NEW DELHI: A major challenge faced by community radios in India is the lack of adequate funds, reveals the findings of a study conducted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
As many as 19 sample community radio stations (CRSs) were part of the study that aimed at gaining an insight into perspectives on how far CRSs currently meet the educational, developmental, social and cultural needs of listeners in India.
The chief functionaries interviewed across eight non-governmental, eight educational and three agricultural stations pointed out they were facing fund crunch in running the CRSs and needed financial support from the government.
The primary problem faced by the CRSs was that despite having applied for empanelment under Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP), they had not received approval for it. The stations also did not have clarity regarding the status of their applications. The report has now recommended that information be uploaded on the website for CRSs to be aware of their application status.
The government should give funds to the best performing CRSs annually and rope in all ministries to announce their developmental schemes of that area through these stations for which the CRSs should get due payments, the study has recommended. The DAVP norms for CRSs should be simplified and made more liberal for the sustainability of these stations, says the report. Currently, there are 238 operational CRSs.
“The policies are so limiting that a lot of potential of the community radios cannot be met. Even in cases when they are empanelled, the government excludes CRSs from national campaigns. The payments do not come on priority basis either,” said Archana Kapoor, director of Radio Mewat. The other way forward is to come up with innovative solutions like turning a CRS into a rural knowledge centre that offers a range of services of library, public service telephone, fax, selling records, hiring out of video and audio equipment, and photocopying facilities to make these more sustainable, the report suggests.