Community Radio for Change: Case of DHAN Foundation

P Krishnamurthi1
AMARC, the World Association of Community Broadcasters, describes community radio
as follows:
When radio fosters the participation of citizens and defends their interests; when
it reflects the tastes of the majority and makes good humour and hope its main
purpose; when it truly informs; when it helps resolve the thousand and one
problems of daily life; when all ideas are debated in its programs and all opinions
are respected; when cultural diversity is stimulated over commercial
homogeneity; when women are main players in communication and not simply a
pretty voice or a publicity gimmick; when no type of dictatorship is tolerated, not
even the musical dictatorship of the big recording studios; when everyone's words
fly without discrimination or censorship, that is community radio.
DHAN Foundation believes that the Community radio can perform as an enabling tool for
poverty reduction, when it is truly owned and managed by the community, particularly
the Peoples Organisations promoted by the poor women, small and marginal farmers
and fishermen. Promoting mutuality, self help and self reliance for achieving poverty
reduction should form foundation for the Community Radios. DHAN perceives that the
main commitment and mandate for community radio promoted or supported by it should
be committed to produce programming on themes that will contribute to the
development of the communities that they serve.

DHANs approach in ICT for Development

Poverty is a complex phenomenon. The gap between the rich and poor is widening.
Isolation, powerlessness, and inequalities aggravate poverty, perpetuate it from one
generation to the next and make the poor more vulnerable and never allow them to
come up. For poverty reduction to be achieved, the limitations that the socially and
economically marginalised communities face must be eliminated. These limitations
include low self-esteem, lack of mobility and access to and control over resources, lack of
access to services, to skill and capacity building opportunities, to information and
technology, as well as to decision-making in the community and within and households.
DHANs ultimate goal is to reduce poverty by collective action and promote self- reliance
among the poor and their organisations in a large scale through context specific
development strategies. In all the themes and interventions DHAN follows the enabling
approach of poverty reduction, where the themes such as microfinance, water and
rainfed farming were conceived to be the means for poverty reduction, not the ends.
Similarly the ICT for Poor theme has also been viewed as a tool to bring about economic
and social development. The ICT theme in DHAN has been conceived with following
model of development.

1* Team Leader, DHAN Foundation

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Organised Peoples Institutions

Scaled down technology

Enabling Environment
Fig 1

The enabling approach forms the basis of all the designs and strategies of building
people and institutions for poverty reduction. It is the basic approach to processes and
deriving from that, institutions, knowledge systems and styles of functioning. This is the
enveloping function or approach to the above triad (fig 1). Also, it is important to note
that common property approaches to praxis lead to governance and collective
empowerment. In the former, placing all the issues, conflicts, and decision-making
processes, and so on, in the public space, leads to collective empowerment. Nothing is
kept confined to a few individuals.
The information and communication technologies should be viewed as enabling inputs for
development. The content that the Community Radio Stations develop within and across
the communities should be grounded in the following Basics of Development.

Freedom of choice: How do we help individuals and groups to identify, generate

and act on their choices?

Quality of life: How do we assist persons to determine and develop the meaning of
their lives, their identities, and their life styles?

Managing resources: How do we deal with the personal responsibility for

generation, management and conservation of human and material resources?

Inter relatedness: How do we help individuals, institutions and cultures recognise

and deal with their inter-relatedness and inter-dependence?

Change as a constant: How do we deal with the causes and effects of change
within and upon individuals, institutions and societies?

DHANs Experience in Community Radio

After the Tsunami, in December 26, 2004, DHAN Foundation started working in a big way
with the affected fishing and farming communities along the coast with a long term
development focus. Empowering the community in all aspects, particularly in building
capacity of the community for disaster management was felt as an important area of
intervention. Applications of ICT were introduced through the Village Information Centres
connected with internet facility setup in all the villages. To complement this ICT initiative,

