As Madhya Pradesh gears up for state elections, a new mobile community radio initiative – Radio Sangharsh – that aims to highlight the suppressed voices is making waves in Mahan forests of Singrauli, Madhya Pradesh.

After a successful trial run of four months Radio Sangharsh has been formally launched and is being seen as a potent tool to raise issues that concern the common man in the villages of Mahan region.

Radio Sangharsh was set up by Greenpeace in association with CGNetSwara aims to act as a bridge between the local authorities, policymakers and the villagers. The villagers have turned into citizen journalists getting vocal about issues that have been irking them for a long time. All one has to do is dial a number and record his/her grievance.

Since July, Radio Sangharsh has been receiving six to seven calls a day amounting to 4,117 calls a day from 619 unique callers.  “It is interesting to note that a total of 3,545 calls were made to listen to the stories, which makes it an average of 34 listeners per day. This number is very encouraging considering the fact that we started only in the 3rd week of July. Even the number of unique callers (619) is pretty high, as our on ground reach was mostly to 5-7 villages,” says Anirban Chakrabarti, mobiles-marketing manager of Greenpeace India.  

 Of the total calls recorded, 49.5% of calls were about non-implementation of the Forest Rights Act in the villages. While 32.8% of calls were complaints against bribery, 10.3% of calls complaining about basic amenities such as, roads, ration card, BPL card, hospital services, schools, water and electricity. Besides this, there were 7.6% calls on displacement.
 
“The tribal and marginalised sections of the society living in far flung areas have historically been an ignored. Thus, Radio Sangharsh has proved to be a potent communication tool to both, create awareness among the villagers in Mahan as well as a tool for proactive policy makers, who can listen to people's issues –straight from the horse’s mouth,” says Priya Pillai, senior campaigner, Greenpeace India.

 
How does it work?

 It’s a simple tool. All one has to do is to call ‘+91 990 291 5604’. The call disconnects automatically and the person gets a call from the server with voice-enabled instructions like ‘press 1 to record your own story, press 2 to listen to what others said’. The recorded messages/ stories are selected by a moderator. The chosen ones can be heard by calling the given number and pressing 1. Also they are posted onwww.radiosangharsh.org.

About 25 ‘Amplifiers’ or ‘Citizen Journalists’ have been trained so far; these amplifiers help people make calls and register their complaints. Virendra Singh, a resident of Amelia village is one such amplifier. “I have helped people record their messages and listen to the recorded messages as well.”  So whether it was the illegal numbering of trees or fraudulent Gram Sabha resolutions, Virendra has helped villagers air their grievance on Radio Sangharsh on a regular basis.

“After the launch of Radio Sangarsh in Mahan, more and more people are aware of their rights (Forest rights act , as well as rights of people in a Gram Sabha) and are now standing up for a free and fair implementation of laws protecting their rights in the region,” says Pillai.

Background

Virendra is also a member of Mahan Sangharsh Samiti (MSS) – a conglomeration of 11 villages which, over the past few months, has been working tirelessly to save the forests of Mahan from being mined and destroyed by Mahan Coal Ltd (a joint venture of Essar Power and Hindalco). The team of Radio Sangharsh has been working closely with MSS to create awareness.

Radio Sangharsh’s team undertook a five-day long yatra on foot, along with MSS, across 11 villages in Mahan. At a public meeting – ‘Van Adhikar Sammelan’ – on August 4, 2013, people were further trained as to how the community radio could empower them to save their forest and homes and culture.    

Table  

Total calls to Radio Sangharsh 4117
Avg. calls to Radio Sangharsh / day 40
Calls made to attempt record (including blank & incomplete calls) 572
Avg. calls to attempt record / day 6
Total stories recorded (excluding blank & incomplete calls) 392
Avg. actual stories recorded / day 4
Calls made to listen to the stories 3545