Jaimans’ IndiaBlog

I find it hard to breathe when I think of the scale of the catastrophe in Bihar. More than 25 lakh people affected by the raging waters of the Kosi. As I browse through news reports out of Bihar, it is depressing and infuriating to see the depths of human behaviour in the looting, raping and pillaging of fleeing villagers. The very boatmen who are supposed to rescue people, are turning tormentors, in the worst way possible.

Filmmaker Prakash Jha, an outspoken champion of the rights of the dispossessed, has launched a mission to reach assistance to the people of his home state, Bihar. Here is a video interview with him.

We’ve been seriously considering Teaching of English as a significant element in the CR station’s content offering. Centre for Learning Resources’ Dr Kurrien has mentioned that he would be happy to share the content that they have developed for the teaching of English over radio.

I just read a wonderful story about how it is being done in Bihar, through the radio (AIR), for primary school children throughout the state. Read the full story here.

We’ve finally done it. Today I spent the entire morning weaving my way through the corridors of Sanchar Bhavan, and sitting with a very helpful person who screen by screen helped me fill out the Network License Application form. This is the last remaining form before our application file is considered complete. Now, all we have to do is to print the form out, and drop send it off to WPC.

I have to say that everyone at WPC was extremely helpful. From the people at the reception who had to figure out who would authorize my admit pass to the people in the technical department of WPC who finally sat with me and patiently helped me figure it all out (given that even he was stumped a couple of times), I couldn’t have asked for gentler souls. The person at the reception even offered me tea, and the assurance that he would not let me leave till my work was done. Must be my “lost puppy” look that did it.

I have taken some very scattered notes on how the form was filled. So, if someone wants some assistance with their form, they are welcome to come over with a copy of their SACFA form and ID as well as their WPC site user-id and password. In return, I would like to take some screen grabs of the form-filling process so that these can be uploaded for everyone else to access.

An interesting story out of Philippines. According to the Inter Press News Service Agency (IPS), “amidst the raging conflict between government forces and Muslim rebels on the island of Mindanao, the religiously mixed population in the North Cotabato region looks to a community radio station as a beacon of peace.”

Read the full story here.

A question of questions: what do we include in the survey that we have to conduct in our target villages of Garhi Harsaru and Dhankot? In a bid to get as many inputs as possible (and at the risk of too many cooks…), I’m putting up what we’ve worked out so far. Please feel free to suggest additions, deletions, changes, and especially re-wording. Continue Reading »

Just a passing thought as I chew the back of my pencil (or the keyboard). In my online search for Haryanvi folk music (yes, I have unending faith in the power of Google to turn up anything and everything), I came across a video clip from Shubham Haryana TV. First off, I wasn’t even aware that there was such a channel. A quick browse showed me that I certainly did not get it among the plethora of regional channels that Tata Sky dished out. The clip was pedestrian - just a recording of a clutch of women, dressed in a traditional Haryanvi dress, singing folk songs. But now I’m wondering where I can get access to recordings of Haryanvi folk music.

Meanwhile, the survey questionnaire is being finalized. We should be starting our sample survey sometime around September 10, 2008. Two schools, 500 students, equal numbers of girls and boys, and hopefully lots of interesting data to bite into. We’ve taken the sample questionnaire available at www.mib.nic.in and added our own bits, and this amalgam is what we will work with.

Here’s a video link sent by Frederick Noronha through the CR-India mailing list. Sajan is the founder of the Community Radio Forum. Currently with Doordarshan, Sajan has 15 years of experience with radio. He has also been moderator and resource person for Solution Exchange, a UN ICT for Development initiative.

The video of Sajan outlining where community radio in India stands today, can be seen here.

An NDTV story reports on MUST Radio, Mumbai University’s Community Radio. Two girls, born in slums, who have never been to school, have taken to the air waves as RJs talking on issues of health, education and hygeine. Read the full story here.

The Telegraph has just run a story on the Birsa Agricultural College’s radio station that was launched in March 2008. Seems that the college is so enthusiastic about the response, they now want to set up 21 community radio stations across the 21 Krishi Vigyan Kendras in the state of Jharkhand.

The report quotes BAU director R.P. Singh Ratan who said, “The objective is to ensure that farmers in all these districts are constantly updated on agricultural procedures, the latest farming technologicies and even made aware of climate changes and pest attacks.” You can read the full story here.

Great news just filtered in. According to a report at www.indiantelevision.com Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indira Gandhi National Open University (Ignou) to broadcast DW-Radio over campus radio throughout India. DW will also assist IGNOU in training operators for community radio.

