Audio Broadcast Centre - Oravakal, India

The organisers accompanied the local project leader and her team to negotiate a communications set-up with the cable distributor, who rigged up a system whereby an antenna made of television cable could be attached to basic equipment already in place. The village sarpanch, who happened to be a civil engineer, helped the team attach the antenna to the very highest point in the village, and negotiated for a broadcast room at the top of a house situated there.

Organisers then showed the designated team, consisting of about 20 men from the village, how to operate the equipment. (Unfortunately, village women were involved in a large teacher training programme that was going on concurrently; it was left to the project leader to undertake their training). The organisers taught the men how to edit using the advanced features of the portable, cost-effective optical minidisk recorders. The men were trained in groups of four; training involved the recording of sample interviews and use of post-production editing features to remove flaws (noise and interference from passing vehicles) and add voice-overs.

Local programming is recorded on cassette tape and played back by village volunteers. The station has been named Mana Radio, which means Our Radio in the local language, Telugu.

Click here to view pictures and to access a technical discussion of the circuitry used in this initiative.

Technology.

Oravakal is a small village of roughly 5,000 people near Kurnool, a district headquarter town about 200 km from Hyderabad, the state capital. The village is divided into social groups, mainly by religion and caste. The lowest caste people, belonging to at least two religions (Hinduism and Christianity) tend to cluster to one side of the village. There is one Muslim area off on another side. Oravakal is the site of a village development project that has been going on for the past six years or so, since about 1996. This has taken various forms over the years, but has resulted in several women and men taking the initiative to lead the villagers out of a cycle of poverty. This radio station enables villagers to produce and disseminate FM radio, without having to go many kilometers away to the local government-owned station.

Radiophony was been created to provide innovative and cost-effective solutions to problems of access for those who do not have the means, one way or the other, to use regular computers. The Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty is an NGO created and headed by officials deputed from the Andhra Pradesh State Government. It has access to state and international funding for both study of and programme implementation in poverty alleviation projects. The focus is on sustainable initiatives.