Cutting a vital link
T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
The phenomenal hike in royalty and licence fee for community radio has
come as a big blow to its rural operators.
PICTURES: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Volunteers of Henvalvani, Uttarakhand community radio, doing a
broadcast.
Amidst recent apprehensions of increasing government and other
regulation on the media through guidelines or Bills, one area went
relatively unnoticed. Community radio representatives and operators are
feeling highly insecure following the Ministry of Communications and
Information Technology's decision in March to effect a fourfold hike in
royalty and licence charges for assignment of frequencies to community
radio stations. The fact that no consultative process preceded the
decision makes matters worse.
As per the recent notification of the Wireless Planning and
Coordination (WPC) wing of the Ministry, the royalty and licence fee for
operating a small FM community radio station broadcasting within a
range of five to 10 kilometres has been raised from Rs.19,700 to
Rs.91,000 per annum.
Community radio has been in operation in the country since 2006 after
the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) along with the
Ministry of Communications recognised the fundamental right of
communities to speech and expression in accordance with Article 19(1)(a)
of the Constitution. The campaign for community radio began in the late
1990s following a landmark judgment of the Supreme Court (in the
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting vs Cricket Association of
Bengal case), which held that freedom of speech and expression included
the right to acquire and disseminate information and that airwaves were
public property and have to be used for the benefit of society at large.
Voices of protests were heard across the country following the
decision to raise the fee. The Community Radio Forum (CRF) of India,
which represents community radio stations across the country, wrote to
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal in May asking him to reconsider the
decision as community radio came in the non-profit sector and would be
placed under much hardship if it was forced to pay the increased
royalty. A press release issued by the forum said: “It is shocking that
community radio stations, which are of, for and by communities, often in
remote, rural and hilly areas, operating in marginalising and
disadvantageous conditions, will now be required to pay as much as
Rs.91,000 per annum as royalty/licence charges for operating a small FM
community radio station broadcasting within a range of 5-10 kilometres
with a 50 watt transmitter. The Government of India, through its various
ministries, has been deploying various strategies to suppress freedom
of media in the country. One such method has been to arbitrarily and
unreasonably raise the barriers to entry, causing smaller players to
drop out and creating a non-level playing field.”
The Community Radio Association submitted a memorandum to Sibal in
the second week of May. It said: “As you are aware, the Government of
India has been advocating a strong policy for encouraging more and more
community radio stations in rural and backward regions of the country in
an attempt to empower the rural and marginalised people. However, it is
regrettable that the Ministry of Communications and Information
Technology has adopted a retrograde policy by equating the non-profit
community radio stations with other commercial stations.”
Henvalvani volunteers recording the experiences of women who have worked
for the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
The CRF is incidentally on the I&B Ministry's screening
committee for community radio and is also identified as a nodal agency
for complaints resolution for community radio under the government's
draft Broadcast Bill/Content Code 2006/2007.
There are 132 community radio stations in India that address a range
of issues from gender to education. Advocates of community radio rightly
argue that these issues are not adequately addressed by the mainstream
media and that it is the community radio stations that give people an
opportunity to express themselves. The criterion for getting a licence
itself is rather stringent. Non-profit organisations have to show that
they have at least three years of experience doing community work before
they can apply for a licence. In community radio, there is the option
of receiving low-cost, battery-operated transmission within a limited
range.
A persistent demand of community radio operators to the Department of
Telecommunications has been to exempt them from paying spectrum fees.
Now, instead of exemption, there has been a mammoth increase of the fee.
The CRF argues that this will paralyse the sector as many existing
stations will have to be shut down and that it will also discourage new
applicants. This move, said the CRF, was clearly a mockery of the
government's claim that no licence fee was charged for community radio.
As per the policy, the I&B Ministry would insist only on a bank
guarantee of Rs.25,000 at the time of signing the Grant for Permission
Agreement. However, for frequency allocation, operators had to pay a fee
to the WPC Wing of the Ministry of Communications, apply for clearance
from the Standing Committee on Frequency Allocation (SACFA), obtain a
Wireless Operating Licence (WOL), and so on.
Raising the spectrum fee by almost 500 per cent could mean that
genuine grass-roots communities will be excluded and that community
radio licences will be captured by rich non-governmental organisations
(NGOs), universities and private educational institutions. As a mark of
protest, the CRF decided to boycott a policy consultation held by the
I&B Ministry on May 9 and 10. It also decided to observe May 9 as a
day of silence by switching off transmitters for the whole day.
N. Ramakrishnan, general secretary of the CRF, told Frontline
from Bangalore that the government should recognise community radio as a
resource. He said that the CRF had been formed in January 2007 with the
objective of amplifying the progressive nature of the community radio
policy and democratising licensing procedures. The community radio
policy guidelines, issued by the government in 2002, were revised in
2006 to include civil society organisations. The Telecom Regulatory
Authority of India (TRAI) apparently came out with a position paper that
recommended zero spectrum fee for community radio.
“Grass-roots NGOs, as it is, find it difficult to put together
Rs.20,000, not to speak of Rs.91,000,” Ramakrishnan said. The Krishi
Vigyan Kendras would not feel the pinch, he said.
From a street play on health awareness done in 2009 by Henvalvani. The
play was recorded for broadcast.
Henvalvani, the community radio station in Tehri district,
Uttarakhand, is run by Rajendra Negi, Ravi Gosain, Raghu Bhai Jhardhari,
Pradeep Kothari and Aarti Negi. The young State does not have a
regional Doordarshan channel, so Henvalvani has an important role to
play here. But the radio station does not have a regular source of
funding.
According to Rajendra Negi, its station director, Henvalvani found it
difficult even to raise the monthly rent of Rs.3,000 for the office
from where the station operates. “We don't have proper infrastructure;
we have just one table for our transmitter. But we reach out to nearly
450 villages and all in the local dialect,” said Rajendra Negi. The
staff at Henvalvani are volunteers, several of them students. Issues
relating to daily life – water, electricity, roads, schools, and so on –
are broadcast. “In the summers, information about forest fires is
relayed to us, and through our caller line system we regularly keep
people updated about developments, including feedback from officials
that we get in the form of interviews,” said Rajendra Negi.
Sajan Venniyoor, former general secretary and one of the founder members of the
CRF, told Frontline
that of the 132 community radio stations operating in India, the
majority were concentrated in urban areas and that only a few were in
the hands of NGOs or civil society organisations. Delhi, he said, had
more stations than many States put together. “I would find it difficult
to quantify the benefit from community radios to urban India, but in
rural India it is very significant,” he said. For instance, if a small
station in a hill State announced bus timings five times a day in the
local dialect, it had a huge social benefit. The local dialect also
received encouragement due to its frequent usage.
“The idea of community radio was to serve people who do not have the
benefits of modern communication, not to concentrate in already
media-rich areas,” he said. Community radio advocacy groups have long
campaigned for the dissemination of news. At present, there is a ban on
it. Traffic, weather, disasters, education and so on are topics that
community radio stations can freely broadcast. But even this is being
questioned. “In rural areas, everything is political. Even the digging
of a well has a certain political dimension to it,” said a community
radio representative.
It is not clear whether the government will decide to revoke the hike
or exempt community radio from spectrum fee altogether. What is evident
is that there is a growing opinion against the commercialisation of
resources such as spectrum – at least in contexts like community radio
which have a certain social importance.
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.
Join the Community Radio Forum. For membership details, please go to
www.crforum.in
