Community radio for rural development a social capital perspective of the role of NGO initiatives in Tamilnadu

Abstract

Though there are plenty of CRS on the pipeline and a hundred odd stations are already operational, the number is extremely small for a big population. The government has in fact recognized this potential, and has planned to set up over 4000 community radios in various areas across the country over the next few years. However, there is still a long way to go in ensuring the sustainability of these stations. Despite a lot of success stories across the country, setting up and running an effective community radio faces lots of challenges. First of all the guidelines regarding the ownership and content of a community radio in India are still very strict. It is difficult to create enthusiastic community participation and requires time and resources to train community members in social, business, creative and IT skills. It is a fact that many of the CRS are over relied on paid staff which is not recommended. At the same time promoting volunteerism is not an easy task. newlineMost community radios today run on a Donor system. This however, slowly needs to be phased out, as a community radio essentially needs to be run by the people and should survive on volunteerism, and hence ownership should be passed over to local-ites. Apart from this, the Community radio sector also faces a series of problems in issues like material resources and human resources for installing, running and maintenance of the station, financial resources, technology resources and content resources.