 "A voice for everyone")
On April 12 2016, Baiga adivasi women of Kabirdham district in Chhattisgarh reported that after they complained that they had no handpump and were drinking dirty water from a nullah, a handpump was installed.
A March 22 news item from Dindori district in Madhya Pradesh stated that people below the poverty line in the village had not received subsidised foodgrain for a long time. Soon after this news broke out, all 550 BPL card-holders in the area received the ration that was their due.
Such stories are not isolated. Across the Naxal-affected swathes of central India, a unique phone/radio service has given voice to India's marginalised, illiterate and impoverished fringes. Called CGNetSwara, the mobile phone-based reporting platform enables villagers to become citizen journalists, creating news that is about themselves, and for themselves. Co-founded by award-winning digital activist Shubhranshu Choudhary and computer scientist Bill Thies, CGNetSwara has been working since 2004 to provide a platform to communities that have neither access nor linguistic representation in what Choudhary terms as India's "media aristocracy".
Once a BBC journalist, Choudhary was a part of this aristocracy. On one of his visits home, he realised that the adivasi weren't gravitating towards Naxalism out of any great appreciation of Mao's teachings. They were drawn to Naxalism because they were angry at being left unaffected (and isolated) by the country's march towards development. Not only were they unable to air their many woes, there was no one to hear them. That is how CGNetSwara was born.
CGNet works on a simple formula. Fieldworkers encourage villagers to use their mobile phones to record reports on local issues and information that they feel their community would like to receive. Each report is accompanied by phone numbers of local officials so that other listeners can pressure them find solutions to their problems. These "barefoot journalists" use the CGNet app that allows them to record even in the absence of cellphone connectivity. The app automatically uploads the report whenever the phone catches signal. At CGNet's headquarters, each report is verified, translated and edited by its staff before it goes live.
Their primary focus now is to figure out a cheaper solution. Community radio could have been a good option but it is illegal to disseminate news through any unofficial channels in India. VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is another cost-effective solution which is against the Indian law. Which is why the folks at CGNet are so excited about their latest project - Bultu radio. "We noticed that villagers in remote areas hardly use mobile phones to make calls. Instead they use Bluetooth (locally called "Bultu") to transfer songs onto their phones and use them as radios," says Choudhary.
CGNetSwara has inspired similar mobile phone-based news networks in other developmentally challenged regions like Somalia and Borneo. Closer home, Choudhary too has ambitious plans. "We aim to set up at least a hundred bottom-up media platforms in the villages of Chattisgarh in the next few years," says he.
For more, visit www.cgnetswara.org
