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P Krishnamurthi Team Leader, DHAN Foundation AMARC, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, describes community radio as follows: When radio fosters the participation of citizens and defends their interests; when it reflects the tastes of the majority and makes good humour and hope its main purpose; when it truly informs; when it helps resolve the thousand and one problems of daily life; when all ideas are debated in its programs and all opinions are respected; when cultural diversity is stimulated over commercial homogeneity; when women are main players in communication and not simply a pretty voice or a publicity gimmick; when no type of dictatorship is tolerated, not even the musical dictatorship of the big recording studios; when everyone's words fly without discrimination or censorship, that is community radio. DHAN Foundation believes that the Community radio can perform as an enabling tool for poverty reduction, when it is truly owned and managed by the community, particularly the Peoples Organisations promoted by the poor women, small and marginal farmers and fishermen. Promoting mutuality, self help and self reliance for achieving poverty reduction should form foundation for the Community Radios. DHAN perceives that the main commitment and mandate for community radio promoted or supported by it should be committed to produce programming on themes that will contribute to the development of the communities that they serve.
water and rainfed farming were conceived to be the means for poverty reduction, not the ends. Similarly the ICT for Poor theme has also been viewed as a tool to bring about economic and social development. The ICT theme in DHAN has been conceived with following model of development.
Fig 1
Enabling Environme nt
The enabling approach forms the basis of all the designs and strategies of building people and institutions for poverty reduction. It is the basic approach to processes and deriving from that, institutions, knowledge systems and styles of functioning. This is the enveloping function or approach to the above triad (fig 1). Also, it is important to note that common property approaches to praxis lead to governance and collective empowerment. In the former, placing all the issues, conflicts, and decision-making processes, and so on, in the public space, leads to collective empowerment. Nothing is kept confined to a few individuals. The information and communication technologies should be viewed as enabling inputs for development. The content that the Community Radio Stations develop within and across the communities should be grounded in the following Basics of Development.
Freedom of choice: How do we help individuals and groups to identify, generate and act on their choices? Quality of life: How do we assist persons to determine and develop the meaning of their lives, their identities, and their life styles? Managing resources: How do we deal with the personal responsibility for generation, management and conservation of human and material resources? Inter relatedness: How do we help individuals, institutions and cultures recognise and deal with their inter-relatedness and inter-dependence? Change as a constant: How do we deal with the causes and effects of change within and upon individuals, institutions and societies?
Programming Plan
Fig 2. Production and Dissemination of Content
Staff
Voluntee
The content prioritised by the community varies from context to context. While the Communities in Nagapattinam required audio content related to cyclones and marine based livelihoods, the farmers in Kottampatty required content relevant to droughts
Prioritization
Manag
and floods, tanks and tank based livelihoods. The need assessment workshops organised by the staff under the guidance of the Professionals of DHAN help generate an exhaustive list of programme areas. The Management committee at the federation level help in prioritizing the areas and the staff and volunteers prepare production plan. However the formats for presentation are left to the creativity of the volunteers (mostly students and young men and women) and the staff. In our experience following variety of presentation formats were followed buy the CRS in Kottampatty as well as Nagapattinam. Features Interviews Reporting events and cases Stories and experiences Readings Local announcements Discussions and debates Radio drama Talks / narratives Local music and songs Jingles
Producing Content Production is done in three methods depending on the availability of equipment, distance from the production centre and financial resources available for production. Method 1: A well equipped audio production theatre established in Kottampatty, a block town where the people have easy access to travel. Most of the arranged programmes such as talks, interviews, songs, music and readings are made in the theatre. Method 2: Each VIC has a provision of a mini mixer and a microphone connected with a computer and an amplifier. The VICs which are primarily meant for offering internet based services are also used as production facility, wherein the people/producers are invited to the centre for recording. Live announcements are done there itself. Some of the programmes are recorded and transferred to the main studio in Kottampatty after a first level editing for further editing. Method 3: Field recording is done using voice recorders in the areas where there is a difficulty in bringing producers to the VIC or theatre at Kottampatty. Mostly event coverages, spot commentaries and interviews are done in this method. Disseminating Content In Kottampatty, programmes are narrowcasted through the public address systems fixed over Village Information Centres in 20 villages covering about 10,000
