Community radio is stepping in to help battle loneliness, build awareness and demolish misconceptions during the ongoing pandemic.
Shivendra Kumar Kashyap, dean, College of Agriculture at the GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar in Uttarakhand, says, "We have a close-knit relationship with our communities because we go into the villages to understand and solve problems. We then bring back those voices within the four walls of our studio."
Kashyap's point of reference is 'Pantnagar Janvani', the university's community radio station set up in 2011 under his guidance when he was professor in the department of communication.
'Pantnagar Janvani' reaches in 150 villages in the bordering districts of Uttar Pradesh, right up to Udham Singh Nagar in Uttarakhand.
During the pandemic, the 12-hour normal programming schedule has been maintained, with increased phone-in facilities. "We have created awareness, given information on government directives, linked with the district administration and had officials speak to our listeners," says Kashyap.
A close community connect means the radio's voice is considered far more reliable when it speaks of establishing quarantine centres in villages, informing health workers about migrants, and maintaining social distancing norms while working in fields—issues that have become flash points at many places in the country.
The expertise that comes from the university, which manages the station, also translated into the government accepting its recommendation that combine harvesters from Punjab be permitted to come into the state to harvest wheat. "That was a concern we shared with our farmers as the university itself had 10,000 acres of land to be harvested,” says Kashyap.
As per the ministry of information and broadcasting, there are 289 community radio stations operational in the country as on March 31, 2020. Most of these are run by educational institutions, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (agricultural science centres) and NGOs.
'Waqt ki Awaz' is a station operated by an NGO called Shramik Bharti in Kanpur Dehat (rural) since September 2013. Listeners from 400 villages across five blocks tune in to it.
Station coordinator Radha Shukla says the station's team of six has continued the normal 10 hours of programming during the lockdown. "Even before it was officially announced, since March 21, we had been educating our listeners on various aspects of the virus, especially how to protect oneself against it,” she says.
While this messaging was built into the radio's usual programme mix of education, sanitation, domestic violence and entertainment in the local dialect, specific programmes such as a 26- episode series on the World Health Organisation's facts, figures and directives were also broadcast.
Though the station has not experienced any frequency issues or hardware challenges during this period (barring the non-availability of rechargeable cells) Shukla says it does get lonely for the field coordinator who manages operation from the station office. "Three team members come in turns to record their bits. I work from home as the office is 35km away, but our coordinator, who stays in the office 24 hours, is battling some anxiety. Our community reporter is also not able to capture as many people's voices as we used to due to distancing and travel restrictions".
There is also increase in the number of call-ins, with many, including youngsters who never used to call to the station before the pandemic, wanting to clarify doubts. And Shukla's personal number is available at all hours to listeners. "We are besieged by worried callers. Some want to know when they will be able to conduct marriages that have already been fixed. Some want tips on how to explain to children why they cannot go out to play as usual. Some are worried about what to do with their rotting flower crops as they cannot reach the markets. Others do not know how to deal with migrants who have returned home,” says Shukla.
The radio station regularly brings in experts to allay fears of its listeners. "We once had a call from listeners who were worried that no doctor was coming to them to check on some suspected cases. We called up the doctors, explained to the villagers that it would take them long to get to them and guided them on how they could get their patients to the nearest hospital while taking all precautions,” she says. The station's vast reach also means that it connects with Accredited Social and Health Activists (ASHAs) to help them keep an eye on the people they reach.
The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) has, since 2010, been running the 'Kumaon Vani'—a radio station that reaches to more than people in 500 villages, right upto the higher altitudes of Mukteshwar in Uttarakhand where the station is based.
Sumit Bansal, the coordinator for the station, says of the nine-hour broadcast, 90 minutes have been set aside for COVID-19 issues. "The concern of our listeners at the moment is not the long term impacts. Their queries and our programming are speaking about mental health, positive thinking, and maintaining harmony at home. We are also focusing on children, encouraging them to undertake home-based activities,” he says.
'Kumaon Vani' has started re-broadcasting a few earlier programmes such as Ajab Khel, Gajab Ganit—an 182-episode fun maths learning show it had created for the department of science and technology—and the 90-episode language tutorial, We Learn English, which is drawing in children and adults alike.
The terrain that the radio station's listeners inhabit comes with its own challenges. "Women have to fetch water from far away sources. A difficult task at most times, this is now a larger challenge because of the need for repeated hand washing. So we are even more focused on water harvesting, which we have promoted even otherwise. The men are at home and turning their frustrations towards the women. That is an aspect we weave into our messaging through stories,” says Bansal.
The comfort of recognisable voices on community radio stations, speaking in known dialects of identifiable problems, is often, for lakhs of listeners across the country, the only reassuring presence in these unknown, unimaginable times.