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Community radio + RTI > NREGA

My experience and wisdom say that the community radio policy of the information and broadcasting ministry is more powerful than the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, especially when the CRP is complemented with the Right to Information Act. Let me share my thoughts on it.

My experience and wisdom say that the community radio policy (CRP) of the information and broadcasting ministry is more powerful than the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), especially when the CRP is complemented with the Right to Information Act. Let me share my thoughts on it.

What?s the character of Bharat? For me, the hallmark of Bharat is its ?information poverty?. Although India is the third most populated country on the Internet, has the second highest number of active citizens on Facebook and the second largest number of mobile users, one-fourth of the country still lives in a dark age with regards to media, which means that more than 300 million people do not have any access to it. Consequently, they have no means to access or convey information. No wonder then that a large portion of the population lives unattended, unreached, unserved, exploited, cheated and their rights never reach them.

Consider this: For a country with a population of 1.2 billion, we have 247 million households, including 168 million rural households, 68% of the people living below the poverty line, about 500 million unique mobile users, 175 million houses with TV, about 150 million of the population reached through radio, and no more than 110 million Internet users. Clearly, media outreach has been able to cover a significant part of the population. Since our culture is oral media, any medium that is oral is more effective than one that requires the ability to read and write. And among the vehicles of oral media, the most affordable and effective are mobile phones and radio.

With the advent of the 21st century, there have been some developments that are likely to make a huge difference in the long run. For example, the government has made it possible for any NGO, which is at least three years old and working with local communities, to apply for and have community radio licences and for literary communities to run FM radio stations to reach out to people in a 10-15 km radius.

Although a community radio licence comes through the information and broadcasting ministry, it requires permission from the ministries of defence, home, human resource and telecom. No wonder then that in the past six years, only 135 community radio stations have been able to get operational across the country.

But the reason why I feel the CRP is more powerful than the MGNREGA, which provides a legal guarantee for 100 days of employment in every financial year to adult members of any rural household willing to do public work-related unskilled manual work, is the fact that the latter is relevant only as long as we have unskilled labourers and large-scale unemployment. As soon as we have better literacy rates, more productive education and seamless employment opportunities, the MGNREGA could become irrelevant. Community radio, on the other hand, is a perennially empowering media tool that provides local communities a voice and a chance to broadcast it. It is also extremely cost-effective in terms of setting up and broadcasting as it does not require the frills of a professionally-run radio station.

Please take note of these: Radio Namaskar, a community radio in Konark, Orissa, has been instrumental in questioning many local PDS programmes and MGNREGA payments because of the community ownership. In a few cases, it has pressurised the authorities to take cognisance and their actions have put many government officials behind bars. Go to Tilonia village in Ajmer, Rajasthan, where barefoot college students broadcast their community voice focusing especially on RTI awareness programmes and MGNREGA-related issues, including social auditing. Visit Delhi?s neighbourhood Gurgaon, and Gurgaon Ki Awaaz, in the heart of Udyog Vihar, has been a true voice for migrant labourers in the garment industry, highlighting their culture, challenges and daily problems.

Walk up the hills in Uttarakhand and you have Henvalvani in Chamba, Tehri district, where several panchayats, dominated by women, are using community radio for issues like the environment, water and deforestation. Henvalvani is particularly unique as it has a call-in programme on which they get more than 1,000 calls a day. Come to Mewat, famous for being one of the biggest hubs for minorities infested by dogma and high levels of illiteracy, and you see the Mewat community radio trying to break the barrier of being ghettoised. Step into Bundelkhand and you have as many as three community radio stations?Chanderi Ki Awaaz, Radio Bundelkhand and Radio Dhadkan in Shivpuri?all of them primarily by and for tribal communities.

Then there is the all-woman-run Radio Ujjas, perhaps the only community radio station close to the international border in Kutch, run by members of the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS).The beauty of community radio is that it is oral, local, cultural and empowering as the voice of the unheard, untouched, unconnected and unreached.

The availability of community radio can only vindicate the applicability and practices of the RTI Act (which gives the power to seek information from the government) in general and in a local area in particular. Although the telecom department hasn?t allocated a single frequency in the last one year because of internal confusion over the spectrum, community radio is here to stay, take advantage of the RTI Act and vindicate the implementation of the MGNREGA.

Also, its integration with mobile phones is going to make it even more powerful. If all community radio stations start putting their programmes online, the huge amount of diverse content being streamed could revolutionise the media space, making it the most effective community-driven, content-based media in the history of the country.

Osama Manzar is founder director of Digital Empowerment Foundation and a member of the screening committee for the community radio for the information and broadcasting ministry. He is also a member of the working group for Internet proliferation and governance, communication and IT ministry. Follow him on Twitter @osamamanzar

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First published on: 02-12-2012 at 00:32 IST
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