DHAN has launched Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli (Kalanjiam Community Radio) with a
vision of creating a Community Media Centre with mixed media model, combining radio
with video and web based technologies. United Nations Development Programme
supported this initiative. The Station has started to function from October 2006.
The Station is equipped with audio production infrastructure. A team of trained
Volunteers from the local community are involved in programme production. The station
is connected with the VICs set up by DHAN in the villages through Local Area Network.
These VICs narrow cast the programmes produced and sent by the Station through the
Public Address Systems fixed over towers. Presently programmes of one hour duration
are presented daily. Also the Station broadcasts selected programmes once in a week for
fifteen minutes through the AIR - Karaikal FM Station to.
With the experience gained from Nagapattinam, DHAN supports of the Peoples
Organisations promoted by it with the farmers dependent on traditional water harvesting
structures called Kanmoi, in Kottampatty block of Madurai district to launch Vayalagam
Samuga Vanoli (Vayalagam Community Radio). Similarly, the Farmers Federation
promoted by it in Punganur Mandal of Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh is getting
prepared to launch a community radio station dedicated for livelihoods development.
Details of the CRS are in table 1
Table 1: CRS in various contexts
CRS

Location

Anchored by

Context

Major
stakeholders

Focus

Kalanjiam
Samuga
Vanoli

Vizhunthamavadi,
Nagapttinam

DHAN
Foundation

Coastal

Fishermen,
women and
farmers

Disaster
preparedness
and livelihoods

Vayalagam
Samuga
Vanoli

Kottampatti,
Madurai

Madurai
District Tank
Farmers
Federation

Rural

Farmers and
women

Disaster
preparedness
and livelihoods

Community
Radio

Punganur,
Chittoor, AP

Punganur
Mandala
Vayalaga
Rythula
Samakya

Rural

Farmers

Livelihoods and
conservation

Generating Content: Experience of Vayalagam Community Radio

Locally produced content is a lifeline for the sustainability of community broadcasting. It
should focus on the development issues concerning the local communities, aimed at
improving and transforming the living standards of communities served by the CRS. The
content that depicts local issues should also promote dialogue among the local
communities to work for change, and at the same time should advocate for the change
in the policies, perspectives and processes of the other development stakeholders around
them, the government, private and non-government agencies.
In DHANs understanding of Community Radio, the content generated by the community
can become a key engine for development; as it is a tool that can build on the local
wisdom, community based methods and processes. Change focused content produced by
CRS should be grounded on the basics of development discussed at the beginning. The
CRSs in Nagapattinam and Kottampatty are following a unique process of generating
local content with the support of the social infrastructure that has already been created
in the form of federation of women SHGs, Farmers and Fishermen (fig 2). It reinforces
the need for an organised platform to promote dialogue and generate needs for content.

Fig 2. Production and Dissemination of Content

The content prioritised by the community varies from context to context. While the
Communities in Nagapattinam required audio content related to cyclones and marine
based livelihoods, the farmers in Kottampatty required content relevant to droughts and
floods, tanks and tank based livelihoods. The need assessment workshops organised by
the staff under the guidance of the Professionals of DHAN help generate an exhaustive
list of programme areas. The Management committee at the federation level help in
prioritizing the areas and the staff and volunteers prepare production plan. However the
formats for presentation are left to the creativity of the volunteers (mostly students and

young men and women) and the staff. In our experience following variety of presentation
formats were followed buy the CRS in Kottampatty as well as Nagapattinam.

Features
Interviews
Reporting events and cases
Stories and experiences
Readings
Local announcements
Discussions and debates
Radio drama
Talks / narratives
Local music and songs
Jingles

Producing Content
Production is done in three methods depending on the availability of equipment, distance
from the production centre and financial resources available for production.
Method 1:
A well equipped audio production theatre established in Kottampatty, a block town where
the people have easy access to travel. Most of the arranged programmes such as talks,
interviews, songs, music and readings are made in the theatre.
Method 2:
Each VIC has a provision of a mini mixer and a microphone connected with a computer
and an amplifier. The VICs which are primarily meant for offering internet based services
are also used as production facility, wherein the people/producers are invited to the
centre for recording. Live announcements are done there itself. Some of the programmes
are recorded and transferred to the main studio in Kottampatty after a first level editing
for further editing.
Method 3:
Field recording is done using voice recorders in the areas where there is a difficulty in
bringing producers to the VIC or theatre at Kottampatty. Mostly event coverages, spot
commentaries and interviews are done in this method.
Disseminating Content
In Kottampatty, programmes are narrowcasted through the public address systems fixed
over Village Information Centres in 20 villages covering about 10,000 populations.
Flexible timings of narrowcasting is decided after consulting the villagers for avoiding
disturbances to their other works (e.g. school and exam times). A typical scheme of
narrowcasting is given in the table 2.

