Educational radio opening up in India... but only slowly >From Frederick Noronha
Indian universities and deemed-universities have come up with proposals to launch 'educational radio' stations from their campus. But the current government policy is to allow only India's national open university to transmit such broadcasts. For the present, the Government of India has allowed the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to run FM radio stations for educational programmes, India's federal minister for information and broadcasting Sushma Swaraj said in parliament. IGNOU stations have been commissioned at Allahabad, Bangalore, Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore, Lucknow and Mumbai (formerly called Bombay). IGNOU is the country's most important national-level open university, that conducts distance education programmes, mostly via post. It has recently been expanding into using the radio as a medium for education. Its seventh station at Bhopal is likely to be commissioned shortly. Besides, another 23 more IGNOU-run stations are expected to be commissioned before March-end 2003, the minister added. Rs 151 million has been kept aside during the year 2001-02 for this purpose. For over five decades, radio has been internationally seen as a powerful tool for communication and development. Proponents of radio in India have long argued that its potential has been unfairly eclipsed by the advent of television. Over the past few years, India has gone about 'liberalising' its air-waves, allowing commercial FM radio stations to be set up, on payment of multi-millioin rupee licence fees. So far, ten commercial FM radio stations have been commissioned in six Indian cities -- Bangalore, Indore, Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Pune and Mumbai (five stations). Three more companies have paid licence fees for broadcasting in six cities -- Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Jabalpur, Coimbatore, Tirunelvi, Visakhapatnam -- but are yet to launch operations. Earlier, nine more broadcasting companies were given time till August 29, 2002 to launch their operations. But campaigners for 'community radio' -- non-profit low-powered radio stations run primarily for development purposes -- have argued that the airwaves should be freed also for the commonman, since this medium could be a powerful means of getting across developmental or educational information. RETHINK POSSIBLE? In mid-August, some official statements coming out from the Indian government also indicated a possible re-think on opening up of radio, to the non-state and non-commercial sector. There were hints that the educational sector could be opened up first. Indian Information and Broadcasting Minister Sushma Swaraj was quoted in the mainstream 'The Times of India' newspaper that she is giving "final touches" to a proposal permitting schools, colleges and other educational institutions to set up their own radio stations to cater to a variety of activities. Some higher-educational institutions, including deemed universities, are known to have applied for permission to launch educational radio networks. But it is not clear what exactly the minister meant by talk about "permitting schools" to launch the same. "The proposal will be placed before the Union Cabinet next month. We will target IIMs, IITs and residential schools to start off with. But my dream is that every school in India should eventually have its own radio," the minister was quoted saying. (The IIMs and IITs are prestigious, top-level management and technological training institutions. Elite Indian students gain admission to these centres via competitive exams.) Swaraj added that the idea behind the proposal came from the concept of community radio, popular in many foreign countries. "But in our proposal, we want schools to start off with this, because there is a lot of scope, and we want to improve the quality of education. Class lessons, lectures, extra information, educative programmes and programmes created by students can all be aired within a limited radius of access. There is immense potential for interactive radio with phone-ins," she was quoted saying. It was not immediately clear whether schools would be given slots on existing stations, or allowed to explore options of setting up their own. Soon after the Cabinet approval, the Department of Telecommunications would be approached to allot frequencies to interested institutions, the minister said, sounding optimistic. "The radius will be limited to about 5 km," she said. Swaraj said she was encouraged by the enthusiastic response to the idea. "Whenever I broached this subject with the IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) or IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), the idea was welcomed, and they told me to do it quickly. So it is not a pipe dream," she said. "The ministry will have some amount of control, especially where content is concerned, but it will be very minimal. But these will be decided only later," she added, giving hints of a persistent concern of the Indian government -- that controlling what went out on radio could be difficult for the authorities who are worried about potential misuse of the medium. Reports from the national capital of New Delhi also suggested that there are plans to open up low-powered radio stations. "The government is planning to set up low-power community radio stations in FM mode through local communities, non-profit organisations and educational institutions (Universities) for educational, cultural and economic development of specific communities during the Tenth Plan Period," the Times of India reported. Efforts are also on to improve government-run radio and TV broadcasting to North-East India, a remote and sometimes insurgency-prone part of the country. ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
