The latest petition on the CR spectrum fee hike has come from National Advisory Council (NAC) member Aruna Roy, who has written to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi opposing the five-fold increase in licence fee for community radio....
Read MoreThe recent notification from Ministry of Communications and IT (MoCIT) announcing a five-fold hike in the spectrum fee for Community Radio broadcasters in the country heated things up, this summer. According to the Wireless...
Read MoreA historian, attempting to cover the course of community radio policy in India, might be prompted to describe the first couple of decades as throwing up a series of uneasy questions and- at best – piecemeal answers:...
Read MoreI often urge my students of journalism to do a small experiment. I say “Connect your TV to a video recorder. Take a remote in your hand. Select a channel. Never mind what it is. Start your recorder. Use your remote and start...
Read MoreIt is close to 10 years since a putative community radio policy was announced by the Government of India, allowing ‘established educational institutions’ to apply for a license to broadcast over a limited-power FM frequency....
Read MoreWhat we call the ‘spectrum’ is actually a whole range of frequencies, from high-frequency gamma and x-rays at one end, all the way to low frequency waves used for TV, mobile phones and radio at the other. It also includes the...
Read MoreSpectrum is public property and must be used for public good as articulated by Supreme Court judge P B Sawant. Even though spectrum is public property, the government is a caretaker since it is a scarce and natural resource, AND...
Read MoreAccording to the Radio Communications Act, the first and overarching imperative of regulating access to this resource is to “maximise … the overall public benefit derived from using the radiofrequency...
Read MoreSince 2006, by allowing community radio in India, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MoIB) along with Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MoCIT), have recognized citizens’ fundamental right to speech...
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