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Shri S. Jaipal Reddy, Minister of Information & Broadcasting and Culture today said that there is scope for 4000 Community Radio Stations in the country. Addressing the Parliamentary Consultative Committee attached to the Ministries of Information & Broadcasting and Culture, Shri Reddy said that Community Radio(CR) has socio-economic and cultural relevance, as it caters to the information and entertainment needs of small communities and the programmes have local flavour. He informed the members that Information & Broadcasting being the nodal Ministry is trying to rationalize and simplify the procedure to facilitate intending organizations/communities, to set up CR stations.
Shri Reddy said that the Ministry is considering to put a time limit for clearance of proposals by the other Ministries involved in the process. The members were informed that the only Community Radio Station set up by the Anna University in Chennai in February 2004 was a success and had been emanating four hours daily programme. As on date a total of 60 applications had been received, of which 38 eligible applications had been sent to the other concerned Ministries for clearance. The members were further informed that letters of intent had been signed in 26 cases and licence agreements signed in 10 cases.
The members were in consensus about the usefulness of the scheme and, therefore, its adoption at a large scale. They, however, expressed concerns about the funding ability of the community/organizations in the far-flung and remote rural areas since the Communities Radio Stations are run on a no-profit basis. Also the restriction of advertisement time @ 4 min/hour leave little chance of generating enough funds to run the station. Some members felt that even the original start –up cost of Rs. 4-10 lakh may not be possible for rural communities and the Government should come out with supporting ways and means to overcome this problem. It was also suggested by members that adequate safeguards may be created to check any misuse of CR Stations. Coming out with a pragmatic solution to the funding problems, one of the members suggested that each MP may fund atleast two Community Radio Stations in his/her constituency from the MPLAD fund.
On the other agenda item, the strengthening of the libraries in the countries, the members felt that there was decreasing interest in libraries by the younger generation and the habit of using libraries need to be inculcated in them. The members who attended the meeting included, S/Shri Dinsha Patel, Dharmendra, Dr. Satyanarayan Jatiya, Hannan Mollah, S. Sudhakar Reddy, Smt. Usha Verma, Bhartruhari Mahtab, P.K. Maheshwari, Vijay J. Darda, E.M. Sudarsana Natchiappan, Ajay Maroo, Shatrughan Sinha, S.C. Chandran and Sanjay Raut.
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