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Farewell sweet prince
SEVANTI NINAN
Dilip Kumar Jha ... the ever smiling captain.
NOW that the Government is finally ready to open up the community radio sector to licensees, nobody who has been producing community radio programmes so far in the country will be eligible to apply. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has formulated a proposal to usher in this tier of very local broadcasting through educational institutions. It is now awaiting cabinet clearance. Recognised and established universities, colleges and schools may apply if they wish for an FM transmitter of 50 watts power or less. The ministry will contact the Wireless Advisor to determine availability of frequency, and issue a letter of intent thereafter to the applicant. However after that, various ministries including Defence, Legal Affairs, and Home Affairs have to give their approval. The licenses will be for 10 years.
Licensees have to set up their stations within one year. Members of the community have to be involved in the broadcast, commercial use is not permitted, and the stations cannot broadcast news, current affairs, sponsored programmes or carry any advertising. The proposal stipulates that programmes will be local, preferably in the local language, and should focus on rural community development as well as education and environment.
The demand for community radio has come primarily from NGOs, though applications from one or two universities have also been pending. Today a number of voluntary organisations in Daltonganj in Bihar, Kutch in Gujarat, and Kolar in Karnataka do community radio programmes using time bands on All India Radio. UNESCO built a transmitter in Medak district in Andhra Pradesh some years ago, for a community radio programme run by the Deccan Development Society. But it is a 100 watt transmitter and will be disqualified from getting a licence under this new scheme on two grounds — its wattage, and the fact that it is not an educational institution. For that matter, none of the NGOs above, already doing community radio programming, will be eligible for a licence. But an Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad or Kolkata will in theory be eligible.
Interestingly, the ministry does not intend to ban religious programming. It only says due care should be taken in this regard to avoid exploitation of religious susceptibility. Social and cultural programming will be allowed, and it appears from the proposal that this category can be stretched to include religious broadcasts. What's more, the Ministry of Human Resources Development is now trying to get into the act to ensure that it is involved in the selection of educational institutions which are given licences. Once cabinet approval is given, the stipulated terms and conditions will be drawn up, and then one will know just how much freedom the Government intends to permit.
At present the only known community radio experiment with its own transmitter is a newly begun one in Oravakal mandal in Kurnool district in Andhra Pradesh, as part of the communications programme of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project. The women in the project area are learning to use it to broadcast once a week on issues that they think are important. This is a 40 milliwatt transmitter built by private entrepreneurs at a cost of Rs. 2 lakhs, with a 400 to 500 metre range. Since it is extremely low power, its signals do not penetrate walls and are also blocked by trees and disrupted by rain. It has as much power as a remote control car locking device, and is running without a licence on the assumption that at this range of frequency, you do not require a licence.
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Death in Kashmir is a routine and faceless affair. Earlier this month, a young army captain died in the Mendhar sector when his unit intercepted a group of militants. His major says he killed six and was then hit by a stray bullet which caught him just under his bullet proof vest. He was the only casualty on the army side. One more statistic? So it seemed. Until the news filtered back to Delhi and the production house that had produced the reality series "Commando" for the BBC realised that this was Captain Dilip Kumar Jha, the 24-year-old, always-smiling officer that they had filmed as he underwent the commando training course in Belgaum. The series was telecast from January this year. As they rewound the tapes, there he was over 13 episodes, one of the four trainees they had followed through a grim course that tested the men to their limits.
There he was, talking about his buddy, doing stand up imitations of both his course mates and the "Commando" crew, going off with a bunch of roses to see a girl on his day off, dropping out of the final 30 km run to fall back and motivate course mates who he knew would not pass the course if they did not complete the run. He himself already had the requisite marks.
Not knowing how to pay tribute, Miditech sent off a camera team to his village in Darbhanga to shoot the funeral. And came back with footage of how one more death in Kashmir becomes a sombre vignette of martyrdom in a dusty village setting in distant Bihar. Crowds, slogans of Dilip Kumar Jha amar rahe, a grim guard of honour in full regalia firing guns in salute, and a retired railwayman father reading out the last "Dear Daddy" letter he received from his son last month. Together with the full set of "Commando" tapes, the footage gives his family something to hold on to.
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Okay folks, time to call it a day. This column has gone on for 11½ years, having begun in 1991 to review programmes when there was only Doordarshan, and bashing it was a national pastime. Today there are many more players, doing far more outrageous things, and even if one were to go cross-eyed watching TV all day and night, it would be beyond one person, and a once-a-week 1,000 word column to do any justice to media watching.
Particularly when there are so many lively channels in the Southern languages which did not exist back in 1991 and which the said watcher cannot follow a syllable of.
So here's winding up "Media Pulse", and wishing all TV junkies undisturbed viewing.
E-mail the writer at sevantininan@vsnl.com
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