[cr-india] Fwd: RE: [biharchintan] Bihar radio man gets help from abroad]

[Vickram Crishna]

On Fri, 2006-03-31 at 16:30, sajan venniyoor wrote: 
> > > From: "Osama Manzar" <osama_manzar at yahoo.com>
> >>Raghav has innovated a low cost technology and it should be
> > > protected, operated, propagated, and replicated within the frame
> >>work of> > regulatory authorities.
> 

While Sajan is correct in pointing out that Raghav didn't actually
innovate in the sense of doing something new, let us not on this list
forget that he does appear to have worked out on his own that a cordless
microphone is a gizmo artist's platform for a full fledged FM station. 

I described in a print article (in Time Out Mumbai magazine, a year or
so back) how to do this (alas, I don't think it is available online),
for readers who might be interested in setting up wireless music
extenders within their own homes. With a 300 word limit for the
published article, obviously the conversion can't be too complex.

Cordless microphones have been sold widely, freely and illegally in
India for years, a fact completely ignored by the mandarins bestride
their iron towers, despite the booming sales in Connaught Place, a
stone's throw away - no need to trek all the way over to Bihar, or for
that matter, Oravakal - from said towers of ignorance.

However, innovation in wireless does not end at making radio stations. I
submit that the global trend (applied very blindly in India, sad to say)
in limiting the use of FM, has in fact stifled innovation here. There is
no gainsaying the fact that no single change affected the fortunes of
urban India in the past decade than the opening up of Internet access.
The employment and income opportunities are as yet barely tapped
although average income levels are now among the highest in the Indian
organised sector. Raghav's work illustrates that the same could - and
should, I believe - happen in rural India with FM. Is there a possible
economic justification to preventing growth in the rural sectors?

Only a couple of days ago, we were discussing on this list the use of FM
for multiple language simultaneous translation - it will be hard to find
a more ready to deploy and inexpensive technology that has done so much
so easily, targeting such grassroots communities. 

Using FM in the house (or garden, for that matter) for home stereo is
trivial, technically speaking. Is home electronic music to be an elitist
technology by law? What about public concerts, where using this
technology synergistically and serendipitously combats urban noise
pollution? Should music lovers be denied access to superior and
healthier (both socially and medically speaking) technology? 

However, there are other innovations, some of which we describe on other
pages of the Radiophony site (if we knew everything that will be
possible in the future, they wouldn't be innovations, would they?) - see
the FAQs on FM <http://www.radiophony.com/html_files/crindiafaqs.html>. 
Against this, the refusal of the government to seriously address any
modification of the current policy, based on commonplace physical
phenomena, that a low power signal can only reach a relatively short
distance and is easily swamped by much more powerful signals in the same
geographical area, is simply perverse. 

These two simple scientific facts make it imperative to allow technology
innovators to research, develop and assist to deploy applications of low
power wireless in existing 'junk frequencies' (the broadcast FM band is
effectively also such a frequency band, considering its coverage over
the Indian terrain is so low, uneven and underutilized even where
present) cheaply in rural and other lower income sectors of the
population. Where exactly is the supposed public benefit the government
is guarding, in keeping with the Supreme Court judgment of 1995? In my
opinion, eking over just a handful of the potential in the recent
commercial FM disbursement is a travesty of management of India's need
for even growth across all sectors of the economy.

Preventing a more evenhanded approach is a fairly antediluvian law (it
can be argued, as Sajan has done, a pair of equally inappropriate laws,
both promulgated by a colonial government well before the widespread use
of technologies in several of these bands - 100 MHz FM and 2.4 GHz
microwave, for instance) designed to impose colonial controls on a
shackled population, unsuited for a democracy of equals. Since November
(or was it October?) 2005, a Cabinet Committee has been sitting on the
simplest of preliminary steps to putting a more appropriate regime in
place, being the opening up of community radio beyond educational
institutions. 

Against this background, can anyone on this list enlighten me about
other low cost technology based wireless solutions developed and widely
deployed in India (not developed abroad and copied here or bought
outright and placed here)? And if Raghav Mahto can work out the basics
in his spare time, sitting in a remote town, why aren't more persons
applying their minds in this area? Is the government seized of this
unrealised potential of human resource, created by the shackling of
thought in the unwritten ban on using FM? Other recent posts on this
list, pointing out the impossibility of Mr Mahto getting a license at
any cost under the current provisions of the law, have already mentioned
this fact, but I wanted to put it in context.


		
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