Centre broad-based Community Radio Station licencing policy, introduced grant, says Anurag Thakur

Considering that Community Radio Stations CRS represented the communitys voice and had a wider impact on people, the central government broad-based the policy in granting licences to facilitate the setting up of more CRS across the country, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur said on Tuesday.

Considering that Community Radio Stations (CRS) represented the community's voice and had a wider impact on people, the central government broad-based the policy in granting licences to facilitate the setting up of more CRS across the country, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Anurag Thakur said on Tuesday. Also, the government introduced the central sector scheme of extending a grant for Rs 7.5 lakh to an organisation for setting up infrastructure for the CRS, he said. ''We have come a long way from 140 CRS before 2014 to 481 now. Of them, 117 are functioning in the southern region,'' the Minister said in his virtual keynote address at the two-day Regional Community Radio Sammelan (South) being held here under the aegis of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting to celebrate 20 years of Community Radio in India. All the 117 Community Radio Stations of southern States /UTs are participating in the regional Sammelan which was inaugurated on "World Radio Day." The Sammelan was a celebration of the important work being done by this sector in giving voice to the voiceless apart from the content disseminated in local dialect and regional language, Thakur said. ''I personally feel and the government feels that vernacular is very important and that is why the new education policy encourages learning through the local languages,'' he said. Considering that the community radio represented the voice of the community and had a wider impact, the government decided to broad-base the policy by bringing non-profit organisations like civil society and voluntary organisations etc., under its ambit to allow greater participation by the civil society on issues relating to development and social change, Thakur added. On major policy changes, he said now one organisation could have more than one CRS in a district and the initial period of licence has been increased from five to ten years while the permissible advertisement duration has been increased to 10 minutes from 7 minutes. The advertisement tariff has also been revised to Rs 74 per 10 seconds from Rs 52 per ten seconds, he said. The CRS played an important role in disseminating information about government initiatives that benefit the people at grassroots level, Thakur emphasised and added that these efforts are crucial for realising Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for 'Vikshit Bharat'.

Tracing the journey of the community radio, he said it was started in 2002 under the leadership of former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee and the government then approved the policy for the grant of licences for setting up CRS to well-established educational institutes such as the IITs and IIMs.

The first CRS was inaugurated by former Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani in 2004, he noted. The Sangam Radio of Andhra Pradesh was the first CRS not-for-profit organisation in 2005.

In his special address, Union Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting L Murugan said the first Community Radio Station was launched at Anna University two decades ago. CRS played a crucial role in communicating the government's programmes and achievements to the common man and as per the vision of Modi to regard border villages in the country as ''first villages'' the Centre provided infrastructure for Rs 2,500 crore in the frontier villages to strengthen the community system.

With the present 481 CRS set to increase by another 200, youngsters and entrepreneurs could involve themselves in setting up CRS, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)