MUMBAI: Radio Sharda, the first community radio station of Jammu & Kashmir, has made the best use of technology to reach out to listeners not only in their frequency area but across the globe.
Although the station is doing its best to reach out to listeners, it is striving hard to collect enough funds for the station. The station that was launched in December 2011 is still struggling to get its first live phone in instrument installed.
Speaking with Radioandmusic.com, Radio Sharda 90.4 FM founder and managing director Ramesh Hangloo says, “Presently, we don’t have live phone-in instruments like other stations as we are community radio stations who are depended on monetary support to get investment on such costly instruments. But we are strongly working towards it and have not stopped trying. There is a lack of support from legislature and ministers.”
The station that broadcasts in Kashmiri and Hindustani on 90.4 MHz in Jammu (Buta Nagar) is aimed at the betterment of the displaced people of Kashmir” (ie, Kashmiri Pandits). It is licensed to Pir Panchal, a civil society organization.
Over 100 volunteers work for Radio Sharda. “There are students doing internship with us. “We earn a small sum through advertisements that run locally here. We have volunteers who provide their service to the community radio as we are not able to pay them we get their advertisements posted on our website. So the advertisements on our site don’t really get us any revenue,” informs Hangloo.
The programming content on Radio Sharda is in Kashmiri, Dogri, Punjabi, Gojri, Bhaderwahi and Ladhakhi. Being the first community radio from J&K to receive license of CR, Radio Sharda has the onus to revive and preserve the cultural ethos of our community among the progeny.
“We are interested in youth programmes currently. We want to give more youth oriented programmes concerning their education and career and have already started working on it. There is lot of scope of youth programmes here and as they have developed their own style we have to understand that and then work on it.”
The station also has programmes to promote their culture, tradition and languages that are usually lost among the people with changing trends.
It airs 15 hours of live programming; out of which three hours are live, rest is recorded. The streaming on the website is available for 24 hours. “Kashmiri, Dogri and Punjabi are the three distinctive languages in this region and we air the programs in these languages. We have more 2 lakh listenership over radio and 2 lakh around the globe through our website. The website was the need of the community as we have people from our community around New York, China, Washington, Africa, and Indonesia and all over India. It was necessary to get them connected to their culture and language.”