[cr-india] New Delhi, India - Experts ask media to boost Community Radio Movement

[George Lessard]

Experts ask media to boost Community Radio Movement
IndiaEduNews.net - New Delhi,India
Suman Basnet, South Asian regional director of World Association of
Community Radio Broadcasters or Association Mundial De Radio Comunitarias
(AMARC) ...

<http://www.indiaedunews.net/Universities/Experts_ask_media_to_boost_Community_Radio_Movement_6315>

[...]

 October 14, 2008

New Delhi: Have you ever heard anybody calling radio an 'Idiot Box'?
Never. Yet Radio experience in India has mostly been from the gigantic
broadcasting house, All India Radio (AIR). 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 (IGNOU) 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". This
was what irked the speakers at 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. O.P. Kejriwal stressed, "Though our
generation speaks of globalization, we rather need more focus on
globalization. So along with broadcasting, we need narrow casting. 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."

[...]

The functionaries must accommodate and educate future trained hands for
running and owning CRs, for which CEMCA has already announced 150 annual
scholarships for capable students of IGNOU's Certificate Programme in CR.

There cannot be one solution to deal with issues, nor one uniform code for
all communities.

Local knowledge, geographical indication in health products, herbals
medicines, must be promoted through CRs.