reply to mahesh acharya Dear Mahesh
I agree 100% with your concerns and questions. Gyan Vani was born not out of any one lobbying for it or applied for it. I am going to write a book on the 'birth and death' of Gyan vani soon and I also jouclarly say that one day I am going to conduct a mock funeral for both Gyan Darshan and Gyan Vani at the Lodi crematorium in Delhi in full fiew of the media. Gyan Vani did have members like Sevanti Ninan and Ashish Sen and did offered 40% of its air time completely for Community and the NGOs. But the successive managements at IGNOU who were falling at the feet of both NDA and UPA ministers, thought GV as a public relations exercise and used it for it. I was inconvenient and hence voluntarily left IGNOU with a heavy amount of depression. Then by sheer luck, having seen the CR rules along with Mr Jeyaweera once in delhi, and when the opportunity came, when MHRD was about to turn down the cabinet notel, I interefered and facilitated to a very small extent the passage of 2002 regulations. Having been a king of media centre at IGNOU, and having later become a non entity at Anna Univesity, I applied for CR under those regulations with a supporting vice chancellor. In those days we had to get more than 30 licenses for the CR but today they have been reduced to 5 steps. Campus CR became a reality because of NDA governments last minute PR exercise called 'India Shining". From NDA to UPA it is a long story with a minister whose family was running commercial CR went all out to kill this movement. BUt it was left to Tsunami and the present Election commissioner and former I & B secretary Navin Chawla to see the work done during that time, it was revived at the highest level. He was able to convince the powers that be that we much decentalise soon. He himself is sypathetic to civil society organisations and is connected with many of them. Hence I never played any major role and nor would like to take credit for anything that I have not done. What I meant by 'islands' was that the four star CR performers in the country must come forward to create viable models and allow change in attitude of people who are having some kind of thoughts on the subject . If many countries can come together to form Unions, many parties come together to have common minimum programmes, why not all CR enthusiasts come together to get the movement on the track. Once they get stabilised, then Individual ideologies could take front seat. There is no dearth of frequencies in India except in the Metros and that also will vanish by 2012-2015, when India goes digital. We could have millions of CR stations at that time. But the foundation is more important. regards sreedher
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