The wireless is yet to be fully utilized in rural hinterlands where information flows from government to people and vice versa
Information and communication technologies are playing a critical role in bringing globalization to India. First radio and later television’s reach has increased manifold due to digitalization and convergence of multimedia with satellite broadcasting. Besides, transnational organizations continue to consolidate their control over electronic media that target populations with homogeneous content, treating them as mere media consumers.
In addition, the scourge of backwardness, poverty and illiteracy continues to afflict large sections of the population. This limits the organized capacity of marginalized rural communities to enter into public discourse about felt needs that are local and could at times conflict with global processes. Such a conflict could impact participation in a vibrant public sphere of our civil society, especially in the context of public service broadcasting.
Public service broadcasting in India has striven to strengthen cultural diversity, pluralism and indigenous content. It has also entailed a sacrosanct condition – that the citizen is able to obtain information, education and entertainment significant to him or her culturally, created by the community and independent of those in power. Such broadcasting is also based on the concept of a self-fulfilling human being whose national consciousness has to be strengthened. Thus, both public radio and television in independent India have acted as catalysts in social modernization, economic development and nation-building.
Such broadcasting remains at the core of India’s cultural and communication policy debates despite being ideologically challenged. The introduction of new delivery systems, especially cable television system and direct broadcast satellite in tandem with multimedia has greatly increased the availability of programme sources.
All India Radio (AIR), with allocation of funds in all Five-Year Plans, has expanded to become a network of 215 broadcasting centres (which include 115 regional and 77 local radio stations) and 144 medium-wave, 54 short-wave and 139 FM transmitters. These cover 91 per cent of the rural population by area in 24 languages and 146 dialects. With 13.2 crore radio sets in about 11.7 crore households, the average actual listeners of AIR, including those residing in rural hinterlands, on any day are roughly estimated at 53 crore.
Local AIR stations have a reach of approximately 100 km and the thrust of the programmes is on folk, music and drama-based programming with interactive sessions with local audiences. On an average, there are four to five local stations in each state.
Broadcasting, along with posts, telegraphs, telephones and wireless, has been placed in Union List I of the Seventh Schedule (Item 31) of the Constitution. Consequent to the historic Supreme Court Judgment of 1995 declaring airwaves to be public property, the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation) of India was set up in November 1997 as an autonomous body to deal with policy, programming and operational issues pertaining to AIR and Doordarshan. Besides, since 2004 the carriage part of radio broadcasting has been brought within the ambit of telecommunication services under the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) Act, 2000. There is also in force a Radio Broadcasting Code with restrictions that are based on Clause 2 of Article 19 of the Constitution. A concern in government is evolving an enabling framework to tackle the critical issue of convergence of telecommunications, information technology and electronic media.
The Communication Convergence Bill introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2001 proposed the setting up of a Communication Commission of India modelled after the Federal Communication Commissioninf the US to manage, plan and monitor the communication infrastructure in India. This could unleash energies in rural India for effective access and participation of marginalized communities in the process of rural development through radio broadcasting in a major way.
The first wave of liberalization in 1999 enabled private companies registered in India to seek licences to set up independent FM radio stations in 40 cities and broadcast only entertainment programming. In 2003, well known universities, schools and colleges were also granted licences to run campus radio stations for educational purposes. Again, allowed to broadcast programming only within campuses, the latter were interestingly called “community radio” initiatives. But civil society groups and various review committees appointed since the Ashok Chanda Committee (1967) to examine the reach and impact of radio broadcasting continued to pinpoint the top down and vertical reach of AIR and these later initiatives. This was especially highlighted in the context of rural hinterlands where the fight against backwardness, poverty and illiteracy necessitated the dire need for community access and ownership in radio programming.
The question raised was: how could radio broadcasting help to create a participatory model of development in the vast rural hinterland where information flowed not only downwards from the government to the people but also upwards from the people to the government? The issue of autonomy and the degree of state monopoly over broadcasting has also been conceptualized and brainstormed time and again.
Attempts to solicit community participation in radio broadcasting began in 1956 when an experiment in farm radio forums was conducted with the assistance of UNESCO in 150 villages across five districts of Maharashtra. AIR played a pivotal role in the 1960s to disseminate information of new techniques and practices to propel the Green Revolution.
