[cr-india] the CR Policy - at last

[Vickram Crishna]

A few comments interlined below (it's a bit long, I'm
afraid):

--- sajan venniyoor <venniyoor at rediffmail.com> wrote:

> India's new community radio policy is now official. 
> 
> The 'detailed policy guidelines' are available on
> the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting's website
> at this URL:
> http://www.mib.nic.in/informationb/CODES/frames.htm.
> (Scroll down to this link: "Policy Guidelines for
> Setting up Community Radio Stations in India"
> (Updated 04/12/2006)).
> 
> No surprises, really. The policy allows civil
> society and voluntary organisations to apply for a
> CR license; 

Basic Principles
	 An organisation desirous of operating a Community
Radio Station (CRS) must be able to satisfy and adhere
to the following principles:
a)	It should be explicitly constituted as a
‘non-profit’ organisation and should have a proven
record of at least three years of service to the local
community.
b)	The CRS to be operated by it should be designed to
serve a specific well-defined local community. 
c)	It should have an ownership and management
structure that is reflective of the community that the
CRS seeks to serve.
d)	Programmes for broadcast should be relevant to the
educational, developmental, social and cultural needs
of the community.
e)	It must be a Legal Entity i.e. it should be
registered (under the registration of Societies Act or
any other such act relevant to the purpose).

While the criteria listed here do not explicitly state
that the registered organisation with the proven
service record should be three years old, as long as
its record does satisfy the criterion, the next
paragraph goes on to make this clear. While the
intention may have been to prevent frivolous
applications (yeah, like the country has been flooded
with pesky community radio servuice operators to make
this condition necessary), the fact is that it thus
seems aimed at thwarting Raghav Mahto from applying. I
hope this wasn't the only intention.

Groups of individuals who have been providing local
community service should (if they are interested) be
allowed to start community radio services under the
policy. We need to fight for this provision. It beats
me that after all these years and all this talking the
government still comes up with a community empowering
policy that is exclusionary by definition.

Next, c)	Organisations operating with a motive to earn
profit;

Motive? I can think of several non-profit
organisations that have what seem to be very
well-heeled 'founder-executives' doing well out of
them. Is the government planning to use the CR policy
to reduce this evil? It took a year for this policy to
be published, and I would dearly like to know what
others think of such vague clauses, since I assume the
Law Ministry is satisfied. 
 
> there is no license fee; 

There is a one-time processing fee of Rs 2,500. By
declaring it such, it becomes effectively
non-refundable, I believe this will help reduce
spurious applications. The earlier mentioned
strictures on constitution of the applying bodies
should be reduced. 

What form shall this Rs 2,500 processing take?

i)	Universities, Deemed Universities and Government
run educational institutions will have a single window
clearance by putting up cases before an
inter-ministerial committee chaired by Secretary (I&B)
for approval. No separate clearance from MHA & MHRD
shall be necessary. Once the WPC Wing of the Ministry
of Communication & IT earmarks a frequency at the
place requested by the institution, a Letter of Intent
(LOI) shall be issued. 
ii)	In case of all other applicants, including private
educational institutions, LOI shall be issued subject
to receiving clearance from Ministries of Home
Affairs, Defence & HRD (in case of private educational
institutions) and frequency allocation by WPC wing of
Ministry of Communication & IT.

In both cases, frequency allocation has been deemed
necessary. Obviously the endless discussions we have
had about frequency reuse have had absolutely no
effect in terms of the framing of this policy. The WPC
has been allowed to continue its stranglehold on the
matter of local FM usage. I think we need to challenge
this, and not rest on our laurels now that 'a policy'
has been finally framed.

I won't copy out the next section, it is a bit too
long for this post. What it says is that the
processing time has been codified for a maximum of: 1
plus 3 plus 6 plus 3 months = 1 year, 1 month; for
getting the various clearances and putting up (!)
another Rs 25,000 as bank guarantee. I am really glad
that this last clause has been added, since now the
nationalised banks can move ahead full steam to set 
up branches in villages (640,000 of them at last
count) to issue such guarantees. 

The biggest laugh comes in the last clause, which says
that if the applicant doesn't set up the station in
time (the last 3 of the 13 months listed above) the
bank guarantee stands forfeit. Nothing about what
shall be done to government officers who don't do
their duty in time. But then government servants are
there to serve the people, and I suppose we shouldn't
stand in the way of their putting their feet up now
and then. 

