Very well written. We really ought to post our appreciation on the online
article.
Regards
Arti
Arti Jaiman
Station Director : Gurgaon Ki Awaaz Samudayik Radio Station 107.8 MHz FM
email: [email protected]
website: www.trfindia.org
Gurgaon Ki Awaaz is the first and only civil-society-led community radio
station in the National Capital Region of Delhi. Since 2009, we have been
broadcasting 22X7, in Hindi and Haryanvi, with a team of community reporters
who generate community content with community participation.
--- On Mon, 14/5/12, sajan venniyoor <[email protected]> wrote:
From: sajan venniyoor <[email protected]>
Subject: [cr-india] "Knocking the air out of a community's lungs"
To: "CR India" <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, 14 May, 2012, 11:16 AM
One of the better stories on the spectrum fee hike for community radio and how
it impacts small CR stations across India. Thanks to Rajendra Negi for this
link.
As always, MoCIT was unavailable for comment. They don't speak much to CRF
either, preferring to speak only to the CBI and very occasionally the CAG and
CVC. I was particularly delighted by the JS(B)'s comment that the Telecom
Ministry "had apparently put up some consultation papers about the hike on
their website. No one checked the website during that period, and because they
saw no comments, they went ahead and announced it." As Vickram would say, all
this has happened before, at some point in the future:
"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for
the last nine month."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday
afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them
had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
(from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams)
We 'found' our notice when Radio Madhuban, up in Mt. Abu, got their annual
spectrum fee invoice from the wireless planning & coordinating wing (WPC) of
the Dept. of Telecom this April. The WPC's original order dated 22 March giving
the formula for calculating 'royalty charges on assignments of frequencies' can
be found here.
Sajan
Knocking the air out of a community's lungs
Mid-Day, May 13, 2012, Kareena N Gianani
Last month, the Ministry of Communications of Information and Technology hiked
the annual spectrum fee for radio by over 300 per cent without any formal
consultation with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. How will a two
month-old community radio in the country's remote hills continue its radical
work and still pay up? Kareena N Gianani listens in and finds smothered voices
that fear wipeout
All appears calm high up in Chamba, a village in the Tehri Garhwal district in
Uttarakhand. But 34 year-old Rajendra Negi, director of the region’s community
radio, Henvalvani, is bracing himself against brutal expletives by locals at
his recording studio — which, he says, is just a fancy term for the cramped
room with a single, large table holding recording equipment.
Word has spread in the valley that their two-month old community radio might
shut down soon. In March, the Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology (MOCIT) hiked the annual spectrum usage charge from Rs 19,700 to Rs
91,000, an amount humble set ups like Henvalvani cannot possibly gather, says a
defeated Negi.
“We just found our voice, after a five year-long battle with the government to
get a licence for community radio,” says Negi. Henvalvani is yet to officially
get the licence and all transmission is “test prasaran”. N Ramakrishnan,
director at Ideosync Media Combine, a media and development NGO, helped set up
Henvalvani. Locals from 500 villages around Chamba, who tune in to Henvalvani
for four hours every day, however, don’t care about these technicalities. The
antenna — slung on a welded pipe outside the recording studio — and the man
slouching over the answering machine have changed their lives.
Giving the Garhwali a voice
In 2001, when Negi studied in Class 12, he started a youth group that had “had
enough of what the media called news but which had no place for what was really
relevant to their people.” “We could hear the politicians’ voices, but could
they ever hear ours? We don’t even get national papers up here and there is no
Garhwali channel on Doordarshan either,” he says. That’s when, armed with tape
recorders, he, along with a group of five went into people’s homes and recorded
their songs and folktales and sat in with the panchayats to record issues in
Garhwali — a language under threat of extinction, according to the UNESCO —
which were then broadcast at local gatherings.
And it changed their lives. Since its inception, the hour-long live calling
slot at Henvalvani has received more than 4,953 calls from locals from villages
Negi didn’t even know existed in Uttarakhand. Recently, one Banali called Negi
to complain about how the local school was run by only one teacher for 25
years. A few days later, the school got a new teacher. Last month, someone
called to complain about the sweepers’ strike. “People in this region are very
particular about hygiene and the local had just sighted one polythene bag on
the road when he called us.
Before I could even approach the authorities, I got another call from him 15
minutes later, telling me that the area was being cleaned.” From home remedies
(which are not synonymous with “tantra-mantra”, says Negi) to organic farming
techniques, the channel gives everyone a voice. Talented Garhwali singers have
made their first recordings on Henvalvani and migrated to cities after bagging
plum singing offers. A woman named Godambari Devi, who was beaten up by the
Patwari police (local policemen) for exposing her brother-in-law’s illegal
alcohol trade, spoke on Henvalvani and got justice, says Negi. “It takes
exactly one day to reach the closest village here, but Henvalvani has travelled
where no local has yet.”
Today, 16 reporters work with Henvalvani, which just about manages to make Rs
20,000 through local advertisements. Some local women who work in farms and do
odd jobs and make Rs 150 a day themselves, unfailingly donate Re 1 to their
beloved community radio. “Should I now ask them to raise almost Rs 1 lakh every
year like this?” demands Negi.
