20 Aug 2008
· community-radio
I eat my words. Okay not all of them. But at least the ones in the last blog where I cribbed about the WPC site. It turns out that the site has all the links – just that none of them show up when you access the site using Mozilla Firefox. Or for that matter if you’re using a version of Internet Explorer that is less than 5.5.
Since I am guilty of the first offence (I was forcibly evicted from my comfortable but limited IE existence and made to learn Firefox), no wonder nothing showed up. Apparently its a global malaise - of site programmers not checking their sites workability and usability on browsers other than IE. The irony of a community radio access site insisting on users having the latest version of a software in a country where affording a computer is a luxury of sorts seems to have missed the entire ministry.
Continue reading →13 Aug 2008
· community-radio
Here we are, at the receiving end of a Letter of Intent from the Ministry of Communications informing us that they were considering the possibility of bestowing upon us a community radio license for Gurgaon. Cheers went around, and we then gleefully typed up the URL that we had been asked to visit to register online (http://www.wpc.dot.gov.in/). There was no offline option. A diktat had been passed - all applications had to be done online, followed by the printed version being sent off to the Ministry. Cool. This did not sound too difficult. Except that for the first one hour, the URL just refused to open. Then, suddenly it did. What we had before us was a home page with no links. None. There was a search box on the left, a stream of alert crawling up the bottom half of the page, and some “About US” kind of matter giving us the raison ’d etre of the Wireless and Planning Wing (WPC) of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (Department of Telecommunications). Very interesting I’m sure except that we just could not figure out where to go for our online application. Us! An NGO that is supported by a fully-functional tech team! In desperation I called up the officer who had issued us the letter. He sounded nice, sympathetic even. He put me in touch with CEMCA (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia) which is working as a kind of nodal agency coordinating between NGOs and all the various departments and ministries involved in the gargantuan task of giving licenses for community radio. The CEMCA folks were extremely helpful, and obviously had received plenty of calls for help from other applicants. They promptly took over, filed our application, sent us the sample documents, and pretty much hand-held us till all the paperwork was done.
Continue reading →08 Aug 2008
· community-radio
The NGO I work with (not for), The Restoring Force (TRF), has received the preliminary Letter of Intent from the Ministry informing TRF that it has been granted a license to start a community radio station in Gurgaon. Considering TRF’s existing work in government schools in Gurgaon, especially in the area of career counselling and infrastructure development, it seems appropriate to focus, at first, on this area alone.
Having taken on the demanding yet exciting challenge of getting the radio station off the ground for TRF, I’m dazzled by the possibilities of this medium. When I look at our footprint - of semi-urban villages in Gurgaon district; slum clusters in the heart of Gurgaon’s mall mania; the lower middle class, middle class, upper class, and the super rich flooding the houses and apartments developed by private developers and HUDA - I can think of a million things that need to be said and heard on radio.
Continue reading →