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| Welcome to Oravakal, Radiophony's
first application of innovative audio solutions
in communications for ordinary people. This
place in Andhra Pradesh is the first village
in India to run its own audio broadcast center. |
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| Oravakal is a small village
of roughly 5,000 people near Kurnool, a district
headquarter town about 200 km from Hyderabad,
the state capital. It is the site of a village
development project that has been going on
for the past six years or so, since about
1996. This has taken various forms over the
years, but has resulted in several women and
men taking the initiative to lead the villagers
out of a cycle of poverty. |
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The overall project leader handling
developmental activities in the area has built
up a network of self-help groups in this and
other villages. Among her successes, she has
been able to create an entire school campus
just outside the main village area, and is
visibly appreciated in the area for her leadership
and hard work. The school caters to girls,
who were otherwise left out of mainstream
education.
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The village is roughly shaped
like half an egg, falling to either side
of a low hill. It is roughly a kilometer
long and about half a kilometer wide. Most
of the village lies to one side of a state
road, which connects by bus to towns on
both sides of the village. The road is lined
with shops, while the inner roads and paths
of the village are mainly lined with residences.
The main road also has one large Christian
church just about in the middle of the village
bordering the road.
Not very obviously, the village is divided
into social groups mainly by religion and
caste. The lowest caste people, belonging
to at least two religions (Hinduism and
Christianity) tend to cluster to one side
of the village. There is one Muslim area
off on another side. None of these divisions
is very visible in terms of house construction
or dress codes or anything in particular.
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| The Society for Elimination
of Rural Poverty is an NGO created and headed
by officials deputed from the Andhra Pradesh
State Government. It has access to state and
international funding for both study of and
programme implementation in poverty alleviation
projects. The focus is on sustainable initiatives. |
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| We were asked to work with the
project leader and her designated team to
identify and create a communication center,
where audio programmes could be locally created
and distributed among people in the village. |
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We reviewed various possibilities,
including production of local programming
on cassette tape and playback by village
volunteers. Based on this analysis, we recommended
setting up a grassroots studio using state-of-the-art
consumer digital equipment, whose great
advantage lies in the fact that it is relatively
inexpensive and thereby cost-effective.
The technology, the optical minidisk developed
by Sony Corporation of Japan, affords non-linear
editing capabilities for a fraction of the
cost of traditional studio equipment. It
is also portable and therefore mobile.
We also recommended the use of cable relay
for distribution of recorded programmes.
This involves using an existing distribution
network created [privately, usually] for
relay of popular satellite television broadcasting.
Audio programmes can be duplexed onto this
network using a standard frequency modulator,
on whichever spare cable channel is available.
Leakiness of typical old cable ensures that
low-power signals can still be picked up
3-4 meters away from the cable, which runs
overhead past most houses in the village.
We tested the system and found it delivered
tolerable quality, wherever the cable actually
ran. |
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| However, when we accompanied
the local team to negotiate with the cable
distributor, we found that his equipment was
already used to capacity. He wanted help to
get a loan to expand his capabilities before
he could spare a channel or two for this project.
This began to get complicated. He was not
a traditional target of the village microbanking
infrastructure set up by the self-help groups.
We suggested releasing the modulated signals
to free air, without modification of the
basic equipment, by merely attaching an
antenna made of television cable.
When we tested the system, we found we
could get fairly good audio quality on ordinary
(the sort freely distributed in rural India)
FM receivers mostly through the village.
The problem was in the location of the project
field office, which was shielded from most
of the village by the hillock. Building
a high enough antenna mast above this little
house was a fairly major engineering task.
There were also problems with the landlord,
who was worried about possible damage to
the building.
One alternative was to put the mast on
top of the village watertank, which as we
soon discovered, suffers from a major construction
flaw and leaks, which has limited its usefulness
to the village. However, it administratively
belongs to the state water department.
We took the problem to the village sarpanch,
who turned out to be a civil engineer himself
and was very interested in what we were
trying to achieve. Possibly one reason for
this is the fact that the project leader
has become a very visible force in the village,
with the dynamics of development beginning
to play a role for change.
Regardless of these undercurrents, he was
willing to help. He took us to the very
highest point in the village, at the top
of the hillock, and negotiated for us to
get a room at the top of this house. It
has an independent entrance.
We placed the mast at the top of this house,
with some difficulty, because of the peculiar
construction used in this area. Houses are
made of slate like stones mortared together
very loosely with a mixture or mud and cement.
What seem to be very thick solid walls are
actually very porous and poorly made, from
the engineering point of view. |
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| We showed the designated team,
consisting of about 20 men from the village,
how to operate the equipment. Unfortunately,
the women were involved with a large teacher
training programme that was going on concurrently,
so we had to perforce rest with an assurance
that their training would be taken up by the
project leader.
We found that all the men were familiar
with the concept of recording and playback,
and knew how to handle cassette recorders.
This made the job of explaining how to edit
using the advanced features of the minidisk
recorders much easier. We trained the men
in groups of four, making them record sample
interviews, and use the post-production
editing features to remove flaws (noise
and interference from passing vehicles)
and add voice overs. |
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