[cr-india] No takers for Community Radio programme [in Karnataka]

[Gora Mohanty]

On Fri, 2008-02-08 at 05:52 +0000, Vickram Crishna wrote:
> 
> NGOs backed out as they had to bear one-third of the cost
> 
> 
> 
> A rather unfortunate choice of phrase for a headline, missing the
> point made in the body text "The technology being mooted is expensive,
> which is why this seminar is important. We are trying to put forward
> technological solutions which were cheap and affordable". 
[...]

I also learned from other people yesterday that the expense
was at least partly due to the fact that there are a few
approved vendors, the price for whose kit runs into a few
lakhs. Admittedly without knowing details, this figure
sounds ridiculously steep to me.

This is definitely one place where technical people, free
software enthusiasts, and community-radio folk need to
join hands. I just got confirmation that Rakesh Peter, a
master's student from Coimbatore will be at Freed.in
( http://freed.in/2008 ), Feb. 22-24, to demonstrate the
software and hardware for an open-source, software-defined
radio, using GNU radio. I have asked him to join this list,
and discuss hardware issues pertinent to community radio.

Please do come to the event, as this is exactly the sort
of outeach that we are interested in.

Regards,
Gora