Ministry of Information and Broadcasting holds its third meeting for screening applications from NGOs for setting up of Community Radio Stations

Ms. Jayalakshmi Chittoor, Programme Coordinator of CSDMS, has joined as an invited Member of the seven members Screening Committee for consideration of applications from NGOs/ CSOs and private educational institutions, etc. for the grant of permission for establishment of community radio stations by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. The Committee was constituted by a Ministry’s Order dated 22 August 2007.

The Joint Secretary (Broadcasting) of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, chairs the Screening Committee. Other members of the Committee include Dr. Lalit Kumar, Deputy Advisor, Planning Commission, New Delhi; Dr. R. Sreedher, Director, CEMCA, Commonwealth of Learning, New Delhi; Mr. Deep Joshi, PRADAN, New Delhi; Mr. Sajan Venniyoor representing the Community Radio Forum, New Delhi; Mr. S.H. Indrukar, Deputy Director, CAPART, New Delhi.

There are three to five special invitees to the Screening Committee. They may change and be invited from time to time to bring expertise from other sectors.

The Screening Committee has met twice in 2007. The first meeting was held from 10-12 September 2007. The second meeting was held 22-23 November 2007. Since the establishment of the committee, Seven NGOs have been awarded the CR licence.

The third round of screening committee meetings have been scheduled from 15-18 January 2008. Mr. J.P.S. Verma, Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi; Mr. C.T. Mahajan, Additional Apprentership Advisor, Ministry of Human Resources Development, New Delhi; and Ms. Jocelyne Josiah, Adviser in Communication and Information, UNESCO, New Delhi will be participating as Special Invitees to the upcoming meetings.

For those who are interested to learn more about the policy, the guidelines, the processes of application, for NGOs and CBOs to set up a community radio station in India, please link up to: http://mib.nic.in/CRS/CRSmainpg.htm.

Hope you all benefit from this post! Enjoy the new year with more CR stations in India.

How does knowledge flow in an organisation which is pretty ICT savvy?

Today was an interesting day at work. The Internet connectivity was intermittent, or none, depending on whether someone had access to a data card or not. This being the case, one saw a lot of face to face knowledge exchange happening. People were also trying to get some off-line work done.

But in general, the mood appeared to be one of relaxation, and destressed situation with most colleagues, except the team on Digital Learning which is fighting some deadlines, and desperately looking for online connectivity. Looks and truly feels like a Friday afternoon.

Today was also a day to spend some time with a colleague to understand the nuances of knowledge flow in our own organisation, where a lot happens through the mails, notes and shared file system among team members. The phone was the next best thing put to use when the Internet connectivity denied email as the option to send out notes, updates and information to each other.

People also generally walked around the office and chit-chatted a bit, not necessarily always about work. But this to me, appeared as a crucial necessity to share ideas, thoughts and friendship.

To promote more knowledge sharing, it would be a great idea to have a No Internet Day (once a month) and promote free-flowing sharing of ideas.

Radio Duniya 2008 planning meet sets the tone of the conference in February

Yesterday, the advisory committee of the Radio Duniya team met in Intercontinental -The Grand in Barakhamba Road, New Delhi. The meeting was chaired by Ms. Zohra Chatterjee, Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.

It was a fantastic experience to meet a mix of the radio professionals passionately discussing the issues at the policy level, at the implementation level, and most importantly wanting more clarity on measuring what people really want? The measurement of the viewer feedback indicators and what other experiences were there in other countries figured as an important topic to be discussed at the upcoming conference and awards function to be held from February 11-12, 2008.

The overview of the meeting was provided by Ravi Gupta, the editor of the Radio Duniya magazine, and my dear friends Sajan Venniyoor of the Community Radio Forum and Ashish Bhatnagar along with Dr. R Sreedher of CEMCA, Commonwealth of Learning were also present at the meeting.

Kudos to the team members who have done a good job of preparing for this meeting, and also for putting together three issues of the monthly magazine, since it was launched in November 2007.