The Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) is going to launch ‘Community Radio Empowerment and Resource Centre’ on Wednesday at its campus in New Delhi with the objective to “impart training on establishing, operationalising and managing community radio stations.”
The centre, to be inaugurated by IIMC Chairman and Secretary of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Ajay Mittal, will be a dynamic hub for diverse professional, practical and research activities on community radio.
The Director General, IIMC KG Suresh said that the Community Radio Empowerment and Resource Centre will serve as the nodal point for assisting the existing and aspiring Community Radio Stations by providing guidance, research, consultancy and capacity building services in terms of content, technology and revenue generation. “It would also endeavor to create awareness about Community Radio in the remote and rural areas and among stakeholders including educational institutions, NGOs, Media Educators etc.”
IIMC runs its own Community Radio Station - 96.9 FM from IIMC’s Delhi Campus, and proposes to start similar stations at all its other campuses across the country. Some of the core strategies of the Centre will be firstly to develop the “Apna Radio station” at IIMC as a world class model community radio station and secondly to partner with award winning community radio stations.
“The ultimate objective of the centre is to partner with developmental and infrastructure Ministries for transfer of knowledge regarding certain programmes and schemes through these community radio stations with the help of participatory communication methodologies. In due course, the Resource Centre would also generate common content on various developmental initiatives of the Government for dissemination at grass root level through community radio stations,” a statement from the IIMC said.
Acknowledging the widespread benefits of community radio stations, the original policy intent was to set up 4,000 community radio stations across India. “Currently, only 196 community radio stations exist in the country. After exhaustive consultations with its stakeholders, a strong need for an incubation centre emerged to scale up these community radio stations,” it further stated.
The IIMC is also home to a Community Radio Station, Apna Radio (transmitting on 96.9 MHz frequency mode) that aims to give a voice to voiceless person or community. Apna Radio has been in operation since September, 2005 and has been broadcasting for seven hours a day, primarily in Hindi and few hours in English to its target audience that includes people in South Delhi.