[cr-india] Pirate radio stations

[Vickram Crishna]

At 8:31 AM +1000 21/05/2002, Jo Tacchi wrote:
>Pirate activities have influenced opening up of broadcasting 
>elsewhere in the world... will such activity in India spread do you 
>think?
>At 10:58 PM 20/05/2002 +0530, vincent.dsouza at vsnl.com wrote:
>>The point is these people ran localised film and soft programmes to 
>>entertain the local communities. How imaginative; CR India must 
>>award them a certificate of appreciationa and so should Sushmaji 
>>instead of slapping a rusty Act on those poor souls.

I think one of the difficulties we faced when suggesting legal action 
earlier (the DDS refusal of license) was that no-one could agree on a 
cogent case. Now we see a situation where villagers are producing 
their own content for their own consumption and being shut down.

I strongly advocate filing a suit praying that the government set up 
local FM stations in 800,000 villages purely for local consumption. 
The government should be allowed a reasonable time, say about 6 to 8 
weeks, to reply with a time frame for deployment. If it cannot find 
the resources to begin this activity within the next three months, 
the court should be asked to bar the government from reserving the 
right to licence such local stations (with 1/2 to 1 km local range) 
anywhere in India. We can concede places located within this distance 
from specified high security areas such as ammunition dumps, and 
perhaps even this distance from the border with other countries 
(Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan), but I for 
one see no reason why local people should be denied this form of 
expression endlessly.

Vincent, Fred, Satheesh, any others who have been part of this 
discussion before or would like to help now... I mentioned earlier 
that we can ask other successful activists like Dr Arun Mehta to help 
with getting legal assistance in Delhi so that we can file this as a 
PIL with the Supreme Court quoting the Orissa case as an example of 
unnatural restriction of the ordinary right to freedom of speech. 
Does anyone have serious objection?

I request that we debate this for no more than a week, then if we are 
in agreement approach a suitable lawyer in Delhi who can help us 
frame a suitable plea. Does next Wednesday seem ok for taking it 
forward to the action stage?
-- 
Vickram