On a Saturday after a busy week of work, my friend invites me to visit SIT Tumkuru (Karnataka) for the purpose of exploring a community project. It was a usual ignorance of mine where I had no clarity of what the project was about since my friend also has no great understanding of. He is an active “free software activists” who likes spending his weekends over some kind of activism. OK! Straight to the purpose of this blog!!
“Idu namma ellara radio, nammadu ondu radio”
Girish, the person behind this novel cause of connecting several small villages in Tumkuru which still lacks a basic network connections, and probably electricity too. He used to work as a tech support at a Kannada news channel, has immense knowledge about handling many electronic devices used in studios. He quits his job of loosing hope on the news channels who cook and fabricate news just for the sake of TRP. Backed with a strong philosophy and belief on community driven ideas, he builds a community radio center which connects various small villages around. He and his team calls it “Namam halli radio”. An other great thing about this project is, almost all the activities, programs, talks, technical work like editing of the audios, maintains, content creation etc are done by the children of the village itself!! Isn’t that so amazing!!? All the children fall under the age of 10-15.
Genuine content with simple implementation
This radio is no where like the urban radio station we hear. Girish sets up the master control center with all the used or second-hand electronics which he himself buys from Sunday Bazaar. He uses Raspberry Pi(a whole computer on small 10cm chip capable to run a complete OS) to record and WiFi routers are set up as nodes at a distance of 50-100 meters around the villages. These routers broadcast the. recorded audios everyday, anytime. He reuses old coin phone booths as one if the recording centers which are situated at different parts of the village. People can just pick the hand piece, press a button, talk their mind, and share with their fellow villager. (Crazy!!)
All the daily shows are organized by the kids themselves. They share how their day was, a life lesson from a elders of the village, question the administrators of the area for any wrong deed.. etc.
Why I want to contribute
This model of working is purely community oriented. I understood how technology and internet is not just about enabling people with a bunch of gadgets which runs FB and YouTube. This project proves me how people are capable finding a way out to be connected even in a lack of convince. They prove how they know what they want and what they don’t, and know exactly hoe to standup for a rightful cause.
RuchikaWrites 