Raghav Radio may be back in Bihar

Radio in remote parts of Bihar, closed for running without license, may rise again, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Nov 7, 2006, 22:49:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Raghav Radio in remote parts of Bihar, closed for running without license, may rise again. The new community radio service policy allowing NGOs and bodies associated with farming activity may give new life to Raghav Radio. The policy recommending slashing the license fee by half would be considered by the Union Cabinet shortly.

For over three years, Raghav Mahto’s station, ‘Radio Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1 channel’, had been beaming popular programmes from Mansoorpur village in Vaishali district. The station aired music and local news and views to hundreds of people in and around the area. After the channel was closed, last year, people have collected money to support Mahto’s invention.

The collected money may be enough to run the community radio as I&B ministry’s has proposed to charge only Rs 25,000 as license fee for a period of 10 years as compared to Rs 50,000 in the earlier regime.

The ministry seeks to widen the scope of community radio to nook and corner of the country and in it, Mansoorpur, may get its local radio channel back. “We will support local community channels which provide information and in interactive in nature,” a ministry official said.

So far, only educational institutions are allowed to run community (campus) radio centres. Jamia Millia Islamia and Osmania University are some of the educational institutions that are running community radio.

The limitations of the present policy can be gauged from the fact that the ministry has issued only 17 licenses for community radio stations in the past two years whereas over 100 licenses for FM radio have been granted.

Once the Cabinet approval comes, scope of community radio is expected to widen. “We want it to grow bigger than FM radio as it is community specific and can help in raising social issues. The NGOs will be the biggest beneficiary of the new policy,” an official said. Any trust or society can also apply for the license but it should not be political or religious in nature. However, all applications are mooted through the Union Home Ministry.

In a bid to financial sustain the community radio channel; the ministry has proposed to allow advertisements to meet the running expenses. But, the revenue generated cannot be for commercial gains, he clarified.

Officials also say that the new policy will also be applicable to 59 applicants to whom I&B ministry has already issued a Letter of Intent and waiting allocation of frequency.

In the meantime, the I&B ministry has, however, ruled out the possibility of allowing news content on FM channel in near future.

Email id : Chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Check India news real-time updates, latest news on Hindustan Times and more across India.