The 2006 policy guidelines for setting up community radio stations envision that marginalized communities in rural areas manage, own and operate radio stations with the help of civil society organizations. Hence, non-profit civil societies willing to serve a well-defined local community are eligible to apply for radio licences. The guidelines are very specific about the fact that such organizations should have an ownership and management structure that is reflective of the community intended to be served. Besides, 50 per cent of the content would be generated with the participation of the local community for which the station has been set up. Thus, with a transmitter having an effective radiated power of 100 watts, the community radio station is expected to cover a range of 6-10 km.
The above policy guidelines are a landmark in enabling, for the first time, the poorest of the poor in rural hinterlands to have access to relevant information though participatory radio communication. For instance, India’s first female Dalit community radio at 90.4 FM was launched last October in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.
Some reputed non-profit NGOs such as the Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency in Karnataka set up community radio production centres in remote rural hinterlands before 2006. In the absence of station licences, they rented airtime on the local AIR station to serve the poorest communities after narrow casting programming in local dialects. The government needs to put together the experience gained by these NGOs in entry-point activities related to media literacy campaigns and disseminate it through websites and other means.
High start-up costs prohibit access to the medium as envisaged in the 2006 guidelines. One viable option could be to create structural synergies to use dedicated funds within umpteen centrally sponsored rural development schemes for IEC (Information, Education, Communication) with multilateral funding that is availed of to set up and run the radio station.
Marginalized rural communities are today engulfed with news and entertainment fromterrestrial, cable and satellite television in addition to the regional AIR channels. But there is a need to put in place a “third tier” of community radio broadcasting that is a product of their socio-cultural moorings. Thus, non-profit organizations in tandem with gram panchayats have to work towards creating a tangible database of oral community narratives, dialects and ethnicities that could form inputs for radio programming relevant to 6-10 km.
It is pertinent to pay attention to the practical nature of the management structure for the rural radio station. Hence the need to outline the mandate and composition of a Community Radio Council as a multi-sectoral body that provides a set of locally-written policies, rules and directions to successfully operationalize the rural radio station.
In a convergent multimedia environment the fusion of radio broadcasting with other information technologies, specially the Internet, could further shift the paradigm with several fresh options for transmission and reception of AIR, FM and rural community radio stations. Therefore, it is pertinent to study further the regulatory reforms initiated in the public service broadcasting regimes of countries such as South Africa and Australia.
The demand for a Communication Commission of India to facilitate the development of and access to a national communication infrastructure is pertinent. It would enable a future level playing field between competing AIR, private FM and community rural radio stations both in programme content, transmission and distribution.
Reality radio
Putting the 2006 community radio guidelines into practice:
• The grassroots grounding of rural stations needs to be appreciated in the context of AIR and FM stations, typically called “local” stations serving an area or community.
• New community radio stations need to be structurally dovetailed with the Constitutionally-backed third tier of rural local self-governance, the gram panchayats. In the backdrop of the second generation reforms currently underway to devolve three Fs (funds, functions and functionaries) to gram panchayats, civil society can enter into public private partnerships with them to run rural radio stations.
• The Centre should make available to the state governments the expertise and advise of community radio consultants. This is especially relevant in the context of state governments perhaps unable to appreciate the purpose and viability of running a rural radio station within a radius of 6-10 km.
• District Magistrates are the cutting edge of the administrative machinery in the districts. They need to be sensitized about the relevance, need and utility of the guidelines to establish radio stations for effective empowerment of marginalized rural communities.
Across airwaves
The first regular radio service was inaugurated by the Indian Broadcasting Company in July 1927. IBC went into liquidation by March 1930. Thereafter, the Government of India took over broadcasting, slotting it in the Department of Industries and Labour as Indian State Broadcasting Service.
The government’s current monopoly over radio derives from the Indian Wireless Act, 1933 and the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 which gives exclusive privileges for the establishment, maintenance and working of wireless apparatus to the Central government.In 1936 the nomenclature of the Indian State Broadcasting Service was changed to All India Radio (AIR). It was finally relocated in 1941 in the Department of Information and Broadcasting which became the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in 1947. The introduction of the commercial channel, Vivid Bharati’, in October 1957 increased the interest and popularity of radio as a communication medium cutting across age, caste, creed, religion and ethnicities.
Public service broadcasting in India has striven to strengthen cultural diversity, pluralism and indigenous content. It has also entailed a sacrosanct condition – that the citizen is able to obtain information, education and entertainment significant to him or her culturally
