[Reader-list] Community Radio

[Harsh Kapoor]

The Washington Post
Wednesday, September 17, 2003; Page A17

Community Radio Gives India's Villagers a Voice
Officials Worry Local Stations May Foment Unrest

By Rama Lakshmi
Special to The Washington Post

BOODIKOTE, India -- Crushed under the weight of 
three years of drought, the villagers lost their 
patience when the public water pipes dried up 
last June. For eight days, there was no water for 
cooking, cleaning or washing.

There were murmurs of protest everywhere. Women 
came out of their homes with empty pots demanding 
that the old pipes be fixed and new wells dug. 
Men stood at street corners and debated angrily. 
The village chief made promises, but nothing 
happened.

Then, a young man ran over to the village radio 
station and picked up a recorder.

"Women complained and shouted into the mike and 
vented their anger at the village chief's 
indifference. There was chaos everywhere. But I 
recorded everything," said Nagaraj Govindappa, 
22, a jobless villager. He played the tape that 
evening on the small community radio station 
called Namma Dhwani, or Our Voices. The 
embarrassed village chief ordered the pipes 
repaired. Within days, water was gushing again.

India's first independent community radio 
initiative is in this millet- and tomato-growing 
village in the southern state of Karnataka. It is 
a cable radio service because India forbids 
communities to use the airwaves. A media advocacy 
group, with the help of U.N. funds, laid cables, 
sold subsidized radios with cable jacks to 
villagers and trained young people to run the 
station.

"The power of community radio as a tool of social 
change is enormous in a country that is poor, 
illiterate and has a daunting diversity of 
languages and cultures," said Ashish Sen, 
director of Voices, the advocacy group.

Emboldened by a Supreme Court ruling in 1995 
declaring airwaves to be public property, 
citizens groups and activists began pushing for 
legislation that would free the airwaves from 
government control. Two years ago, India 
auctioned its FM stations to private businesses 
to air entertainment programs. And late last 
year, India allowed some elite colleges to set up 
and run campus radio stations.

By keeping the airwaves restricted, activists 
complain, the Indian government lags behind such 
South Asian neighbors as Nepal and Sri Lanka. 
Nepal launched South Asia's first community radio 
station in 1995 and today has at least five 
independent stations across the country that 
address people's complaints and act as hubs of 
information in times of strife. In Sri Lanka, 
Kothmale Radio has been an integral part of the 
Kothmale community for 14 years.

Last December, Sri Lanka issued a broadcasting 
license to the formerly clandestine radio station 
run by the Tamil Tiger rebels, Voice of Tigers. 
The decision was made to strengthen the peace 
process underway after nearly two decades of war 
and to bring the radio transmissions under Sri 
Lankan law.

Radiophony, an Indian lobby group for community 
radio, claims that villagers can set up a 
low-powered, do-it-yourself radio station -- with 
a half-watt transmitter, a microphone, antenna 
and a cassette player -- for approximately $25. 
The group says such a station can reach about a 
third of a mile and cover a small village.

Last year, the group supplied a low-wattage 
transmitter to a World Bank-supported women's 
group in Oravakal, a village in the southern 
state of Andhra Pradesh. Mana Radio, or Our 
Radio, ran for five months before officials from 
the communications ministry seized the equipment 
and shut down the broadcast in February.

"We have to tread very cautiously when it comes 
to community radio," said Pavan Chopra, secretary 
of India's ministry of information and 
broadcasting. "As of today we don't think that 
villagers are equipped to run radio stations. 
People are unprepared, and it could become a 
platform to air provocative, political content 
that doesn't serve any purpose except to divide 
people. It is fraught with danger."

The ministry runs the All India Radio service 
that covers the country and has more than 200 
stations. Chopra said communities can buy time 
from the radio service and run their programs 
under state supervision. Since 1999, two groups 
of villagers, one in the western state of Gujarat 
and the other in the northern state of Jharkhand, 
have used time slots on All India Radio to run 
programs in their local dialects. But activists 
say that the central principle of community radio 
is to own and run a radio station freely.

"Community radio in India is not about playing 
alternative rock music," said Seema Nair, who 
helps the villagers run the station at Boodikote. 
"It is a new source of strength for poor people 
because it addresses their most basic development 
needs."

Since it began broadcasting in March, Our Voices 
community radio has crackled with the sounds of 
schoolchildren singing songs and giggling to 
jokes; of young girls talking fearlessly about 
the evils of dowry and admonishing boys for 
teasing them at school; of women giving out 
recipes and teaching others how to open a bank 
account; and of farmers debating the vagaries of 
the weather and fluctuating crop prices.

"This radio station is ours because it speaks 
about us -- in our language and in our accent. 
When I turn it on, I hear the voices of people I 
know," said Triveni Narayanswamy, 28, as she 
twirled the dial of her tiny transistor radio.

Narayanswamy sold milk until her only cow died three months ago.

"But when I went to claim insurance money for my 
cow, the agent tried to cheat me. He said he owed 
me no money," she said. "I went up and down his 
office at least a dozen times in vain. Then I 
spoke about my problem on Namma Dhwani radio. The 
next day, the agent gave me the insurance 
amount." She said it was about $240.

"Our radio is more powerful than the corrupt and 
inefficient village council," she said proudly. 
"They hold secret meetings and don't spend the 
money on our welfare. I want the proceedings of 
such meetings to be recorded. We all have a right 
to know what happens to the money that comes in."


© 2003 The Washington Post Company