'Local content essential ingredient for community radio'

The strength of community radio lies in its ability to address local issues and embrace local culture, said an official of the Information and Broadcasting ministry here Tuesday.

"Community radios have greater potential to grow further in India. We (ministry of information and broadcasting) are trying to take it to state level, so that everyone can access community radios," Supriya Sahu, joint secretary (broadcasting), ministry of information and broadcasting, said at a conference here.

"The strength of community radio lies in its reach within a community and addressing its issues in local language and sharing its culture. We need to work with community radios to see greater localisation of content and produce relatable information," she added.

Sahu was speaking at a conference on the Radiophone Project, an initiative where visual content of a popular children's programme has been converted into audio and with the help of 10 community radios, they have been able to reach out to 1.4 million children.

"We aim to have one community radio in every district that are around 600 in numbers and then take it to each block that are around 6,000 in number," said Sahu.

"We have already given permits to community radios in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and some districts in the north east," she added.

In the presentation "Hello Tomorrow - Technology and Storytelling, Together Changing Rural Children's Lives", the team behind this project highlighted how they created a platform that was informative and engaging and at the same time local.

"The most challenging aspect was to convert visual medium into voice and sound-based system, and then include local content to produce relatable content," Sashwati Banerjee, managing director, Sesame Workshop India, said.

Each episode gives messages related to language and literacy, maths and reasoning, health and nutrition, environmental awareness, social and emotional health in an innovative manner.

Ira Joshi, vice president, education and research, Sesame Workshop India, echoed similar sentiments: "We needed a narrative that could engage children."

"In this case, lack of visual cues meant our narrator had to play a pivotal role," she added.

This project was launched in 2011.