[X-Post]Rs 50 FM Radio station

Mon Feb 27 12:55:17 IST 2006

Morning Friends,

A beautiful story that portrays the power of
innovation and power of will.

--- Shubhranshu Choudhary <smitashu at gmail.com  wrote:

  To: <bytesforall_readers at yahoogroups.com 
  From: "Shubhranshu Choudhary" <smitashu at gmail.com 
  Date: Sun, 26 Feb 2006 19:41:37 +0530
  Subject: [bytesforall_readers] Rs 50 FM Radio
  station

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4735642.stm

  The amazing DIY village FM radio station 
        By Amarnath Tewary 
        In Vaishali, Bihar  

  It may well be the only village FM radio station on
  the Asian sub-continent. It is certainly illegal. 

  The transmission equipment, costing just over $1,
  may be the cheapest in the world. 

  But the local people definitely love it. 

  On a balmy morning in India's northern state of
  Bihar, young Raghav Mahato gets ready to fire up his
  home-grown FM radio station. 

  Hundreds of villagers, living in a 20km (12 miles)
  radius of Raghav's small repair shop and radio
  station in Mansoorpur village in Vaishali district,
  tune their $5 radio sets to catch their favourite
  station. 

  After the crackle of static, a young, confident
  voice floats up the radio waves. 

  "Good morning! Welcome to Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1!
  Now listen to your favourite songs," announces
  anchor and friend Sambhu into a sellotape-plastered
  microphone surrounded by racks of local music tapes.

  For the next 12 hours, Raghav Mahato's outback FM
  radio station plays films songs and broadcasts
  public interest messages on HIV and polio, and even
  snappy local news, including alerts on missing
  children and the opening of local shops. 

  Raghav and his friend run the indigenous radio
  station out of Raghav's thatched-roof Priya
  Electronics Shop. 

  Ingenious 

  The place is a cramped $4-a-month rented shack
  stacked with music tapes and rusty electrical
  appliances which doubles up as Raghav's radio
  station and repair shop. 

       I just did it out of curiosity and increased
  its area of transmission every year 
        Raghav Mahato  

  He may not be literate, but Raghav's ingenuous FM
  station has made him more popular than local
  politicians. 
  Raghav's love affair with the radio began in 1997
  when he started out as a mechanic in a local repair
  shop. When the shop owner left the area, Raghav, son
  of a cancer-ridden farm worker, took over the shack
  with his friend. 

  Sometime in 2003, Raghav, who by now had learned
  much about radio mechanics, thought up the idea of
  launching an FM station. 

  It was a perfect idea. In impoverished Bihar state,
  where many areas lack power supplies, the cheap
  battery-powered transistor remains the most popular
  source of entertainment. 

  "It took a long time to come up with the idea and
  make the kit which could transmit my programmes at a
  fixed radio frequency. The kit cost me 50 rupees
  (just over $1)," says Raghav. 

  The transmission kit is fitted on to an antenna
  attached to a bamboo pole on a neighbouring
  three-storey hospital. 

  A long wire connects the contraption to a creaky,
  old homemade stereo cassette player in Raghav's
  radio shack. Three other rusty, locally made
  battery-powered tape recorders are connected to it
  with colourful wires and a cordless microphone. 

  The shack has some 200 tapes of local Bhojpuri,
  Bollywood and devotional songs which Raghav plays
  for his listeners. 
  Raghav's station is truly a labour of love - he does
  not earn anything from it. His electronic repair
  shop work brings him some two thousand rupees ($45)
  a month. 

  The young man, who continues to live in a shack with
  his family, doesn't know that running a FM station
  requires a government licence. 

  "I don't know about this. I just began this out of
  curiosity and expanded its area of transmission
  every year," he says. 

  Local hero 

  So when some people told him sometime ago that his
  station was illegal, he actually shut it down. But
  local villagers thronged his shack and persuaded him
  to resume services again. 

  It hardly matters for the locals that Raghav FM
  Mansoorpur 1 does not have a government license -
  they just love it. 

  "Women listen to my station more than men," he says.
  "Though Bollywood and local Bhojpuri songs are
  staple diet, I air devotional songs at dawn and dusk
  for women and old people." 
  Since there's no phone-in facility, people send
  their requests for songs through couriers carrying
  handwritten messages and phone calls to a
  neighbouring public telephone office. 

  Raghav's fame as the 'promoter' of a radio station
  has spread far and wide in Bihar. 

  People have written to him, wanting work at his
  station, and evinced interest in buying his
  'technology'. 

  "But I will never share the secret of my technology
  with anyone. This is my creation. How can I share it
  with somebody who might misuse it?" he asks. 

  "With more powerful and advanced chips and equipment
  I can make a kit which could be transmitted up to
  100km or even more." 

  A government radio engineer in Bihar's capital,
  Patna, says it is possible to use a homemade kit to
  run a FM radio station. 

  "All it needs is an antenna and transmitting
  equipment. But such stations offer no security.
  Anyone can invade and encroach such locally made
  transmitters," says HK Sinha of India's state-run
  broadcaster All India Radio (AIR). 
  But people in Mansoorpur are in awe of Raghav's
  radio station and say it gives their village an
  identity. 

  "The boy has intense potential, but he is very poor.
  If the government lends him some support, he would
  go far," says Sanjay Kumar, an ardent fan of his
  station. 

  But for the moment Raghav FM Mansoorpur 1 rocks on
  the local airwaves, bring joy into the lives of the
  locals. 

  Story from BBC NEWS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/4735642.stm

  Published: 2006/02/24 11:34:36 GMT

  © BBC MMVI

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Shubhranshu Choudhary                Freelance
  Journalist
  Ph : + 91 98110 66749                   e mail :
  smitashu at gmail.com
  http://www.cgnet.in                      
  http://smitashu.8m.net

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 1123 bytes
Desc: pat1199453782
Url : http://gnowledge.org/pipermail/fsug-bangalore/attachments/20060226/f651fa86/attachment.gif