[cr-india] PATNA, India: Community radio stations to be set up for farmers

[CJ]

It is time that all of us in the CR initiative get together and organize a meeting with the I&B Minister at New Delhi and present a white paper, especially the point that very aptly raised here, of distinguishing between a campus radio and community radio.  No one can deny the power of CR in making the Indians at the grassroot level feel involved and engaged in bringing about the positive change in their immediate neighbourhood that the policy makers have not been able to achieve.  We should have a CR Chamber to represent the interest of our group and bringing about the changes in the I&B policies. 

 

CJ

 

From: cr-india-bounces at sarai.net [mailto:cr-india-bounces at sarai.net] On Behalf Of Vickram Crishna
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 8:38 AM
To: CR India
Subject: Re: [cr-india] PATNA, India: Community radio stations to be set up for farmers

 

"Farmers in Bihar would soon have their first brush with communityradio. "

"Apart from airing informative programmes about the latest farming practices and the precaution the farmers should take to safeguard their standing crops, programmes based on lives of successful farmers of a given area would also be aired. Then, the community radio would provide localised weather reports." 

 
It is really wonderful (I don't think, just in case the strength of my irony is lost on some Gentle Readers) that these 3 stations will provide the kind of programming that numerous public service stations could not in sixty years of independent broadcasting.

It is about time the movement for independent media in India stood up to reaffirm our faith in the innate ability of India's experienced broadcasters all these years. While no-one can deny that some of the content over the years was not top-drawer, that is equally true of any media form, or any art form, anywhere, for that matter. 

What I find quite annoying is the kind of media announcements being made by the Ministry, firstly claiming some kind of proprietary interest in the stations set up under the 'CR'* label licenses, secondly an implicit rubbishing of all the years of public radio. It also reveals an unconscious lack of understanding of the sort of content that a truly independent and audience-focused station will produce, but then one never exactly believed that the Ministry had any understanding of the content business in the first place. 


*one is forced to use the acronym, commemorating the outstanding - 1% down, just a little farther to go now, with 42 hits from the 4,000 targeted by end-2008 - achievement of the Ministry's implementation of a Policy that fails to distinguish between community and campus, and specifically disallows empowerment

Vickram
http://communicall.wordpress.com
http://vvcrishna.wordpress.com

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Community radio stations to be set up for farmers
Times of India - India

<http://timesofindia <http://timesofindia/>  .indiatimes. com/Cities/ Patna/Community_ radio_stations_ to_be_set_ up_for_farmers/ articleshow/ 4093319.cms>

Community radio stations to be set up for farmers
8 Feb 2009, 0538 hrs IST, Sanjeev Kumar Verma, TNN

PATNA: Farmers in Bihar would soon have their first brush with community
radio. To be set up under the Agriculture Technology Management Agency
(ATMA) Project of Union ministry of agriculture, the community radio would
air programmes catering to the needs of the farming community.

Apart from airing informative programmes about the latest farming
practices and the precaution the farmers should take to safeguard their
standing crops, programmes based on lives of successful farmers of a given
area would also be aired. Then, the community radio would provide
localised weather reports.

 

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