[cr-india] INDIA: Experts ask media to boost Community Radio Movement

[George Lessard]

December 28, 2008
Experts ask media to boost Community Radio Movement

http://studyinindiainfo.com/2008/12/experts-ask-media-to-boost-community.html

[excerpt]

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Have you ever heard anybody calling radio an 'Idiot Box'? Never. Yet Radio
experience in India has mostly been from gigantic broadcasting house, All
India Radio. The recently emerged FM radios are only cosmetic boredom,
like TVs, to the concept of development of grassroots of population. The
conference on 'Community Radio : Practices and Possibilities' at Indira
Gandhi National Open University recently discussed a plethora of issues
dogging the grassroots and lamented the current state of Indian community
radio (CR) movement started way back in 1951 during India's initial Plan
years.

Indian Media drew most flak for ignoring a movement very core in the
concept of democracy and development of a nation. They should have
prioritized the CR movement and its processes of how to create awareness
among umpteen communities about their rights, opportunities, vocational
expertise, knowledge and the need to avail themselves of these. They
should have concertedly raised region and issue-specific CRs addressing
target communities, with a view to improving their living condition.
Instead, what the post-Independent Indian media did was far removed from
the necessity of development journalism, was what ired the speakers in the
conference.

The Government Policy of Community Radio, 2002 promised to set up over
4,000 CRs, but till date India only set up 45, that too mostly in public
sector. Compare this with its 35-year-old neighbour – Bangladesh' feat. It
already charted 140 CRs to boast of. The Bangladesh Government officially
adopted a CR policy only in 2008, in response to the World bank vision for
"a world free of poverty".

Former Information Commissioner Dr OP Kejariwal stressed, "Though our
generation speaks of globalization, we rather need more focus on
glocalisation. So along with broadcasting, we need narrowcasting. If we
adapt modern broadcast technologies for local broadcasts, we have
community radio, where we have communities participating not only as
broadcasters but as listeners too."

Lauding the efforts of the School, Vice Chancellor Professor V N
Rajasekharan Pillai said, "Community Radio programme is a new tool for
information dissemination at the grassroots level. It fits well in the
IGNOU's larger aim of improving the quality of life of the masses. It's
probable that Community Radios go on to revolusionise not only developing
countries, but also the developed nations where underprivileged and
marginalized communities still exist."

Former director of IGNOU's nerve centre Electronic Media Production Centre
(EMPC), Dr R Sreedhar, who currently is Director of Commonwealth
Educational Media Centre in Asia (CEMCA), identified the basic problems in
development of CRs in India. He said, "The lack of media literacy,
training and professionalism have been basic hurdles in disseminating
awareness programmes of the Community Radio." Dr Sreedhar also explained
how easy is it to generate fund for making the CRs self-sufficient, even
without any outside funding.

Suman Basnet, South Asian regional director of World Association of
Community Radio Broadcasters or Associacion Mundial De Radio Comunitarias
(AMARC) narrated highlights of evolution of CR and said, "India is the
first country in South Asia to have an independent CR policy. Miracles of
community radio broadcasting are just waiting to happen." A conglomerate
of over 4,000 community radios in 115 countries, AMARC is only eager to
hand-hold genuine Indian efforts to solidify the CR movement in South
Asia.