Community Broadcasting using FM Radio

Admittedly TV is a powerful medium for imparting health education, promoting women and child welfare, spreading adult education, and other similar development communication. For example, remote education through EDUSAT of ISRO has brought eminent teachers from big cities to students in remote rural schools. Interactive TV has taught self help and empowerment to tribal women , so they can themselves build water sheds, set up and run savings and loan cooperatives.

Nevertheless, TV has some limitations which are overcome by Radio. The potential for greater reach through Radio has been over looked in India. Actually, in many countries Radio has also been used cost effectively for infotainment. The cost effectiveness of Radio over TV comes from lower cost of producing radio programs to a broadcaster, and their accessibility to the audience without the listeners having to sit down and pay exclusive attention. A listener can tune in any time, and any where while attending simultaneously to other tasks.

Suggestion is to permit universities to run FM radio stations as public service, without having to pay any license fee. Aim of the programs should be to educate, inform and entertain. One educational function could be elucidation of the roles and responsibilities of the locally situated Central, State and Panchayat category institutions towards the local populace. Informing about the current and forthcoming events and their significance could improve the awareness of listeners. Discussions on the status of implementations of programs and projects could serve a valuable purpose of monitoring by public. Possibilities are limitless.

The radio station can be a training ground for upcoming journalists, and other social scientists. It can also serve as a grievance sounding board, replacing perhaps other different modes of protest. It can promote public participation in projects of interest to the community.

The reason for suggesting FM radio broadcast is its relatively small radius of coverage, making it truly local. Also, the same frequency can be allocated for broadcast to stations located about 200 km apart. So, by licensing such radio stations the government will not loose significant amount of revenue.