Community Radio in South Asia - Kathmandu Workshop

["Irfan Khan" <khania@super.net.pk>]

------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:           	"Subramaniam Vincent" <subbuvincent@yahoo.com>
To:             	"Cr-India" <cr-india@mail.sarai.net>
Date sent:      	Sat, 2 Mar 2002 22:24:01 +0530




Community Radio in South Asia
Media South Asia Project,
Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University)
Feb 21-23, 2002, Kathmandu, Nepal

There were over 40 participants in a 3 day workshop on "Community
Radio in South Asia". The conference was attended by delegates from
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and whole host of delegates
from Nepal. The conference was also attended  by Regional
Communications Adviser of Unesco, Mr. Wijeyananda Jayaveera, the
Regional Director of Panos S.E.Asia, Ms.Saneeya Hussain, and the
Secretaries of I&B/Communications Ministries of Sri Lanka, Nepal, and
Bangladesh.

Participants from India included Bandana Mukhopadhyay, Vinod
Pavarala, Ashish Sen, Subbu Vincent, Dr Sreedhar (IGNOU-Gyan Vani),
and 'General' Narsamma (DDS).

It was a rare opportunity for practitioners, and supporters of
Community Radio to hear station managers talk about ground level
experiences of running community stations and developing community
linkages.

One of the salient features of this workshop was the different models
proposed for ownership and management of CR based on ground level
initiatives particularly in Nepal. Community Radio in Nepal exists in
3 different structures - the cooperative model, the village develop
committee (local govt) model and the NGO model. The session on
experiments in Radio Kothamale of combining Radio with the Internet
was very educative. The efforts of the station manager of the KCR –
Sunil Wijeyasinghe -  of creatively involving communities to
participate in the activities of the radio station was particularly
inspiring. From his presentation, it was obvious to all of us that in
order to sustain a CR station and make it relevant, it must motivate
well as provide tangible benefits to individuals in the community.
There are no community owned radio stations in Sri Lanka. All the
community participatory radio stations currently in operation are
owned by the SLBC. Sri Lanka does have private commercial radio in
operation.

For the Indian delegation, an interesting aspect of CR in Nepal was
that there is currently no distinction between community and
commercial radio so far as charging of license fees.

The Nepal delegation elaborated about their 5 year long and sustained
struggle to obtain a license that culminated in Radio Sagarmatha
becoming the first independent non-profit radio station. The 5 year
long struggle involved the formation of a coalition of alliances
across media organizations, donors, and NGOs, with strong support
from the print media.

One of the important outcomes of the workshop was the articulation
among the participants that in the South Asian context, advocacy and
campaigning for CR could take place within a developmental paradigm
as opposed to a strictly human-rights paradigm.

The conference has taken place at a very crucial time, because both
Pakistan and Indian govt are actively considering announcing a policy
on CR.

This note was put together by Bandana Mukhopadhyay, Vinod Pavarala,
Ashish Sen, and Subbu
Vincent.



CR-india mailing list
CR-india@mail.sarai.net
http://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/cr-india


------- End of forwarded message ---------