Table 2: Programme schedule in Vayalagam Samuga Vanoli

Time
10 AM
11 AM

5 PM

6 PM

Content / format
Thirukural with explanation by VIC operators
Live announcements
Village events and meetings
Birth day wishes, Wedding wishes
PDS announcement
Panchayat announcements
Announcements for SHG, Farmers groups
Weather information
Pre recorded programme
Speeches and debates,
Agriculture and animal husbandry
Stories,
Health information,
Tips for students, youth etc.
Vayalagam Vanoli Programme made
by/with communities
Best practices by farmers, entrepreneurs
New initiatives
Traditional practices
Folk music, songs and stories
Festivals, celebrations
Women and children
Health and education etc.

Duration
15 Min
15 Min

30 Min

60 Min

Exchanging Content
While the Community Radios offer ample opportunity for making localised contents that
suits the social, cultural and linguistic characteristics of the defined geography, there
exists opportunities for the two or more CRSs to exchange their contents. In the context
of globalizing media, among the communities who live similar lives and have similar
issues can very well connect with each other to share their content, expertise and
experiences. There are initiatives by national and international networks that are
promoting such exchanges. In our case the Kalanjiam Community Radio in Nagapattinam
and the Vayalagam Community Radio in Kottampatty, Madurai, both are sharing the
same context of disaster vulnerability. The former could share many of their audio
content except a few areas that are related to marine ecosystem to the latter.
However while exchanging contents care needs to be taken to ensure that they share
similar contexts, culture, and language, and moreover relevant to the purpose for which
it was made. By sharing content, CRSs can increase the impact of their work and reach
new audiences, collaborate with each other for joint productions, learn new formats, and
bring diversity to the programmes.

Contents on local needs: Kalanjiam Community Radio Experience

The focus of the Kalanjiam and Vayalagam Community Radios is disaster preparedness.
Disaster preparedness depends more on how information and services will be facilitated
before, during and after the disasters. Community radio programming addresses local

information and community needs that revolve around disaster preparedness,

livelihoods, local best practices, women and children, health, education and farming. The
Federation is getting prepared to apply for a license to broadcast under the new licensing
policy guidelines issued by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
The Kalanjiam Community Radio has made so far 2032: 35 minutes of programme of
varying types and areas as detailed in the table 3.
Table 3: Areas of Programming: Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli

Sl
N
o
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

No. of
Programmes

Content
Thirukural
Health
Agriculture
Children
Women & SHG
Disaster Mitigation
Governance
Livelihoods
Education
Culture
Awareness
General
Folks & Songs
Total production

376
433
164
533
97
32
27
49
70
29
33
353
221
2417

Duratio
n
3:21:23
20:01:24
18:11:57
25:45:26
9:51:37
4:36:40
5:54:49
6:28:45
7:44:23
5:22:46
3:44:26
15:18:52
8:45:08
135:07:36
Kural

Health
Fig 3. Typology of Programmes
6% 2%

11%

Agriculture

16%

Children
Women & SHG

3%

Disaster Mitigation

4%

13%

6%

Governance
Livelihoods
Education

5%

Culture

4%
3%

7%

20%

Awareness
General
Folks & Songs

The Chart (Fig 3) shows that women, agriculture and health are the major areas of
programming, which is more of best practices in existing sea and land based livelihoods.
Similarly programming for Children was 20 percent of the total duration of programmes
produced. Traditional health practices, local culture and folk songs were the major areas
of programming to fulfill the demands of the communities generated during need
assessment.

Learnings from our Experience: Content for Change

The impacts of globalization of media on the consumers in the developing and under
developed countries are devastating. The people are subjected to a staggering amount of
information every day. Due to the proliferation of electronic media, the average Indian
spends several years of their lifetime watching TV, listening to music, surfing the
internet, and playing video games. The CR Movement in India should build processes and
mechanisms in generating, producing and disseminating content that can transform the
communities who were traditionally kept away from the ambit of media into media
creators, users and owners.

