Today's Times of India reports that Punjab border farmers still tune into
Pak FM <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/9596336.cms> radio
stations. According to the farmer families on the fringes of Ferozepur, the
limited range of "national radio" broadcasts and the absence of any local FM
station have kept radio services from Pakistan the most popular source of
entertainment.
Around the same time last year, the Indian government had become alarmed by
the popularity of Nepal's FM radio channels in Bihar, along the Indo-Nepal
border. According to various sources, some half a dozen Nepal FM radio
stations are broadcasting programmes ("anti-India advertisements and vulgar
songs", according to one outraged newspaper report) into Bihar, especially
Madhepura, Supaul, Madhubani, Kishanganj, Araria, Sheohar, Saharsa,
Muzaffarpur, and East and West Champaran districts.
Regulars on this mailing list will recognize some of those districts as the
ones where, during the 2008 Kosi floods, the Community Radio Forum had
proposed setting up Emergency Radio Stations. The proposal was turned down:
one of the government worthies, a corpulent Noah who sat on the file till
the floods had receded, told us, "You may broadcast flood-related messages
on the surface, but how can we know what you will broadcast below that?",
giving us a fascinating scientific insight into hitherto unknown
capabilities of FM radio.
But back in present day Bihar, all these ostensibly anti-Indian Nepali FM
channels seem to thrive, for some odd reason, on Indian support. According
to one report, "advertisements by traders and industrialists belonging to
Indian markets form the lion’s share of revenue for the channels, but," it
adds bitterly, "it is spent otherwise."
'Otherwise' presumably means a spot of India bashing.
And it's not just traders and industrialists who advertise over these evil
radio stations: Bihar elections are a windfall for Nepal's FM channels, with
candidates for Bihar's assembly polls "finding the FM radio stations of
neighbouring Nepal quite handy in wooing voters" particularly in the absence
of similar FM channels on the Indian side of the border. Fancy that!
While Intelligence Bureau officials in Bihar spend sleepless nights worrying
about the misuse of Nepal’s FM radio "by Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) and Nepal’s Maoists for propaganda in villages bordering
the Himalayan nation", their colleagues in Arunachal Pradesh are an even
more harried lot. "Chinese radio blares in Arunachal Pradesh" screamed one
headline in 2007, pointing out that the "people in border districts of
Arunachal Pradesh have easier access to Chinese radio and TV than Indian"
and that "border villagers are accessing information and entertainment from
Chinese radio with greater efficacy than AIR."
Oh dear.
So what does the Indian government do to counter the popularity of
Pakistani, Chinese and Nepali FM channels along the border? In Bihar, for
instance, they set up AIR relay centres in the border districts, which will
relay AIR Patna's programmes in chaste Hindi while Nepal's FM channels along
the border continue to broadcast -- without a doubt anti-Indian propaganda
interspersed with vulgar songs -- in Bhojpuri, Awadhi, Maithili, Magahi and
other local dialects spoken in Bihar and Eastern UP as well as the Terai.
As one of the young farmers along the Punjab border said, while humming
cheerfully -- and unpatriotically, I'm sure -- 'to the lyrics of famous
songs sung by Pakistan's' singers, "Despite the service by Prasar Bharti, we
have never had the opportunity to regularly listen to any of the famous
Punjab singers. [...] It's high time the government had an FM station here
or some private channel for us. We want to listen to our own legends as
well."
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/9596336.cms
Sajan
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