Community radio stations to be set up for farmers Times of India - India <http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Patna/Community_radio_stations_to_be_set_up_for_farmers/articleshow/4093319.cms>
Community radio stations to be set up for farmers 8 Feb 2009, 0538 hrs IST, Sanjeev Kumar Verma, TNN PATNA: Farmers in Bihar would soon have their first brush with community radio. To be set up under the Agriculture Technology Management Agency (ATMA) Project of Union ministry of agriculture, the community radio would air programmes catering to the needs of the farming community. Apart from airing informative programmes about the latest farming practices and the precaution the farmers should take to safeguard their standing crops, programmes based on lives of successful farmers of a given area would also be aired. Then, the community radio would provide localised weather reports. In the first phase, three such community radio stations would come up at Krishi Vikas Kendra (KVK) Birauli in Samastipur, KVK Barh in Patna and KVK Jamui. The Union ministry has provided over Rs 31 lakh for each such radio station out of which about 14 lakh would be spent on equipment and the balance amount would be spent on the programming head and recurring expenditure. "Community radio is going to play a very positive role for farmers, as it would be localised in nature, with its service area limited to the surrounding areas only and farmers would get area specific inputs for improving the farming practices," said Bihar Agricultural Management & Extension Training Institute (BAMETI) director R K Sohane. BAMETI is the state level co-ordinator for implementation of ATMA project in the state. He said that the funds for the said radio stations have already been received and BAMETI has applied to the ministry of information and broadcasting for licences for starting the community radio stations. "Vigilance teams have already visited the sites where radio stations would be set up. Hence, we are expecting the licences very soon," Sohane added. BAMETI, meanwhile, has started work on deciding the programme contents which would be aired daily for two hours. "KVK scientists and those from the agriculture university as well as successful farmers would play a major role in preparing these programmes," he said and added that local soil and climatic conditions would be given due weightage while giving any information to the farmers through these programmes. Incidentally, the proposed community radio stations would be first of its kind in Bihar as far as farmers' centric programmes are concerned. In the southern states as well as in the neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, experiments with community radio has proved to be very beneficial. "Farmers of these states have appreciated the move and we expect similar kind of response in Bihar as well," Sohane said.
