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- Sevanti Ninan
It is policy formulation time again and a sharp new minister is looking for an opportunity to make his mark. The very many private players whose fortunes will be influenced by any new broadcast legislation have lost no time in getting through their points of view. It is entirely possible that suitably liberal policies with regard to cable, satellite television, Internet and the convergence of these will be put in place. The present indications are that even the demand for a common regulatory authority for telecom, Internet and broadcasting could end up being conceded. There is, however, one item of the 1997 draft broadcast bill, on which nothing is being heard. Perhaps it will end up featuring in the new legislation, in a half-hearted, token sort of way. And a powerful opportunity for using media for development in a still hugely under-developed country will end up being lost. India, amazingly for a large vibrant democracy, is totally devoid of a tradition of community radio. A medium that is flourishing in Latin America, Africa, the US, in some countries of South East Asia, and which has recently taken root in Nepal and Sri Lanka, has never been permitted here. Both the draft Broadcast Bill of 1997 and an Information and Broadcasting ministry press release of July 1999 pay token obeisance to the notion, but governments simply don’t seem to want to move on this matter. In July this year, when the Cabinet approved the entry of the private sector into radio broadcasting services in India, it threw in the following vague paragraph in its press release. “Considering constraints of finances, staff etc. it would be desirable to open up the sector for other players which may include not only private commercial broadcasters but also NGOs, educational institutions and community radios who would run educational and public service programmes.” One had rung up and asked the then top official for Information and Broadcasting what the implication of this para was supposed to be. Don’t quote me, he said, but it means it is approved in principle. Such nervousness over admitting that something like community radio is approved in principle? Not surprisingly, further notification which came after the elections, in the month of October, spoke only of inviting applications (tendering, they are calling it in the ministry !) for licences for commercial FM radio. A total of 74 licences are being offered in forty cities with the reserve licence fee ranging from Rs 1.25 crore per channel in Delhi and Mumbai to Rs 50 lakhs in Madurai and Rs 20 lakhs in Bhopal or Aurangabad. What about that vague paragraph referring to NGOs, educational institutions and community radios who would run educational and public service programmes? Well, according to the concerned official in the ministry of information and broadcasting, there has been no further forward movement on this. One can safely bet that no powerful media houses are pushing for this or writing editorials on the subject. When the government opens up FM radio, it prices it in such a way that only commercial use can be made of it, and here too the licence fee is so high that to recover it only the lowest common denominator in entertainment will be commercially viable. No channel will take the commercial risk of offering, let us say, channels devoted to classical music, Indian or Western, or programming catering to specific audience tastes. If the airwaves belong to the public, as the Supreme Court had decreed in 1995, should access to them be priced out of reach of the ordinary public? If the government wants to exploit the commercial potential of radio, should it not also simultaneously allocate frequencies for other noncommercial uses with educational and public service intent? Mainstream as well as marginalised
groups have their own communication needs. Their information needs,
the language in which they require this information and their broader
communication needs differ from region to region, community to community.
These are not necessarily addressed by existing media. To organise
such communication for themselves, they could develop their own community
radio systems.
Cable and satellite TV came into this country despite being illegal and were then legitimised because their clientele is India’s famously vocal middle class. Community radio was never tried even surreptitiously because it would have needed imported equipment to set up a station. When private broadcasting is disallowed within the country, you cannot acquire the transmission equipment here. The government’s response in the past to the plea for community radio has been that it is willing to allocate time on existing stations of All India Radio to those who may wish to do community broadcasting on it. Some months ago, it was offering to price such time at an exorbitant rate, which makes it hardly a viable proposition for many a small community group. In any case, this notion of using existing infrastructure does not recognise that pluralism and decentralisation are eminently desirable in a democracy. The laws of the land should permit other voices to be heard, and not just by sufferance on a state-owned network. Unfortunately, the fault lies also with self-styled community radio advocates in the NGO sector, who do much more thundering on the international conference circuit than work at keeping up a sustained campaign here. Once there is a Supreme Court judgement upholding that the airwaves belong to the public why has there not been, for four and a half long years, any public interest litigation filed by groups who want to use community radio in their area of operation? All they had to do was apply for licences, and when turned down, file a PIL citing the 1995 judgement. Such radio advocates in Delhi have stopped short of asking for what should be their due, which is direct access to the airwaves. They have agreed to consider the government’s offer of access to All India Radio’s network for a price. An experiment was conducted at the Chitradurga AIR station in Karnataka by giving half an hour a month to an NGO to do a community broadcast. Then the government decided to withdraw the time allotted claiming, at a meeting I attended, that there had been no feedback from the community. How much impact can half an hour a month make? In Medak district in Andhra Pradesh, UNESCO has helped set up a small local radio station with a 100 watt transmitter which awaits the Broadcasting Bill. It was to be run by rural women who are members of the Deccan Development Society, an NGO there. These women cite graphic reasons why they feel the need for their own radio station. So that they can disseminate messages to members of sanghams or savings groups in their area, without having to travel around to do so. So that they can discuss micro-issues which mainstream radio has no time for, such as what kind of goats to buy, what kind of millets to plant in their area, what kind of vegetables to stop eating in the rainy season. Even more graphically, they cite the shortcomings of mainstream radio: it disseminates dominant values which are anti-poor, and it uses language that is not local, whereas their own radio would use local terms that people would recognise. It advocates only the government's approach to rural development, without recognizing that there are other approaches. It is steeped in gender roles, at a time when gender roles in their villages are beginning to get erased. It cannot give high localized information. Until the law of the land changes, the transmitter at this radio station will not be used. But the women tape programmes, edit them on their editing equipment in the studio, and play them back on tape recorders at gatherings of village folk, thus using a community listening system, in the absence of legally permitted broadcasting. Here is a community broadcasting effort which is quite apolitical in character. But because it makes the government more nervous than the big media houses pitching for commercial FM radio stations, it will not get a licence by simple cabinet fiat, as the latter have done. And for all we know, the Broadcasting Bill may also become law without conferring the right to be heard on many such communities in this land, simply because there is nobody lobbying vigorously enough on their behalf. Mr Arun Jaitley is a highly successful lawyer by profession. Would he like to take up their case? Stand-alone Internet radio to localise the world Imagine tuning into pirate radio from England, news broadcasts from Tanzania, rugby games from Australia - without needing a personal computer or short-wave radio. “This device is going to localise the world,’’ vows Andrew Leyden, founder of Penguin Radio, a company working to develop and produce a stand-alone device that will attach to a stereo system. “The walls are about to crumble.” The device, expected to be available early next year for less than $200, uses streaming media. It will be programmed to include programming available through the Internet from about 5,000 radio stations. Leyden, whose start-up company is based in Washington, D.C., said that the device would enable far-flung listeners to follow their favourite football team or hear weather reports from the other side of the world. Europe is an important potential market, said Leyden, a former Capitol Hill staffer. ‘’The frequencies are all tied up there,’’ he added. A boon for buyers is they need no technical know-how to operate Penguin radio. Listeners can find their stations simply by punching in a number. Leyden says the number of radio stations available through the Internet is likely to skyrocket. There are about 12,000 radio stations in the United States and thousands more around the world. Source: http://www.freedomforum.org/international/1999/11/23radio.asp NITES & DAZE - Community Radivision Nites & Daze will begin Radivision
community broadcasts on the Internet in January 2000. Radivision is a new
concept which combines radio and television. New technology allows Radivision
to flourish when it would have previously been prohibitively expensive.
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