| NEW
DELHI: Keen to push its Community Radio facilitating programme, the Information
& Broadcasting ministry is convening an inter-ministerial meeting next week
to find areas of convergence, and has also written to state governments on this
issue, as most of them have been found to be totally unaware of the programme.
Stating that Community
Radio has a massive potential, I&B joint secretary Zohra Chatterjee said that
it would also want more seminars and workshops and by itself, would organise at
least one workshop in each state capital in the days to come. Chatterjee
stated this today at the EIndia 2007 meet, where she also said that the government
has noted and flagged the issue of why none of the 103 applications received so
far have been from NGOs or civil society organisations, but rather from educational
institutions. "The
term 'Community Radio' itself says it is a radio that would serve the specific
interests of communities, but the civil society has not come forward for this.
We have flagged this issue in the ministry and the state capital workshops would
sensitise the NGOs to come forward for this," she said. Of
the 103 applications received so far, all from institutions, agreements have been
signed by the government with 42 parties; letters of intent have been issued to
63 parties, and 26 of the 42 are actually operating. However,
she added that there was underutilisation of spectrum as most of the operators
went on air for a few hours a day at the most, as and when the members of that
community found time. She
said this needs to be studied, but said that the feedback received so far shows
that even these 26 were (in content and ownership) not representative of the community
and so far the purpose of the programme has not been achieved. The
government is also considering the proposed 5,000 licenses it plans to issue to
be divided into sectors, such as farming community, fishing community, women and
children and others, and issue the licenses accordingly. Chatterjee
said: "There are other ministries in the government who also have developmental
work to do and their messages need to reach out to the communities, and CR can
be a powerful tool in that. The
I&B ministry also plans to use the offices of the other departments to identify
the 'good NGOs' in the respective fields of work and train and empower them and
subsequently issue the licenses to them, indicating that the programme, in the
absence of ground level interest, could be modulated to the government's perceive
needs of communities. Responding
to one suggestion from a panellist at the meet that the ministry would need to
issue a GO (government order) to bring CR as a part of school curriculum, Chatterjee
said that even if that is not possible, it could be introduced to schools as special
interest clubs. Chatterjee
also spoke of the need to work with the Information Technology ministry's Community
Service Centre project to converge their activities and use CR as a tool for information
dissemination on the products and services of both the government as well as the
private sector. Chatterjee
thanked the international organisations like Unesco and Unicef, which had helped
organise E-India and said there would more meetings with them for learning from
their experiences globally to make the Indian programme a success. She
ended her address at the valedictory session saying that the AIR stations across
the country could be looked at for developing partnerships with NGOs to help start
developing and broadcasting programmes for communities before the NGOs can actually
set up their own stations. It
is learnt that the organisers, including CSDMS, Unicef, Unseco and others would
write a detailed report on the recommendations made at various sessions of the
CR seminars and workshops at E-India 2007 and table them at the ministry for their
consideration. Earlier
in the day, I&B director Arvind Kumar clarified on the issue of news not being
allowed on CRs, saying that the present policy stops users from using it for political
purposes and relevant information for the community could not be barred from the
community radio stations. | 
