India’s First Community Radio Run by Dalit Telugu Women

“General” Narsamma sounds like a soldier’s name. He is no less than a soldier for Telangana’s Deccan Development Society, an agricultural cooperative society run entirely by Dalit women and their sanghams in Zaheerabad district. Not just him, they are all soldiers.

While he is fondly remembered as the one who takes care of all the ‘general’ work, this is also meant to differentiate the three Narsammas in the cooperative. Two of them work together at Sangham Radio, India’s first community radio, and the other at DDS’s Community Media Centre. A team of Narsammas, Poolammas and Lakshmammas of this drought-stricken rural village built it from scratch and still manage it: with unwavering determination, clarity and a will that cyclones and epidemics cannot suppress.

When the unprecedented COVID pandemic arrived, the two Narsammas remained at the radio station. “Covid was no different here, unless an outside visitor brought the virus,” says General Narsamma.

However, they did inform the villagers about the dangers of the coronavirus and how to prevent it. Since its inception, Sangham radio has been talking about the health and life of the villagers, even when broadcasting narrowly. Narsamma would go to where her subjects were, record their voices, take the edited sounds from village to village, and present them to audiences via narrow broadcast.

Judge BP Sawant, who delivered the landmark ruling in 2008 that airwaves were in the public domain, opened Sangham Radio for broadcast on October 15, 2008. Until then, they were not allowed to have their own radio stations, even though they had built their broadcast towers more than a decade earlier.

When they started radio, they gave loans to sanghams in each village to purchase radios. While it was being broadcast in the UNESCO broadcast, it was broadcasting up to 80-90 kilometers.

“Even though the broadcast was only in the evening, we were calling from the morning, getting requests and complaints about which songs to play. Sometimes the villagers would call and ask us to announce that their cow was missing, and if someone had seen the cow, they would call and give information,” laughs Algole Narsamma.

Sangham Radio has come a long way in telling its stories by adhering to the principles of what and why. From the days of narrow broadcasting to the prosperity of over 1.5 lakh listeners every day, they now stand at the crossroads of a cultural shift where Youtube and Whatsapp have taken over rural communication. Sangham Radio has also been updated: Those who want to listen can access the Youtube channel every day at 7.30 pm.

In DDS’s short film “A Radio of Their Own”, General Narsamma, wearing a skirt and top for a year, sits on one of the bars on the metal tower. Unfazed by the camera focusing on his face, he asks the world: “Why are only big people allowed to run radio stations or something? Little people like us don’t have the right to do that? Why?”

28 years later, Narsamma’s voice remains unchanged, now a well-built woman with a deep tan and smile lines on her face. “We are clear about what we want to release. No movie songs. No political propaganda. This is community media for the community and will remain so,” he says.