URL: http://www.undp.org.in/factsheets/Decent%20n%20Parti%20Plang/Project%20Fact%20sheet-ICT.doc

Contact Person(s): Mithulina Chatterjee, National Programme Officer, UNDP  mithulina.chatterjee@undp.org

Project Period: September 1999 - June 2004

Partner(s): Ministry of Rural Development, NGO

Achievements

This programme is a pioneering experiment in social change communication that is interactive and participative. The radio programme is explicitly oriented towards the needs and concerns of the marginalized communities, be they women, cultural minorities, lower castes or the poor. The central focus of the radio serials was the participation of women in political processes. Some of the more specific gender related issues that had been raised in the serials were women's leadership and governance, girl's right to education, female foeticide, harassment of brides for dowry, maternal mortality and disregard for natural environment, cyclical drought and lack of water resources.

Through this radio effort, this community engages with the wider community of Kutch represented by the listeners, the audience, who also participate in the programme by writing to it, singing, playing, arguing, speaking in it through its various programme modules. The radio experiments in Kutch over the years have seen the creative collisions of various cultural forms and types - the Kutchi kathakars (traditional storytellers) and the charans (traditional community of bards who specialize in a virtuoso form of word-play in literature and performance). The radio programme has become a platform for debate amongst local communities about their culture and socio-political reality.
 
The project provided support for developing the innovative programme content which combines interactive dialogue between the community and the radio characters. A feedback exercise ensured that the listeners decide what issues are taken up, so influencing the script of the dramatized serial.  Over the years a sense of ownership has grown amongst the media team of the implementing NGO and women leaders of the village collectives toward this radio experiment.

The overwhelming response made them rebroadcast 'Kunjal Paanje Kutchji'. The rebroadcast resumed but had to be discontinued due to the earthquake that struck this part of India.  The NGO immediately started a bi-weekly broadcast of a new 15-min radio programme called 'Tu Jiyaro Ai' (To be alive) in March 2001 in the aftermath of the quake. The programme was in a magazine format and featured a range of interviews. Songs and profiles were made to capture and grapple with the enormous complexity and range of issues the earthquake affected to air and share their concerns about rehabilitation.

The Government of India is now expected to come up with a Community Radio policy which will further liberalize the broadcasting rights. The UNDP supported initiative is one of the oft-quoted examples that is helping the GOI to evolve their new policy.