MICA wale bhaiya, a bunch of giggling kids runs ahead to announce their arrival. Women in Babubhai Chauhan’s house in Shela village scurry to make space when, dictaphone in hand, students of Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA) go inside.
Chanchalben Chauhan already knows what the students have come for: ‘‘They’re starting a radio for us, in which they’ll make programmes for us and with us.’’ And five-year-old Nitin says matter-of-factly, ‘‘They’ve come for recording.’’
After a year of research into the listening habits of rural communities of Shela, Tilao, Shantipura, and taking trouble to explain how community radio will be different from regular radio, the students and teachers of MICA have had success.
Student teams are developing scripts based on folk drama, farming, popular superstitions, issues like hygiene and education and have approached some social organisations, says Abhishek Hariharan, who is on project Micavani.
Also on the cards is ‘‘radio-browsing’’: the radio station will serve as a link between villagers and the Worldwide Web.
MICA students are busy with last-minute fine-tuning like signal mapping, but villagers are eager for Micavani to begin. ‘‘No one ever asked us what we would like to hear,’’ says Chanchalben.
Saurabh, who’s working on the radio project, says, ‘‘It was a surprise that problems like girl-child education and child marriages would be a concern barely 15 kms out of Ahmedabad. It was women who were the last to open up.’’
Micavani will be launched on Children’s Day with a programme by school children of nearby areas.
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