Radio

Radio was the first electronic mass medium to reach a mass audience in India, and its reach remains enormous. By the year 2000, All India Radio (AIR) programmes could be heard in two-thirds of all Indian households, broadcast in 24 languages and 146 dialects over roughly 120 million radio sets. This wide linguistic coverage made radio uniquely suited to a diverse country like India, where literacy levels were still low and print media could not reach everyone.

A major shift came in 2002 with the arrival of privately owned FM radio stations. These stations gave a strong boost to entertainment programming on radio. To attract audiences, private FM channels focused on entertainment — especially popular music — because they are not permitted by law to broadcast political news bulletins. Many of these channels specialise in particular kinds of popular music to hold onto their listeners. One such FM channel advertises itself with the slogan "All hits all day!"

Most of the popular FM channels that appeal to young urban professionals and students are owned by large media conglomerates. For example:

• Radio Mirchi belongs to the Times of India group
• Red FM is owned by Living Media
• Radio City is owned by the Star Network

However, independent radio stations engaged in public broadcasting — like National Public Radio (NPR) in the USA or the BBC in the UK — are missing from India's broadcasting landscape.

The potential of radio as an active medium of communication is shown in two contemporary Bollywood films. In Rang de Basanti, a group of angry college students, inspired by Bhagat Singh, assassinates a minister and then captures All India Radio to broadcast their message directly to the people. In Lage Raho Munna Bhai, the heroine works as a radio jockey who wakes up Mumbai with her hearty "Good Morning Mumbai!", and the hero later uses the radio station to save a girl's life. Both films show radio not as a passive background medium but as a tool for action and connection.

The potential for using FM channels in India is enormous. Further privatisation of radio stations and the emergence of community-owned radio stations would lead to the growth of the sector. The demand for local news is rising, and the number of homes listening to FM in India has reinforced a worldwide trend: networks are being replaced by local radio.

A remarkable example of this local, grassroots radio is the story of Raghav Mahato, a young man in a village in Bihar. Raghav built his own FM radio station — Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1 — from scratch, with a transmission kit that cost him only Rs 50. His equipment is housed in a cramped, thatched-roof shack that also serves as his electronics repair shop. The transmission kit is fitted onto an antenna attached to a bamboo pole on a neighbouring three-storey hospital, connected by a long wire to an old homemade stereo cassette player. Three rusty, locally made battery-powered tape recorders are linked to it with colourful wires and a cordless microphone.

Raghav's station broadcasts for 12 hours a day, playing film songs and local Bhojpuri music, devotional songs at dawn and dusk for women and elderly listeners, and public interest messages on HIV and polio. It also airs snappy local news, including alerts about missing children and the opening of local shops. Since there is no phone-in facility, people send song requests through handwritten messages carried by couriers or through phone calls to a neighbouring public telephone office. …