First rural community radio station to go on air
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COMMENTS 
Sangham Radio of the DDS Community Media Trust will be the first proper community radio station to go on air, on October 15, 2008. It will also be the first to be run by women from marginalised communities
India’s first rural community radio station will go on air on October 15, 2008 -- World Rural Women’s Day. Called Sangham Radio, the station will be launched in Machnoor village in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.
Sangham Radio is an initiative of DDS Community Media Trust and is the first radio station to be owned and managed exclusively by women from marginalised communities.
DDS Community Media Trust was started 10 years ago to redress the imbalance in mainstream media which ignores rural people and issues, particularly those of women from marginalised sections.
Sangham Radio will be inaugurated by Justice P B Sawant, the Supreme Court judge who delivered the historic 1995 judgment affirming that “the airwaves are public property”. The judgment made broadcasting history by signalling the freeing up of radio news from State control.
Though DDS applied for a licence in 2000, it was approved only in November 2007. Until approval came, it played recorded news capsules on a tape-recorder in nearby villages on specific days. This “narrowcasting” had its effect on the local people, who soon became eager consumers of information on issues such as biodiversity and seed sovereignty.
The station is managed by Algole Narsamma and ‘General’ Narsamma, dalit women who are alumni of The Green School of the Deccan Development Society (DDS), of which the Community Media Trust is a part. DDS has 5,000 women members, mostly dalits, organised into sanghams or voluntary village-level associations. Ten girls from The Green School have been commissioned to gather information from member villages in neighbouring mandals.
Six other NGOs were issued licences at the same time as DDS. They include the Satara-based NGO Mann Vikas Samajik Sanstha (MVSS) and Development Alternatives’ Bundelkhand FM in Orchha that will be inaugurated on October 23, 2008.
Community ownership and participation are the defining elements of community radio. Whether NGOs can do any better than the several campus radio stations in this regard is what media commentators are looking out for.
Source: radioandmusic.com, October 11, 2008
hinduonnet.com, October 11, 2008
The Hoot, November 22, 2007