Setting up community radio stations in India

This is where you can find the guidelines...

File Format: Microsoft Word - View as HTML In December 2002, the Government of India approved a policy for the grant ... i) The basic objective of the Community Radio broadcasting would be to serve ... mib.nic.in/informationb/CODES/CRBGUIDELINES041206.doc - Similar pages - Filter

technorati tags:radio, cr, cr-india, communityradio, communityradioindia, governmentpolicy, policy

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A Delhi visit...

Had been to the national capital in connection with Manthan Award. The good news is that we managed to put the issue of Community Radio onto the agenda. Was interesting to see senior officials agreeing with the need for it. Perhaps it would make sense to put emergency radio on the agenda too, as a friend rightly suggested. After all, how long can we wait for community radio to happen... on bended knee?

Good Morning Mansoorpur!

Sunday Times of India carried this half-page story titled 'Good Morning Mansoorpur' in it's today's issue (March 5, 2006). It's subtitle says it all: "In a Bihar village, one man runs a radio station from a repair shop. It's social, entertaining and probably illegal too, Alok Mishra reports."

The photo shows villagers in Mansoorpur listen to the radio station, and Raghav Mahato in front of his repair shop, which is also his FM station.

Couldn't locate the story online. But there were some other interesting links. BBC carried this story some time back, and had it titled The amazing DIY village FM radio station

BBC says: It may well be the only village FM radio station on the Asian sub-continent. It is certainly illegal. The transmission equipment, costing just over $1, may be the cheapest in the world. But the local people definitely love it. On a balmy morning in India's northern state of Bihar, young Raghav Mahato gets ready to fire up his home-grown FM radio station. Thousands of villagers, living in a 20km (12 miles) radius of Raghav's small repair shop and radio station in Mansoorpur village in Vaishali district, tune their $5 radio sets to catch their favourite station.

Even more interesting: For the next 12 hours, Raghav Mahato's outback FM radio station plays films songs and broadcasts public interest messages on HIV and polio, and even snappy local news, including alerts on missing children and the opening of local shops.

After years of begging the authority on bended knee for the legalisation of community radio in India, now perhaps one could only conclude that they'll see sense when 'pirate' radio becomes a reality.

There's the DelhiDoorHai blog which has this interesting comment, with reference to the above story: "I can't resist this post. There is all that possibility it seems to offer, of an underground radio network, freedom from the self-righteousness of All India Radio (and AIR 'Rainbow's' catchy, head-bashingly awful jingle). Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1. Radio for the people it seems to suggest - and certainly by them."

CR blog created...

I'm sitting with Ashish Sen in Voices, and among the many things we discussed was the theme of why community radio is just not happening in India. Can we network better through this group blog? Let's see....