What does it take to start and successfully run a community radio station in India? A 'working module' is being developed by the Delhi University for this purpose.
The varsity plans to propose the module to the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting as a universal model which can be accepted by the Community Radio Association of India in the form of structured guidelines for such stations.
"There are over 170 community radio stations in India, but how many of them are operating successfully and have noteworthy listenership graphs?
"This is because not enough research has been done in this area and there are no models which can be followed by these radios to serve their purpose of establishment," Dr Saleem Mir, who is supervising the project, told PTI.
Mir, who is a professor at the DU's Cluster Innovation Centre (CIC), is working on the project with R K Singh, former Engineer-in-Chief of Doordarshan, and six DU students.
The varsity is likely to make its recommendations to the ministry by March next year.
"Since the community radio stations are run by different organisations -- mostly educational institutes, NGOs, small communities and a few gram panchayats -- their target audience and the demographics is also different.
"So, it's a difficult task to develop a universal formula or model which can be applied to all stations across the country," Mir said.
The team, which started working on the project last month, is currently visiting various community radio stations and studying the kind of practices followed by them for involving listeners, generating funds and developing content.
