[cr-india] Heaven help us!: TN Government plans 28 more CRS in Tamil Nadu!

[N.Ramakrishnan]

Dear Satheesh:
Oh, totally - there are a variety of reasons underlying this attempt at 
saturation coverage!
I didn't bring up the GM issue only because my fundamental objection was 
to the issue of 'optimal frequency utlization' as our Hon'ble Minister 
for Communication recently put it in his edict on CR frequencies. 
Evidently 'optimal use' means the Ministry of Agriculture gets a corner 
on the market.
Ramakrishnan

On 20/10/12 1:24 PM, periyapatna satheesh wrote:
> This is hardly as innocent as it appears Ramakrishnan. TNAU is the 
> biggest purveyor of GM crops in India having more than half a dozen 
> research grants from the US Department of Agriculture and transgenic 
> corporations such as Monsanto and Syngenta. With Sharad Pawar bing the 
> high priest of GM crops [obviously because of the huge kickbacks they 
> bring he would like TNAU to have the widest netwrok to spread the 
> "development" that GM crops will bring to farmers.
> Therefore what is CR for us is not the same for them. It is not the 
> voice of farmers and communities that they would like to hear. CR is 
> another tool in their propaganda blitzkreig. Obviously they cannot use 
> AIR to such an extent and range as they can use CRs in local dialects, 
> local idioms
> satheesh
>
> --- On *Fri, 19/10/12, N.Ramakrishnan /<nram at ideosyncmedia.org>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: N.Ramakrishnan <nram at ideosyncmedia.org>
>     Subject: [cr-india] Heaven help us!: TN Government plans 28 more
>     CRS in Tamil Nadu!
>     To: "cr-india at sarai.net" <cr-india at sarai.net>
>     Date: Friday, 19 October, 2012, 11:46 PM
>
>     The Agriculture Minister's announcement of 28 new CR stations
>     across TN, I assume, refers to the stations that were to be set up
>     through TNAU. There have been something like 20 CR applications
>     across TN by TNAU extension centers. (See article quoted below.)
>
>     Food for thought: Why should the Agriculture Ministry not do this
>     by setting aside time on AIR stations already existing in TN? Why
>     take away frequencies from other CR processes in order to do more
>     farm radio?
>
>     CRF had, in fact, recently proposed a mechanism to maintain parity
>     between all flavours of CR to address precisely the kind of
>     imbalance such moves create: We proposed a revised policy that
>     would be called the 'Agricultural, Educational and Community Radio
>     policy', with separate guidelines for each of the three - some
>     issues, community handover of the station, for instance, are
>     easier for some of these entities and more challenging for the
>     others. Such a revision in the policy would also require the
>     reservation in frequencies allocatable for each of the three in
>     each given location, which would address the supposed paucity of
>     frequencies so dear to DoT/WPC and at least allow some kind of
>     balance between CR stations of each kind.
>
>     Comments?
>     Ramakrishnan
>
>     General Secretary, CRF
>
>     28 community radio stations planned in Tamil Nadu
>     Press Trust of India | Updated: October 19, 2012 14:03 IST
>
>     Chennai: Tamil Nadu Government has plans to set up 28 Community
>     Radio Stations across the state at a cost of Rs.14 crore, to
>     provide information to the farmers, Agriculture Minister S
>     Damodaran said today.
>
>     Inaugurating the Farm School of All India Radio on Nutritious
>     Millets here, he said that the stations would help the farmers in
>     getting all required information.
>
>     The government also had plans to recruit 504 Agricultural Officers
>     and 417 Assistant Agricultural officers to help the farmers, he said.
>
>     Stating that it was important to adapt integrated farming, he said
>     that growing millets in addition to rice and other crops was also
>     more important for the country and also to increase the farmers'
>     income.
>
>     He also asked the farmers to use media to learn about latest farm
>     technologies.
>
>     Since India would become the capital of diabetes by 2025, it was
>     important to produce more millets, Dr K Ramasamy, Vice-chancellor,
>     Tamil Nadu Agricultural University said.
>
>     AIR would commence broadcast of the course on nutritious millets
>     from November 1 for 13 weeks for half an hour from 7.30 PM.
>     Join the Community Radio Forum. For membership details, please go
>     to www.crforum.in
>
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