It was a Supreme Court judgement in 1995 that started it all. Hearing a case on telecast rights between the Union of India and the Cricket Association of Bengal, Indias highest court ruled that the airwaves are public property and their use has to be regulated by a public authority in the interests of the public.
Community radio enthusiasts saw this as an indirect endorsement of what they had been arguing for so long that the government open up the airwaves to community radio as it is in the interest of the public. A consultation in Bangalore in 1997 put this even more strongly. A Draft Declaration on Community Radio, supported by media and civil society representatives, underscored the potential of community radio and demanded a separate clause for community radio in the 1997 Broadcasting Bill.
The protests got louder in 2000 when the government gave licences for the first set of private commercial FM channels, ignoring the demand for community radio. IGNOU, Indias largest open university, too got permission to run more than a hundred educational channels. Though the government-run All India Radio offered NGOs broadcast time at cheap rates for community-oriented programmes, the civil society felt that such programmes would hardly meet local aspirations
Over the years, as commercial FM stations struggled to survive, small experiments in three corners of the country were making the right noises for community radio. The Voices cable radio project, supported by Unesco, the AID project in Jharkhand and the KMVS project in Kutch showed remarkable community empowerment. Many other projects were snuffed out even before they could start the DDS initiative in Pashtapur, with Unesco help, was denied permisson by the government while a tiny radio transmitter managed by women in Oravakkal, Andhra Pradesh, was seized by officials. The cr-india mailing list, run by community radio enthusiasts, was flooded with mails expressing outrage.
This year, the government circles finally woke up. In May, the I&B Ministry organised a consultation on community radio in Delhi, involving international experts and UN agencies. Here, officials admitted as least off the record that people had been denied community radio for too long.
Soon after, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) organised an Open House on FM Radio in Delhi where civil society representatives, including OneWorld South Asia, put up a strong case for community radio. This led to TRAI issuing a community radio consultation paper in August 2004, asking the civil society for views.
For OneWorld South Asia, which has been engaging the civil society on this issue since June 2004, this was a chance to lobby for community radio as a tool to voice the voiceless. Through a series of meetings and deliberations with its 300 civil society partners, media experts and universities, OneWorld South Asia prepared a list of recommendations. These have been presented to TRAI and have the support of 40 community radio stakeholders.
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