An important lesson for me, is to have your audience participate in the
program. When we took live phone calls, there were many calls. May be people
felt it easier to pick up the phone and call, or may be they liked to hear
their voice on air, participation is the probably the key. The more direct
participation, the better.

The need to be time adaptive and change program formats to introduce new
ideas and concep ts is required, and the focus should remain on information
rather the n on technology so that you do not loose sight of your primary
objectives.

There have been lots of ups and downs for us. Only I have been a constant in
the program, and when we think about taking it for ward, with enough
participation, the frequency can be increased, and people recruited to work
on it full time and create a daily feature.  May be there should be another
round of tea.

Project Information : 

URL : http:// 
Country of activity : URL : Nepal 
Total budget in US :US $ 0.00 (excluding operational costs) 
Source of funding : Voluntary Effort 
Are there any partners involved : Yes 

Whats the partners role : From November 2000 to May 2001 the Computer
Association of Nepal supported Radio Sagarmatha by sponsoring the program. 
This also helped to increase the air-time of the program from 15 minutes to
30 minutes. But the sponsorship was stopped after-wards, as m oney allocated
was spent.

Since April, two private companies have agreed to provide gifts, in terms of
computer training, to winners of the radio quiz conducted fortnightly in the
program.

Contact information :

Gaurab Raj Upadhaya 
gaurab at lahai.com
For, Radio Sagarmatha
Program Producer / From design to implementation, everything
GPO BOX 13655, Kathmandu, Nepal
13655 
Kathmandu +977-9810 -38080 
Nepal