[cr-india] Our License for CRS

[pardmadurai at eth.net]

Thank you Sajan for reflecting our feelings.  It is nice to hear with your words regarding our experience and we are still lost somewhere and could not decide whether we can start our own Community Radio Station because of somany reasons of this cursed Nation.  We need to fight with the present bureaucratic set up and still find nothing for the last two years.  We are at last punished for the error happened in WPC.

With warm regards and thanks for the sharing. 

James 
for PARD.   

----- Original Message -----
From: sajan venniyoor <venniyoor at gmail.com>
Date: Saturday, January 24, 2009 10:24 pm
Subject: Re: [cr-india] Madurai Kamaraj University to start community radioservice
To: CR India <>

> So, Madurai Kamraj University gets a Gyan Vani station as well as a 
> campusradio station.
> 
> The Hon'ble Vice Chancellor says that his campus station will 
> broadcastprogrammes 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 
> doingsince 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 
> nearlytwo 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 
> nowhereclose 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 
> AndipattiSpecial 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 
> technologyfor rural development.
> 
> Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Vice-Chancellor R. 
> KarpagaKumaravel 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 
> villagersand by the villagers," the Vice-Chancellor said. Recent 
> studies, Dr. Karpaga
> Kumaravel said, had revealed that community radio services were 
> immenselypopular 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 
> onlyuniversity 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 
> AllIndia 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
>