AgricINTERNATIONAL

Community radio is a radio service offering a third model of radio broadcasting in addition to commercial and public broadcasting. Community stations serve geographic communities and communities of interest. They broadcast content that is popular and relevant to a local and specific audience but is often overlooked by commercial or mass-media broadcasters. Community radio stations are operated, owned and influenced by the communities they serve. They are generally nonprofit and provide a mechanism for enabling individuals, groups and communities to tell their own stories, to share experiences and in a media-rich world, to become creators and contributors of media. In many parts of the world community radio acts as a vehicle for the community and voluntary sector, civil society, agencies, NGOs and citizens to work in partnership to further community development aims in addition to broadcasting. Rural women in India are important actors for community development and to hold information from them is to hold back the potential for economic growth. However obstacles such as poverty, illiteracy, fear, poor access to public agencies and lack of knowledge about the right to information and how or where to ask for it have deprived women from access to information. Community radio is the only accessible and readily affordable media within the rural community and can play a significant role for rural development of women. It helps to provide information and support in educating rural women in financially disadvantaged communities.