> advertisements
> are permitted (5 minutes per hour).
> 

But on the other hand, organisations are free to
invite unlimited foreign funding (subject the FCRA) to
run their stations. How does this make sense, anyone?

> And, yeah, "the Permission Holder shall not
> broadcast any programmes, which relate to news and
> current affairs and are otherwise political in
> nature." (Which begs the question: how about
> non-political news & current affairs?)
> 

The relevant clauses specify that the content shall
adhere to the Progamme and Advertising Code prescribed
for AIR (clause iv) and then goes on to specify
(clause vii) just what this means. In fact, the
clauses repeat ad nauseam more or less the same
things, which makes me think they were tacked on by a
wrangling cabinet rather than the thought-out notings
of a directing committee. Oh well. They are so
wonderfully inclusive that it is hard to imagine
anything more than bland boring blah that doesn't
actually offend one or more of the exclusions. Still
the great thing about community radio is that it
challenges the imagination of ordinary people, and I
am confident we will be astounded by what is produced.


> It's time to walk the talk, comrades.
> 

Violation of the content restrictions shall lead to
adjudication of the matter by the Inter-ministerial
Committees on Programme and Advertising Codes (there
are more than one? When do they meet? Are their
proceedings public?), either on the basis of a
complaint or suo motto (sic, really, I haven't made
this up).

However, since the content is expected to be leaning
towards the use of local language and idiom, I think
our worthy ministers are in for a royal time listening
to impugned broadcasts (archiving is for 3 months). 

So after all this time, and all the calculations, they
cannot come up with a better mechanism for monitoring
content than dumping the job on ministers. Clearly
no-one expects more than a handful of stations to come
up. Members on this list may recall that, some years
ago, I had calculated (on the basis of 5 km radius
reach per channel, and non-overlapping stations based
on strict US FCC protocols) a capacity of 1.25 million
radio stations for our country. 

Even a tenth of that number would strain the ears of
the most patient ministers, but this hasn't apprently
occurred to the worthy netas who have imposed this
wonderful work on us. 

I would love to walk the talk, Sajan, but I suspect
the talking is far from over yet. 

Let's look at the technology, now that the content
part is done for the moment.

The CRS is expected to cover a region of 5-10 km, so
an output of (ERP, Effective Radiated Power) of 100W
is limited, but this may be enhanced up to 250W in
special cases. I would love to revisit this after 5
years, when we have data on which stations (and who
really runs them) needed that extra power. 

The antenna height is limited to 30 meters (from
where? it doesn't say), but not less than 15 meters,
in case of radiation biohazards. A good thought, but
it only has meaning if we are talking about such high
output energy. A hybrid data network/FM relay setup
would need just the tiniest fraction of that power,
and certainly no expensive towers, or hardly any. (I
was writing a separate note on that to the list a day
or so ago, but lost it in a power shutdown. I will
rework the note and send it out shortly).

This set of clauses dates back to the fossil age of
radio broadcasting, and deserves a hard relook.
Perhaps we should consider filing an objection with
TRAI. 

Universities etc, who have a 'fast track' clearance
process, are punished for it here by limiting siting
of the tx/antenna within their own campuses (ie, the
fast track clearance is for campus radio only), which
means that even Mr Pawar's favourite agricultural
radio passion (and that of our own Mahesh Acharya) is
stymied by this clause. Shades of some last minute
skulduggery at high levels. 

Other than this, there are no specifics on what kind
of transmitter etc is to be used. Nothing about
'registered dealers' or anything. 

Actually, nothing about the usage of FM at all.
Nowhere does it say that the policy is talking about
FM stations only, hence one must assume that Medium
Wave is no longer an object non grata with our
mandarins. Only in the very last clause does it say
that the monitoring of advertising content must be
particularly adhered to in areas where commercial
(private is the word used) FM stations are licensed. 

Given the very open nature of the technology choices,
I think we need to ask for relaxation of the tower
restrictions. 15 meters is much too high for a
homemade mast using inexpensive materials, and adds
enormously to the cost of cabling, aside from
transmission losses between tx and antenna. Does
anyone have reliable data about biohazards at FM and
MW frequencies? 

I think it is great that the awareness of potential
biohazards is raised, but it needs to be viewed in
context of the actual power output and not
arbitrarily. 

Any other comments, anyone?

---
Vickram

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