|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Penne Nee Arivaai is a community radio programme broadcast thrice a day by MOP Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai. Through their programme the students focus on people from slums and their problems, writes Hema Vijay
When Meenakshi (28) tuned into the radio, it was only to lighten her daily drudgery of washing dishes and clothes. However, just by accident, the young housewife heard the strains of 107.8 MHz. "It was the dialect that caught my attention. The voice on air sounded different. The woman on the radio was speaking ‘slum’ Tamil, unlike the anglicised Tamil common on the FM channel," she recounts. Meenakshi lives with her husband and three children in a one-room shanty in Chennai’s Teynampet slum. The female voice on the
radio reminded listeners about the polio vaccination drive being
conducted in the city that day and of the deformities that a polio
attack can lead to. "I wound up the washing and dragged my
children to locate a polio camp," admits Meenakshi, now a loyal
listener of Penne Nee Arivaai (Lady, you should know). Penne
Nee Arivaai is a community radio programme broadcast thrice a day
by MOP Vaishnav College for Women, Chennai.
Launched in March, 2005, MOP Vaishnav’s community FM is the country’s second community radio station, after Anna FM at Chennai’s Anna University. The service spans out to several schools and colleges, in addition to a few slums and health centres falling within a radius of 4 to 5 km of the MOP campus. "Community radio works because it addresses specific communities," observes senior journalist Anjali Sircar. The team of college girls at MOP FM perfectly understands its audience, as proven by the stock of characters the students mimic on air for ‘Penne Nee Arivaai’ and other programmes. Keeping in mind the target community — women in the slums around the MOP campus that spans just a little less than three acres — S. Niveetha, a third-year student of B.Com, speaks up as ‘Mallika,’ the flower vendor. She is joined by A. Vaidehi who, off air pursues an electronic media course, but is known as ‘Idly kadai’ Muniamma (literally ‘Idli shop Muniamma’) on the airwaves. Then there is Kuppamma, the vegetable vendor, who outside the recording studio is first-year economics student, S. Uma. Interestingly, through their programme, the students — who are in the age group of 16 and 22 and include both under-graduates and post-graduates — bring alive characters who could be residents of the neighbouring slums and with whom real women like Meenakshi can identify. But first they thoroughly prepare for their shows by speaking to doctors, welfare organisations and NGOs. At times, the broadcasters also rope in real slum residents such as Saroja (30), D. Ramani (42) and Kavitha (36) to share their homespun expertise on topics such as child rearing and health on air. "Our primary focus has been to facilitate women’s empowerment," says Vijaya Thiruvengadam, former director, All India Radio, Chennai, who was roped in by the college to shape its community radio service. Each MOP broadcast lasts three hours and there are three broadcasts everyday—between 6.30 am and 9.30 am, 12.30 pm and 3.30 pm and 5.30 pm and 8.30 pm. Each programme lasts 15 minutes. But it is not just the slum dwellers that these talented girls have been involving in their daily shows. They have been speaking to NGO representatives, and have even taken to the streets to monitor and spread the word on traffic rules despite the scorching heat of Chennai. They regularly talk about the need to wear helmets and also outline traffic rules to be followed to ensure safety. When this writer went visiting MOP’s radio station, P. Chandrasekharan, secretary, Tamil Nadu Foundation, was in the studio recounting an incident where the NGO intervened when a young girl in a rural school failed to appear for her school final exams. had been a good student and so we went to her house to inquire and we found the girl all dressed up to be betrothed. Only when the teachers took up the cause and threatened police action did the family send the girl to appear for her exams," he said. For the MOP Vaishnav girls such interviews are eye-openers and a reminder of the restrictive environment in which the girls in rural India live. Another popular programme is the educational broadcast for visually-challenged students, produced by the Dehradun-based National Institute of Visually Handicapped (NIVH), and recorded at Chennai’s Rotary Helen Keller Talking Book Library. "The programme has made a definite difference to our exam preparations," says K. Muniappan, president, Blind Students’ Association in Chennai. The college has invested in a sound-proof recording room, a high-tech 54-channel amplifier, and even expensive Nuendo software used for recording. The recurring costs amount to about Rs 1,00,000 a year, estimates Thiruvengadam. "The college management has been generous with funds. The Department of Science and Technology has given us a monetary grant of Rs 11,00,000 this year, towards the using of community radio to promote scientific temper among women," says Dr K. Nirmala Prasad, Principal, MOP Vaishnav. Voices on MOP FM have been touching lives. According to a survey conducted in July last year by the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 53 per cent of the 1,000 women surveyed in the slums within the 5 km radius of the campus, tuned in to MOP FM, particularly the Penne Nee Arivaai programme. As Chandrasekharan puts it: "They are creating small ripples and, at the very least, the college students are getting to know the real world, discuss serious issues and seek answers." They will eventually find solutions, too. — WFS
|
||||
|
|
||||
