Jaydev of Radio Active—R. Samuel
Bengaluru:
It began as a project for the mass communication class in Jain University. A radio programme is a standard part of any mass communication course, but Radio Active soon became much larger than that.
Started in 2007 by a group of students, it wasn’t long before it burgeoned into a full fledged community radio service. Tucked away in the basement at the Centre for Management Studies, is a group of people who have become the lifelines of their communities, the repressed, under-represented marginal groups for whom life is a sordid, hopeless affair.
Jaydev, a 20-something student at Mitra Jyoti, an NGO which caters to the blind, might have had almost no chance at making it in this world. He first came to Radio Active, a shy, awkward young man. Today, he can handle the station if he has to and focuses on disability issues, reaching out to differently-abled people and helping them see the light. In 2011, Jaydev was felicitated by the National Federation for the Blind for being a role model to thousands of visually impaired youngsters.
Priyanka, lively and garrulous, the ‘Drama Queen’ at Radio Active, hosts the most popular show at the station, Yarivaru, which focuses on issues faced by the LGBT community, like sexual harassment, discrimination and unemployment. Priyanka and Sujata, the daughter of a scrap dealer, also reach out to waste pickers in the city, mentoring them in livelihood and development opportunities. Salma and Siddique became the country’s first waste picker radio jockeys.
“It’s a voice for the voiceless,” said Marwan Abubaker A.M., Manager Projects, Radio Active. Marwan joined the station in 2009, two years after its launch. He has also started Petpals, the street animal management programme. “We started out having awareness programmes with schools and colleges on understanding street dogs. We live in a country that has (stray) animals, we can’t run away (from that),” he said. “Since we’re sharing, we have to coexist.” This programme was launched with the support of the BBMP that provides free vaccinations at government veterinary hospitals.
The urban waste management programme, which is run in collaboration with Solid Waste Round Table Management, has actually come up with a very practical dry waste solution.
“We call it the Kartavya programme,” said Marwan, who had dabbled in waste management before he founded Radio Active. “Then, we found SWMRT and they suggested setting up a Kartavya centre in every ward, so that dry waste doesn’t have to leave the city.” The team is now working on mobilising the work force — the pourakarmikas, who will be trained along with scrap dealers. They will then be listed and certified to run the centres.
“We have a lot of trouble broadcasting and actually reaching people with our programmes. Community radios don’t have very high transmission,” said Marwan. This means tremendous amounts of work on the field, organising health camps, eye camps and awareness programmes.
It’s a sad truth, but a system designed to favour a simple majority means a very large number of people are confined to the fringes, never using the rights to which they are entitled by birth or receiving the opportunities that seem to be limited to an arbitrarily chosen few.
To suffer in silence has become a way of life for most of these groups and even with a community radio station, change, if it does happen is superficial and short lived. That’s what makes Priyanka, Jaydev, Sujata and RJ Auto Shiv Kumar even more remarkable. The odds are insurmountable, but they continue trying.
source: http://www.DeccanChronicle.com / Home> News> Current Affairs / by DC, Darshan Ramdev / February 18th, 2013