Passive
Listeners

Active Contributors
Owners

In order to create change, the CRS should assume certain roles and take up certain
responsibilities so as to create change in the individuals and societies. These 3Rs should
be built around the values of self governance and self management.
Roles
Self governance
Media literacy
Accelerating development
Redefining and ensuring entitlements

Rights
Freedom of Expression
Responsibilities
Collective ownership
Self Management
Access and Control over ICT
Self Regulation
Entitlements over social, economic, cultural and political rights
Accountability
Transparency

Fig 4: Roles, Rights and Responsibilities of the CRS & Communities

The transformation can happen only when the communities start thinking critically about
news, entertainment, and advertisements, asking questions such as "on whom they are
targeting?", "what interests does it stands for?", and "what techniques are they applying
to persuade the intended audience?" The content that the CRS produce should be able to
create awareness among the communities to look for what is needed for them, what is
not there and what kind of impacts certain messages, viewpoints and perspectives can
create. The content that the communities make through their CRS should enable them to
place it into a larger context of development. This means facilitating them to understand
the structures and realities that affect their development, freedom of choice, inter
relatedness and quality of life, ultimately leading into collective empowerment.

Challenges
No doubt, the Community Radios have the potential to create conditions that provide
people with access to useful information, and ways for people to express their
sentiments, opinions, views, aspirations, strengths and their ideas for development. It
can support the communities to build consensus on their development priorities.
However there are few challenges to facilitate the communities to move from producers
to owners of the Community Radio.

Ensuring a strong focus on "local" news, music, events, people and issuesespecially
coupled with "global" relevance.

Exploring, identifying and cultivating new talents and building capacity of the local
communities and volunteers to enhance their ability to adapt, getting acquainted with
the tools and technology that are available at free or affordable costs.

Building institutionalised linkages with the mainstream agencies that are involved in
disaster management, to provide legitimate and localised information on disasters.

Meetings costs of content production and capacity building for the staff, volunteers
and communities is a major challenge in the initial phase, while the CRS is still
working towards meeting running costs. A proven model needs to emerge to meet
this challenge.

Access and use of materials that are copy righted. The CRS stands for non
commercial broadcasting may not be able to afford to the royalties to be paid for the
copyrighted materials. Content exchange among the non-commercial broadcasters
needs more focus.

Building Capacity of the communities to make relevant contents

The Kalanjiam Community Radio Station jointly with district disaster preparedness training unit
organised a training programme with 40 Community members from five villages of the Keelaiyur
block. They were trained on disaster and its types and how to respond in a disaster situation, doing
basic search and rescue. They were also taught on steps to be taken in a distress situation. The
participants were shown how tackle fire accident and different rescue methods. It was followed by
training on First Aid and follow up. A practical manual on disaster management was distributed to
the village information centers and community leaders attended the training programme. After the
programme, they have prepared a series of audio programmes.

Community Radio content to facilitate exchange of local expertise

Karunanidhi a small farmer from Vizhundhamavadi village of Nagapattinam district, in Tamil Nadu
has been growing a new variety of Chedi Murungai (Annual Drumstick) and earning a good profit
from it. Growing annual drumstick was some thing new to the villagers nearby. Community Radio
Volunteer Vetri came to know this in one of the need assessment workshops and approached him
for an interview. He prepared a radio programme on it and narrowcasted through the Kalanjiam
Samuga Vanoli with his contact information. After the programme, many people approached
Karunanidhi to know how to cultivate and market it. Karunanidhi in addition to sharing his
experience, he helped them to get about 300 seeds and 150 seedlings to neighboring farmers.
Now, many farmers in nearby villages are growing Chedi Murangai and enjoying the benefits.

Community Radio to provide platform for the youths

Sowmya, 20 years, is a drop out from school after higher secondary education due to poverty in

Community
to preserve
talents
her family. SheRadio
was working
in a textilelocal
showroom
in Nagapattinam as a sales girl. When contacted

The boy stretches his neck to reach the microphone that dangles in front
by her friend Padma who is working in the Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli, she reluctantly agreed to
of him. But that does not break the enthusiasm. He eagerly narrates the
become a community radio volunteer. Her association in the Community Radio transformed her
story of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves. This young storyteller comes from a
outlook not only about herself, but also on the village she lives. She is the one who has made the
rural village near Nagapattinam in Tamil Nadu. He is one of the many
highest number of programmes among other volunteers and she feels proud about it. She says I
talents, staff and volunteers, who help in creating a very unusual radio
am respected in my village now and happy about listening their feedbacks. Now I could feel
programme for an unusual radio station Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli. He was
importance of my work and I am getting excitement every day by doing new work and meeting
brought to the station by Porkodi, a Radio Volunteer. She and her
new people.
colleagues know how to spot interesting topics, to do interviews, to edit and also how to narrate a
programme. Every day they go out on field assignments to collect new audio material. The topics
range from agriculture, health, education, issues around Self Help Groups, events around festivals
up to disaster preparedness

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Your neighbors voice:

Reducing vulnerability to disasters through community radio
19 December 2008
by Elizabeth Stevens
As Oxfam wraps up its work related to the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, it is helping ensure that partners and
communities have the skills and resources they need to continue the important work of reducing the risk of future
disasters. Oxfam has funded a new research center in India that develops pilot programs on risk reduction to
complement ongoing development work aimed at reducing poverty.

