‘See what our community radio is doing, it’s time to relax policy’

NEW DELHI, JANUARY 31: “We may fall in the ‘suicide belt’ but we’ve never seen a farmer kill himself,” says Narsamma. It’s difficult to miss the pride and the sense of achievement in the voice of this 25-year-old Dalit woman who researches, scripts, produces and anchors a weekly radio magazine with Algole Narsamma.

“Our area is full of small marginal farmers, who have one to three-acre plots on dry red soil. But for 20 years, we have practised self-sufficient agriculture which does not require the kind of credit that many farmers take and pay with their life for. We devised our own way to become self-sufficient,” says Narsamma, who is called General.

She believes that her local ‘radio’ station may have helped add to levels of awareness in this dark corner. Her radio magazine reaches out to about 5,000 fellow Maadiga (Dalit) village women each week. With the help of UNESCO, an NGO called Deccan Development Society has given the Narsammas a school education and helped them “narrow cast” (or talk) to their fellow sisters about local problems, health issues, social problems, and most importantly, tips on agriculture.

“We communicate in Telengana Telugu. The radio stations in AP all speak stiff Telugu which is not similar to our dialect. Also, they don’t understand our local problems or concerns either. We try and tackle local problems and we also have songs, by the way. We are heard through radio recorders over a public address system in large groups, you see permission ledu (there is no permission).”

But the two Narsammas haven’t managed to get permission to broadcast, so they record their radio magazines on tape. But that doesn’t seem to discourage the feisty duo.

And it’s not just the Narsammas in Andhra Pradesh. There’s Namma Dhwani (our voice) in Kannada since 2000, reaching out to three villages in the state through loudspeaker narrowcasts, Charkha—a development communications NGO in the North-East and Jharkhand since 1994, who continue undaunted despite not getting their own licence.

About 70 such organisations from all over India-aspirants to genuine community radio broadcasting-will come together tomorrow at a conference to urge the governement to ease the process of applying for a broadcast licence.

The Union Cabinet had cleared the proposal for community radio stations in November 2006, but small groups complain that there is still no clarity about how to do things. The conference has been organised by the Community Radio Forum-an initiative of Drishti-an Ahmedabad-based media and arts NGO.

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