[cr-india] India Community Radio documentary - new!

Thu Feb 22 17:34:23 CET 2007

Vicoria Fenner has sent us the full transcript of her short but insightful feature on community radio in India. Here it is.
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Community Radio Story by Victoria Fenner, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
For The Green Planet Monitor - www.rabble.ca/rpn/ecp
Episode #6

Clip:  Indian music and voicer from Anna FM
Good morning, and welcome everybody.  Its our great pleasure to extend our warm wishes to Sir John Daniel, Chief Executive Officer of the Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada, visiting the first campus community radio of India, Anna FM at 90.4 megahertz.

Script:  This is Anna FM, in  the city of Chennai, on the east coast of India.  This clip was collected in November of 2004, just ten months after Anna FM went on the air.   The Commonwealth of Learning in Vancouver has been helping out here.  Its a sign of the times.    After years of state radio monopoly, radio is bustling.   Even commercial radio stations have only been allowed on the air for a few years. 

And as for community radio 

Clip:  Ironically, we do not have community radio here, and I say ironically because in a country of so much disparity, in a country of so many language and dialects  you would think it would be common sense for community radio to be there.

Thats Asish Sen, the Executive Director of Voices,  an Indian NGO based in Bangalore.   Hes also the Vice-President for the Asia Pacific Region of AMARC, the world association of community broadcasters.  AMARCs  international secretariat is in Montreal and consists of member stations from around the world.  

Well, barely a month later after speaking with Ashish, community radio is now official in India.  New Delhi has just passed the new policy.

Sound:  Namma Dhwani jingle

The amazing thing about India is that community radio stations have actually been broadcasting here for years.    Namma Dhwanni is one such station.  Its located in the village of Budikote, about 100 kms from Bangalore, Indias Silicon Valley in Southern India.   The village has about three thousand residents, most of whom depend on farming for their living.    Namma Dhwani has been broadcasting for two years - but not on the FM dial.  Asish Sen:  

Clip:  Namma Dhwani is not on air because that would be illegal.  So its not community radio from that point of view.  We use the technology of cable to disseminate for two hours every day, programs made by the community.

Indian community groups have other very creative distribution methods, Asish Sen explains. They distribute programs on CD and cassette, buy time on All-India Radio and even broadcast through loud-speakers on trucks in the middle of the town or village. 

Clip:  from Birth Registration Series

This is a sample of an episode from Namma Dhwani and Voices series on Universal Birth Registration.   The purpose of the programs is to encourage parents to register their children and get them birth certificates.  Its the kind of programming that Indians will have a chance to hear now that community radio is legal.   Indias new policy strongly emphasizes the important social and educational mission of community radio - and its a mission which Voices has been supporting for years, says Ashish Sen.

Clip:  We are in the process of putting a communications system in Nagaputnam which will look at disaster management, we have a disabilities information centre .. these are some of the issues that were concerned with. 

Grassroots Indian groups are fully aware of community radios enormous potential but practically speaking, stations need to be set up and broadcasters trained.  People are raring to go, says Ashish Sen.  He predicts as many as 5000 community radio station popping up over the next decade.

Clip: If there is space for five thousand, I am sure that in a country like India, there will be demand for five thousand, provided we get an enabling environment.   You have to have capacity building but it has to be appropriate capacity building.  And that is very important if capacity building is to take off over here.

And capacity building means its not enough to have a studio and a transmitter.  There are financial issues, a problem which continues to dog community stations all over the world.   Ashish is confident that this is not going to be an insurmountable obstacle.   Namma Dhwani, he says is already meeting its costs by providing training to other organizations, creating audio and video documentation and selling pieces to All India Radio.  Now that the new policy for community radio is in place, Ashish just wants to get going putting stations on the air.

Clip:  I believe the proof the educating will be in the eating and the doing.  It cannot happen the other way.  I mean, weve been talking about it for so long and weve been sitting at various forums and debating and discussing - I think people have to see what it sounds like, what it looks like, what it is like by visiting and doing it.

Clip:   Anna FM

Anna FM and Voices have had a head start.  With Indias new community radio policy in place, theyll be sharing expertise with newly emerging stations.   Organizations like the Commonwealth Institute in Vancouver are providing assistance.  And the World Association of Community Broadcasters. -  AMARC in Montreal - is offering resources which the emerging Indian community broadcasting sector can draw upon.

Sound: street sounds

India has the second largest population in the world - thats over one billion pairs of ears.   Now that community radio has been given the go-ahead, the potential seems limitless.  Five thousand new community radio stations may turn out to be an under-estimate.

For The Green Planet Monitor, Im Victoria Fenner in Bangalore, India

(The Green Planet Monitor is a radio series by Earth Chronicle Productions, Brandon, Manitoba.  Executive Producer is David Kattenburg.  The Green Planet Monitor is produced with funding from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and The Canadian Autoworkers Social Justice Fund.)
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