Manoj Prabakars radio address on water management is delivered flawlessly, and when he steps out
of the studio, he is congratulated warmlyespecially by his grandmother, who puts her arms around
him.
Manoj is 13, and his audience is the village of Mangalamapatti, India. The studio is an information
centera single room that serves about a hundred purposes for five communities, and the machine
used for sound editing is the only computer in town.
This is community radio, where a village fashions the programs it wants and needs, and fast-talking
DJs and advertisers need not apply.

Diverting floods and planting trees

The Advanced Center for Enabling Disaster Risk Reduction (ACEDRR) of the Dhan Foundation, an
Oxfam partner, has helped launch a pilot community radio project to serve around 100,000 people in
rural settlements of Madurai district, because they see its potential in improving disaster response
and risk reduction at the village level.
When emergencies like floods and fires strike remote communities, its friends and neighbors who are
the first responders. Notifying a village quickly of an emergency in a neighboring community can
make all the difference in how effectively help is mobilized.
And localized weather and flood forecasts can help natural hazards from becoming community
disasters.
If we get information about rain upstream, we will take some precautions says Sethurajan, a
farmer whose community has a reservoir for irrigation purposes. Well open the sluices to divert the
flood; well cut off the big bunds to divert the route so excess water can be drained off.
But in communities that struggle with the everyday disaster of poverty, anything from a poor crop to
the loss of a farm animal to a serious illness can create a household emergency, so villagers are
eager for information about anything and everything that can improve the security and well-being of
their families.
Men seem enthusiastic about radio shows on outbreaks of livestock diseases and on the latest
agricultural techniques. One suggests that local radio could help revive kudi maramaithu, the ancient
practice of careful community maintenance of the village reservoir and water works.
Women, says a radio enthusiast named Vijia, like programs about health, legal matters, and the
importance of tree planting. We get a lot of information about our daily lives, she says. As women,
we are happy about that.

Radio: its practical

The radio is a medium that ensures that almost everyone has access to information, no matter what
their age and reading level.
Im illiterate, but Im learning so much, says Manojs grandmother Podaiamma.
Although televisions here are widespreadgifts from the state to households in even the smallest,

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poorest villages of Tamil Nadu theyre not as practical as radios in that you have to stop what
youre doing to watch TV.
With radio, says Sethurajan, we can keep on working.

Young women take the lead

Each radio station has an operatora person who functions as the primary producer and announcer.
The operator gathers ideas for program topics, carries out research, interviews guests, edits sound
tracks, and ensures that the program reaches its target audience. The job has generally fallen to
young womento their delight.
Through this job Im learning so much and getting exposure to so many things, says Bhuvaneswari.
Im learning, so Im happy.
In traditional villages where young women are kept close to home, the level of independence this job
requires sometimes raises concerns among parents, but when operator Amutha rani completes a
program and joins an admiring crowd in the village square, her mother looks on with unmistakable
pride.
The community respects the operators, says a young woman named Raji, who speaks from
experience. Everyone should be a community operator.

The essence of community radio

The afternoons programming ends with music. Its a song about poverty, and the words and melody
are sad, but the womans voice is beautiful, and listening to her in the village square at the close of
the day is a lovely experience. Only a few of us know whos singing our Oxfam colleague
Mareeswari, who made this recording earlier in the day but word spreads quickly.
This is the difference in community radio, says ACEDRR director Sangeetha Rajadurai. Everyone is
curious to know whose voice theyre hearing.
Source: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatwedo/emergencies/fieldstudies/news-publications/yourneighbor2019s-voice-reducing-vulnerability-to-disasters-through-community-radio

For more information on the ACEDRR research, please visit www.oxfamamerica.org/fieldstudies

***

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