populations. Flexible timings of narrowcasting is decided after consulting the villagers for avoiding disturbances to their other works (e.g. school and exam times). A typical scheme of narrowcasting is given in the table 2. Table 2: Programme schedule in Vayalagam Samuga Vanoli Time 10 AM 11 AM Content / format Thirukural with explanation by VIC operators Live announcements Village events and meetings Birth day wishes, Wedding wishes PDS announcement Panchayat announcements Announcements for SHG, Farmers groups Weather information Pre recorded programme Speeches and debates, Agriculture and animal husbandry Stories, Health information, Tips for students, youth etc. Vayalagam Vanoli Programme made by/with communities Best practices by farmers, entrepreneurs New initiatives Traditional practices Folk music, songs and stories Festivals, celebrations Women and children Health and education etc. Duration 15 Min 15 Min
5 PM
30 Min
6 PM
60 Min
Exchanging Content While the Community Radios offer ample opportunity for making localised contents that suits the social, cultural and linguistic characteristics of the defined geography, there exists opportunities for the two or more CRSs to exchange their contents. In the context of globalizing media, among the communities who live similar lives and have similar issues can very well connect with each other to share their content, expertise and experiences. There are initiatives by national and international networks that are promoting such exchanges. In our case the Kalanjiam Community Radio in Nagapattinam and the Vayalagam Community Radio in Kottampatty, Madurai, both are sharing the same context of disaster vulnerability. The former could share many of their audio content except a few areas that are related to marine ecosystem to the latter. However while exchanging contents care needs to be taken to ensure that they share similar contexts, culture, and language, and moreover relevant to the purpose for which it was made. By sharing content, CRSs can increase the impact of their work
and reach new audiences, collaborate with each other for joint productions, learn new formats, and bring diversity to the programmes.
Sl No 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Content Thirukural Health Agriculture Children Women & SHG Disaster Mitigation Governance Livelihoods Education Culture Awareness General Folks & Songs Total production
No. of Programmes
Duration
3:21:23 20:01:24 18:11:57 25:45:26 9:51:37 4:36:40 5:54:49 6:28:45 7:44:23 5:22:46 3:44:26 15:18:52 8:45:08 135:07:36
The Chart (Fig 3) shows that women, agriculture and health are the major areas of programming, which is more of best practices in existing sea and land based livelihoods. Similarly programming for Children was 20 percent of the total duration of programmes produced. Traditional health practices, local culture and folk songs were the major areas of programming to fulfill the demands of the communities generated during need assessment.
Passive Listeners
Active Contributors
Owners
In order to create change, the CRS should assume certain roles and take up certain Roles Self governance responsibilities so as to create change in the individuals and societies. These 3Rs Media literacy should be built around the values of self governance and self management. Accelerating development
Redefining and ensuring entitlements
Rights
Freedom of Expression Collective ownership Access and Control over ICT Entitlements over social, economic, cultural and political rights
Responsibilities
Self Management Self Regulation Accountability Transparency
The transformation can happen only when the communities start thinking critically about news, entertainment, and advertisements, asking questions such as "on whom they are targeting?", "what interests does it stands for?", and "what techniques are they applying to persuade the intended audience?" The content that the CRS produce should be able to create awareness among the communities to look for what is needed for them, what is not there and what kind of impacts certain messages, viewpoints and perspectives can create. The content that the communities make through their CRS should enable them to place it into a larger context of development. This means facilitating them to understand the structures and realities that affect their development, freedom of choice, inter relatedness and quality of life, ultimately leading into collective empowerment.
Building institutionalised linkages with the mainstream agencies that are involved in disaster management, to provide legitimate and localised information on disasters. Meetings costs of content production and capacity building for the staff, volunteers and communities is a major challenge in the initial phase, while the CRS is still working towards meeting running costs. A proven model needs to emerge to meet this challenge. Access and use of materials that are copy righted. The CRS stands for non commercial broadcasting may not be able to afford to the royalties to be paid for the copyrighted materials. Content exchange among the non-commercial broadcasters needs more focus.
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Manoj Prabakars radio address on water management is delivered flawlessly, and when he steps out of the studio, he is congratulated warmlyespecially by his grandmother, who puts her arms around him. Manoj is 13, and his audience is the village of Mangalamapatti, India. The studio is an information centera single room that serves about a hundred purposes for five communities, and the machine used for sound editing is the only computer in town. This is community radio, where a village fashions the programs it wants and needs, and fast-talking DJs and advertisers need not apply.
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