Last week, locals in Chamba started a signature campaign to oppose the hike and
plan to involve listeners from all the 500 villages who tune in to Henvalvani.
It will take weeks, even months, but the locals are livid...” says Negi. “Yeh
toh government ne ek dande se hamare haath hi kaat diye (the government has cut
off our hands with one blow).”
Different wavelengths
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Supriya Sahu, joint secretary, Ministry of Information
and Broadcasting, was busy in meetings with the MOCIT and community radio
directors from across the nation. “This move will adversely impact the
community radio and kill the voices of those who are already marginalised,” she
says.
“I have written to the MOCIT (Ministry of Communication & Information
Technology) , who had apparently put up some consultation papers about the hike
on their website. No one checked the website during that period, and because
they saw no comments, they went ahead and announced it.” The backlash, however,
is too strong and Sahu says she is positive that the ministry will consider a
rollback. The MOCIT was unavailable for comment.
Radio is home
“They better”, says Algore Narsamma in halting Hindi over a telephone call from
Zaheerabad. The remote village in Andhra Pradesh “did not even exist for the
state” until a group of Dalit women started their community radio, Radio
Sangham in 2009. The 26 year-old reporter at the community radio changes two
buses and travels for three hours every day to reach the studio and generate
over 60 hours of content every month that costs the station under Rs 10,000. An
NGO called Deccan Development Society (DDS) in AP helped set up Radio Sangham,
which broadcasts in the little-known Telugu dialect locals lightly refer to as
‘Zaheerabadi’.
Over the telephone, Narsamma is silent. She is mentally translating her
indignation in Zaheerabadi into Hindi, and finally says, “It has been a month
but I haven’t told the women about the hike, yet. They’ll take to the streets
because we know we cannot generate the amount.” Narsamma has grown up with the
community radio. Even before they got their licence, the Dalit women generated
content and gave it to the DDS, who paid them for their efforts. The radio has
wiped out humiliating memories of Narsamma’s childhood — her parents being
ridiculed as ‘untouchables’, the so-called ‘high caste’ Hindus blocking access
to the sole borewell in the area, and constant hunger.
The first time Narsamma held a tape recorder in her hand during training, she
pressed the wrong buttons every time, often forgot to hit the record button,
and frequently came back with blank tapes. “But it was also the first time I
felt free — even if it meant making mistakes,” she says. Women’s rights, gender
violence, agricultural education, legal problems and issues of cultural
identity are closest to her heart, and she designs the programmes accordingly.
She often takes her two children to the radio station, and if running late, she
gets her soiled clothes to wash them outside the station itself. “I call legal
experts from nearby towns on the show. This has helped reduce domestic
violence-related incidents here. Our listeners don’t have to aimlessly go to
courts anymore — they know their rights before they file a case.”
Vision violated
In 2004, before the policy governing community radio came into effect (in 2006)
TRAI had recommended that community radio providers must not be charged any
licencing or spectrum fee, since the whole point of the exercise is to make the
media accessible to people who don’t usually have a say in their own matters.
The move also goes against the 1995 Supreme Court judgement, which stated that
radio waves must be owned by the people, for the people. K Stalin, president of
the Community Radio Forum says the move is ridiculous.
“Is the government trying to make money from this spectrum allocation, too?
This is commodification of air waves. Will the government now apply the rules
of the market to something that belongs to the community in the first place?”
Community radio in Mumbai, too, feels stifled and helpless. Nitin Makasare, a
35 year-old who works at Jago Mumbai, a Khar-based community radio service,
which received its licence in 2010, says he does not see his station running
for more than six-12 months if the hike is not reversed. “The city will lose
out on music, civic issue broadcasting, a platform for BMC school kids who
don’t usually find platforms…but does the government really care?”
How radio changed a region
In Kachchh, two month-old Radio Ujjas is already a name to reckon with. Started
by a group of women who worked with the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS),
the radio has listeners in 24 villages, and has helped women in matters of
property, and agricultural issues. “This is our right. Why should we pay such a
ridiculous amount for it?” asks Bharti Ahir, the 36 year-old senior member of
the KMVS and reporter at Radio Ujjas.
More than a decade ago, when her mother literally pushed the painfully shy girl
out of home, asking her to “do something with her life” and write for the KMVS
magazine, also called Ujjas, Ahir landed up at a bus stop near the magazine’s
office. “I was so terrified that I had decided I would return home if the
editor of the magazine didn’t pick me up from the bus stop.”
Ahir didn’t have to return, and today, she helps the girls from her community
by training them in media and social development. She is the only woman from
her village, in at least three decades, who has managed to get a BA degree.
Ahir, who never even came out of her room when they had guests over, now
confidently “completes paperwork and formalities at airports to travel all
across the country,” she says. “If we lose Radio Ujjas, all our work will be
wiped out in a day. We will be thrown backward by decades.”
http://www.mid-day.com/lifestyle/2012/may/130512-Knocking-the-air-out-of-a-community-lungs.htm
-----Inline Attachment Follows-----
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Join the Community Radio Forum. For membership details, please go to
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