Click to play videoHyderabad: An engaging melody peppered with social comment - that is the wave of a silent revolution unfolding in Machnoor village of Andhra Pradesh.
Dalit women at Deccan Development society's Sangham community radio have been waiting for a decade for a license to go on-air and the
Union Cabinet's go-ahead to community radio stations was just the thing they were waiting for.
"I'm happy to be here. The songs we sing about crops and the message it has can now be heard by other women who can use it,” says Chandramma.
From crop prices to evils of child marriage, voices and issues that barely get air-time are aired at this community radio, which serves the interests of a large section of the country's radio listeners.
Says the director of Deccan Development society, P V Satheesh, "Community radio allows one to look at issues critically, reshape opinions and is used to reach policy makers and the government."
The reason that Chandramma had to wait for almost 10 years for a license was because the Indian Government felt such "citizen radios" could become a platform to air provocative, political content.
The Government had banned them until recently and the five community radios that did exist did so clandestinely using AIR'S frequency.
Some of these were:
- Our voices initiative, Namma Dhwani in Boodikote, Karnataka has been cablecasting its programmes for over a decade now.
- Initiatives like Allari Muchchatlu (Mischievous Chatter), a children's radio programme by an NGO, Samskar in Nizamabad was another clandestine venture.
- Radio Ujjas of the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangthan in Bhuj was a third.
- And lastly there was Jharkhand's Alternative for India Development.
With programmes designed and produced by the communities themselves, voices on community radios across the country aim to bring the message of development from the grassroots and it's in this form that the radio can become an important tool of social change.
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