Community radio could have saved Sunday

What can a small radio do in the face of killer waves riding on the back of a massive earthquake? Saved lives, says A.S. Thiagarajan with the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), who is on AIR for 15 minutes at 8.30 am on Saturdays in Pondicherry.

As part of his job, Thiagarajan spends those 15 minutes allotted by the Government to inform fisherfolk around the area on sea behaviour, including wave height information. On the rest of the days, the information is posted on notice boards in villages or disseminated on public address systems. The radio service, in operation since 1999, is off on Sundays. A 24-hour radio service, Thiagarajan says, could have helped save lives. His colleague Senthil Kumaran, who is busy in relief work, says the radio is cheap and with a range of 25 km (land and sea), it can be of great help to warn people.

What comes in the way of Thiagarajan’s work is the Information and Broadcasting Ministry, which is yet to take call on allowing organisations to run community radios. Increasingly wary of handing over radios to non-governmental organisations, the Ministry has been mulling over the decision. Only of late, it decided instead to allow universities and colleges to operate campus radios.

Several organisations like the Deccan Development Society, Voices Myrada and the MSSRF are hoping the Government comes around and allows them to operate community radio stations. In the face of stiff resistance, Namma Dhwani (Our Voice) has taken to ‘cablecasting’ (ie narrowcasting using co-axial cable rather than wireless transmission) and public address systems in Boodikote, 100 km from Bangalore.