A relaxed, cheerful voice greets listeners in rural parts of Guntur district as they tune in to their favourite source of news in the morning — a community radio station called Radio Ranjan.
‘Radio Ranjan 90.4 FM welcomes you!’, says the anchor, who covers current events and speaks on opportunities in education, government programmes and welfare schemes, and also gives suggestions on public health — all in a three-hour session.
A community radio station, Radio Ranjan is promoted by the Community and Rural Development Society (CARDS), and licensed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. Since January 2020, the community radio has gone on air connecting rural areas across the district. Given the unparalleled reach of the humble radio, the Centre has given licences to a few community radio stations across the country to disseminate news and hold programmes on a wide range of topics that are of public importance.
Guntur-based CARDS, an NGOfounded by P. Ranjan Babu, has been involved in community empowerment since 1979, and was given a licence to start a community radio station in 2000. The radio station is located at Santhosh Nagar and has trained radio jockeys, reporters and technical assistants and operates throughout the year.
“We air a variety of shows, but the thrust is on community empowerment. There are several specialised programmes. ‘Kisan Mithra’ gives suggestions to farmers on good agricultural practices, while ‘Randi Marg’ gives information about welfare schemes instituted by the government. ‘Bala Bata’ is an educational programme for children while ‘Swarna Mahila Marg’ has content aimed at women empowerment and skill development training. We have also widely covered women protection laws like Disha Act-2019 and the POCSO Act,” said M. Satya Vani, director of Radio Ranjan 90.4 FM.
The radio station has also proved to be effective during the pandemic as many bulletins on health, guidelines by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have been aired for over four months. “Radio Ranjan 90.4 FM is now a partner in Unicef Mission Corona — an interactive educational programme in Telugu. Through this, we want to reach out to remote areas in the district,” said CARDS directors P. Franz and K. Mary.
