The Hindu Business Line : Popularising community radio

Mass communication plays a vital role in contributing to cultural synthesis and social harmony as a means of promoting national integration. It also greatly helps in fostering the values of tolerance and amity among different sections of the population in a country of great diversity like India. That was why, among the three Committees set up by the very first meeting of the National Integration Council held in June 1961 under the chairmanship of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was the one on mass communication headed by the veteran film producer and actor, Prithviraj Kapoor.

The blueprint for a nationwide network of broadcasting and television stations drawn up by the Vikram Sarabhai Committee on Synchronous Communications Satellite was instrumental in giving a fillip to mass communication. The process of knitting together the entire country was further carried forward during Rajiv Gandhi's prime ministership.

All these efforts, however, were largely under the aegis of the Government, without leaving any scope for participation by non-official agencies and groups. It was only in the late 1990s that a beginning was made by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) to realise the potential of community radio stations (CRSs) as a unifying force generating a sense of belonging and participation on the part of citizens, and raising the level of their awareness of issues relevant to the betterment of the community. The CRSs enjoy the unique advantage of being low cost and relatively uncomplicated in terms of installation, operation and maintenance.

The I&B Ministry has shown commendable imagination by encouraging well-established educational institutions, agricultural universities, institutions under Indian Council of Agricultural Research and Krishi Vigyan Kendras and nonprofit civil society and voluntary to start and operate CRSs.

The policy guidelines framed by the Ministry are by and large realistic and appropriate, and make for functional flexibility. There cannot be any quarrel with the requirement that CRSs should be designed to serve a specific, well defined local community and have an ownership and management structure that is reflective of the community that the stations seek to serve.

EXCLUSION OF NEWS, CURRENT AFFAIRS

The same can be said for the guidelines that the programmes of CRSs should be of immediate relevance to the community and focus on issues relating to education, health, environment, and agriculture and rural and community development and that at least 50 per cent of content should be generated with the participation of the local community, for which the station has been set up. The curbs on advertisements and sponsored programmes are also understandable.

It is similarly possible to go along with the Ministry's decision not to permit individuals; organisations in the business of earning profit and political parties and their affiliate organisations; (including students and women's wings, trade unions and the like) to establish such stations

But where the Ministry has arguably transgressed the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression (subject, of course, to reasonable restrictions embodied in the Constitution) is in imposing the condition forbidding the broadcast by the CRS of "any programmes which relate to news and current affairs and are otherwise political in nature."

From the wording of the condition, it seems that the Ministry has presumed that programmes on news and current affairs would necessarily be political in nature. They need not be. I see nothing wrong even if they are.

To my mind, educating the citizens on the significance and implications of current issues and events is an important aspect of enhancing the quality of public discourse, and the very purpose of the CRS will be defeated if it is prevented from playing this role. The I&B Ministry should review the conditionality in this light.

B. S. RAGHAVAN