FM Radio – Rebuilding lives in Kashmir

IN Community Media | 29/10/2005

 There is a tragic inevitability to the effect of disasters on local media and communications. Power lines fail almost immediately, and with no electricity, television goes on the blink. Telephone lines snap and exchanges cease to work. With limited or no back-up power, mobile phones and base stations - if any exist - don¿t last very long either. Newspaper distribution collapses. Local radio installations are also affected, and though the survivors can depend on their battery-operated receivers, local news is hard to come by.

 When the October 8 earthquake hit the isolated regions of Kashmir, the predictable collapse of the local media - already familiar to South Asians from the 2004 tsunami - went by the book. The Pakistani press reported that all state-owned media in the quake-hit areas were off the air, and that, "after the collapse of Pakistan Television (PTV) and Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) installations, people have lost access to news." 

 There is no private radio or TV channel in the quake hit region. 

In 2002, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) Ordinance had opened up radio and television to private players, but the ordinance did not cover Pakistan controlled Kashmir or the northern areas. This exclusionary policy was amended in May 2005, when PEMRA invited applications for private FM radio in Kashmir and the northern regions. There was an encouraging response to the new policy and twenty-one ¿Expressions of Interest¿ were received, but sadly, they came in just before the earthquake struck the region. 

Within days of the earthquake, eleven independent FM radio stations in Pakistan came together and formed an Association of Independent Radio (AIR), a nodal body to represent the industry. At their first meeting on October 13, the association members urged PEMRA to quickly grant emergency, temporary broadcast radio licenses in the quake-hit parts of Pakistan.  

To its credit, PEMRA was fairly quick to respond. It took them only a week to announce that, as a special measure, it would - within three days - grant temporary FM licenses in the quake-affected areas. The PEMRA spokesman clarified that the licenses would be for a limited period, ¿so that affected people could be advised and informed about important post-disaster measures and precautions to be taken besides, apprising on relief strategies and progress.¿ 

Punjab University¿s mass communications department was among the first to take up the offer. There were given approval to set up a temporary radio station in Rawalakot, but they plan to extend the facility to other earthquake-hit areas, especially Muzaffarabad. It is reported that UNICEF will provide around 1000 free or cheap transistors to people in the affected areas, while a transmitter tower would be set up in the area immediately.  

Radio is, without exception, the cheapest, most durable and accessible of media. Inevitably, many international broadcasters as well as multilateral agencies send large quantities of radio receivers to disaster hit regions, supported by mobile broadcast equipment. In the aftermath of the tsunami, it was reported how Commercial Radio Australia had shipped 50,000 AM/FM radios and six transmitters to the affected areas. The Freeplay Foundation pitched in with radios for 125 communities in Northern Indonesia.  

Radio, as the Foundation points out, is "essential in providing health and hygiene information; advising where and when food, water and other supplies will be distributed; informing about the activities of the aid workers assisting them; announcing about missing persons and also helping to ease isolation and can be particularly valuable in reuniting separated children and families or helping the orphaned link up with relatives." 

(Freeplay¿s Lifeline radio has proved its worth in innumerable emergencies and natural disasters (www.freeplayfoundation.org). It is a wind-up radio, with solar cells to provide an alternative power source). 

"Radio," says Freeplay, "helps make people feel connected." 

While the independent radio movement in Pakistan, as well as the regulatory authority, sees the need for private radio initiatives in the earthquake-affected areas, not everybody thinks of local radio as a quick fix for all communication needs during a disaster.  

Commenting on news reports of the state media¿s virtual collapse in the region, Dr. Hansjoerg Biener (www.biener-media.de) writes that the press "seems to suggest that the mere existence of private media in the disaster stricken area would have been of use to the public. But how could one know that private stations would not have been knocked off the air, too? If one would argue in favour of a medium that might be useful in a catastrophe like this, I would make a case for short wave radio and high power medium wave. If you need an example, have a look at the United [Radio] Broadcasters of New Orleans using both medium wave and short wave to cover their target area." 

As in New Orleans, while the quake victims of South Asia struggle to cope with the tragedy, radio seems best positioned "to provide the community with news, updates and a connection with the outside world."