[cr-india] Madurai Kamaraj University to start community radio service

[sajan venniyoor]

So, Madurai Kamraj University gets a Gyan Vani station as well as a campus
radio station.

The Hon'ble Vice Chancellor says that his campus station will broadcast
programmes on education, social awareness, population and health "for the
benefit of villages within a radius of five km radius from Andipatti." By an
odd coincidence, this is what his Gyan Vani station would do as well, for
the benefit of villages within a radius of 60 kilometres from Andipatti. By
an odder coincidence, this is what All India Radio Madurai has been doing
since 1987, for the benefit of villages within a radius of a couple of
hundred kilometres from Madurai.

Talk about overkill.

It is instructive to note that PARD Madurai, a genuine community based
organization from the same region, had applied for their CR license nearly
two years ago. After being turned down more times than a bed-spread in a
Karol Bagh lodge (and going to court to fight their case), they are nowhere
close to getting a license. The Madurai Kamaraj University, whose name
doesn't even figure in the list of CR applicants on the ministry's
website,<http://mib.nic.in/CRS/crsgop260208.htm> gets
not one, but two radio stations.

I bet the Hon'ble Vice Chancellor didn't have to conduct Mad Hatter
surveys<http://mib.nic.in/CRS/SurveyQuestionnaire.pdf>in his
'community', asking a  thousand respondents whether they preferred to
listen to the radio in the company of women (well, yes...) and whether they
had any local beliefs about "not bathing during menstruation", which, as we
know, is central to the establishment of community radio stations.

Sajan

[Thanks to George Lessard for this link]

Madurai Kamaraj University to start community radio service at Andipatti
Special Correspondent, The Hindu, 23 Jan 2009

It will be a radio service for the villagers, of the villagers and by the
villagers: Vice-Chancellor
Experts from Delhi to provide link between AIR station and university for FM
radio service

MADURAI: Madurai Kamaraj University will soon start a community radio
service in Andipatti of Theni district in an initiative to apply technology
for rural development.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Vice-Chancellor R. Karpaga
Kumaravel said that the proposed service would be stationed at MK University
College. It would broadcast programmes on population, health, education and
social awareness for the benefit of villages within a radius of five km from
Andipatti. "It will be a radio service for the villagers, of the villagers
and by the villagers," the Vice-Chancellor said. Recent studies, Dr. Karpaga
Kumaravel said, had revealed that community radio services were immensely
popular among rural masses and the Andipatti service would be an effort to
reach the unreached.

The Vice-Chancellor claimed that Madurai Kamaraj University was the only
university in the country to get sanction for a Gyan Vani FM radio station
and community radio service. Both the services would become operational by
the middle of this year. The university had signed a memorandum of
understanding with Indira Gandhi National Open University to run the Gyan
Vani station for which equipment had reached the Madurai station of All
India Radio. The proposed FM station would broadcast programmes for not less
than six hours a day to reach listeners in a radius of 60 km. Programmes for
the services would be produced by the Electronic Media Production Centre of
the IGNOU and Electronic Multimedia Research Centre of the MKU.

http://www.thehindu.com/2009/01/23/stories/2009012350010100.htm
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