As part of the partnership, the Government of India-owned Gyan Vani FM will broadcast DW-Radio programming in Hindi, Urdu, Bengali and English over campus radio at 29 associated universities. In addition, Tomorrow Today, the science magazine from DW-TV, will be integrated into the schedule from Gyan Darshan (also state-owned), the educational channel that operates nationwide via satellite and cable. Read the whole story here.

We’re in a whirl of thinking, doing, worrying, talking, emailing. So far, it looks like that beyond our basic content components of Health (Talk to the Doc), Education (short “explainers” that elaborate on various concepts), language (English language learning), and Career Counselling (Focus on one career per program), we are also looking at modules in Legal Literacy (interesting and very relevant to our target audience), women and child rights (again we’re looking at Haryana with the worst child sex ratio in the country), and a through the day stream of entertainment.

All this has to happen through partnerships and content sharing. Continue Reading »

Is there such a thing as book or magazine publishing 2.0? Perhaps there is a need for it. A lot of smart people are trying – some smart ideas and some not so smart. Which is which? I guess only time will tell.

To begin with, things that have displayed some degree of success on the web are being applied to the traditional format: aggregation, verticals, user-generated content, social networks, popularity rankings…

Some are attempting to transcend the category itself by going digital-only. Books, newspapers, magazines that don’t have a print version and are designed for the computer careen or PDA/iPhone screen. Or perhaps e-book readers like the Kindle from Amazon…

Continue Reading »

A great example of community news broadcasts comes to us from a little village in Manipur, where some villagers have got together to do a daily morning broadcast of news culled from local newspapers. No radio, no license. They simply use a microphone, four loudspeakers and very crude PA system. Such is the broadcast’s popularity, that the villagers have taken to structuring their lives around the broadcast. Read more of this PANOS Relay feature here.

As products proliferate marketers will research and find the smallest niche available. First videos, then Tv programming and now 24 hour channel dedicated to babies under 3. In-womb will be next! Or is it already out there? Fortunately there are pockets of sanity — see this Associated Press Story

France’s broadcast authority has banned French channels from airing TV shows aimed at children under 3 years old, to shield them from developmental risks it says television viewing poses at that age.

The High Audiovisual Council, in a ruling published Wednesday, said it wanted to “protect children under 3 from the effects of television.”

France’s minister for culture and communication, Christine Albanel, issued a “cry of alarm” to parents in June about channels dedicated 24 hours a day to baby-targeted programming. In a newspaper interview, she called them “a danger” and urged parents not to use them to help their children get to sleep.

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. Continue Reading »

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. Continue Reading »

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 »

If you were running a bar, would you refuse to serve an underage customer? Would you make systems to prevent the serving of alcohol to children? How about if you sold cigarettes in your store? What about adult content – either in your store or on your website?

What if you were a social networking site? Would you do something to prevent the eight-year-olds from registering?

I know all of these are not exact parallels, but the fundamental idea is the same. For instance, it bugs me no end that promos for late-night adult movies are shown during prime time TV, sometimes even during programming that is obviously aimed at children.
At least to me, all of these are milder or harsher versions of the same ethical question! There is a difference between putting up some mandatory and hard-to-find signs, and actually preventing the underage customers from being served. Continue Reading »

I have been using Google Trends for some time now – for work and sometimes just for fun! Trust me it can be fun and educational. You can tell a lot about what is going on in people’s minds and you can even break it down by geographies.

Consider the word ‘terrorism’ for instance. Trends shows that steadily people’s preoccupation with it seems to have declined over the years. Search volume is much higher in India than in the USA. The volume has steadily declined over the last couple of years in the US but not in India. Washington DC and New Delhi are the leading cities in terms of search traffic. But in the last 30 days Delhi and Mumbai generated more search traffic than Washington. Makes sense! Continue Reading »

Aimed at stylish women, Daily Candy is being bought by Comcast Corp for an estimated $125 million. According to Philly.com Daily Candy “delivers more than 2.5 million e-mail subscriptions through local editions in 12 key U.S. cities, including Philadelphia and New York”.

Is $50 per “loyal subscriber” a good price?

“We’re trying to build a large presence online as more and more of our customers look to the Web for entertainment and content. Daily Candy fits right into that strategy,” said Sam Schwartz, executive vice president of Comcast Interactive Media. The company said the Daily Candy purchase fit well with its cable television properties, including the Style and E! Entertainment channels.