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“Women had no way to express themselves before. Now they've got a voice.”
-Geeta Rudani, 22
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TV and newspapers rarely reach villages in Kutch, a mostly
desert region in the Indian state of Gujarat, and illiteracy rates are
high. In Kutch, the radio rules. ”In the cities the radio is not so
popular now,“ says Geeta Rudani, a reporter for community radio
station Radio Ujjas. “But in the villages, everybody listens. Even
the cattle grazers who go to the forests take a radio along.” Rural
women in Kutch had no public forum before, says Geeta, but now
they've got one with a dial and considerable power. Radio Ujjas'
listeners regularly contact reporters with tales of scams and
corruption. Teachers who weren't getting their salaries got paid
immediately after a Radio Ujjas reporter paid a visit. In the village
of Reha, new roofs had still not been distributed three years after
an earthquake had destroyed many houses. Yet when a reporter
turned up, the village leader suddenly found he could distribute
them after all. “Radio is the medium of the common people,” says
Geeta. “It should stay in their hands.”
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“Someone may have been nominated as legal advisor to MTNL [the state telephone company] and want that to be known, so I will put it up on the board.”
-Tanajirao Bansode, 40
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Too often, poverty is confused with passivity. But walk down
any street in any Indian slum and you'll come across a noticeboard
bursting with energy. Shashishkala Kamdar, 43, is in charge of the
board run by Mahila Vikas Mandal (Women's Progress Group) in
Siddharth Nagar Slum A in Mumbai. “The board is used to make
announcements, about marriages, births, deaths, or birthday
greetings for our activists. If someone's getting married and they
run out of invitation cards, we'll put one up on the board and
everyone considers it an invitation.” The writing of notices is done
in chalk or paint by local youths who get paid a soda or two for the
work, which sometimes has to be redone. “Now and again kids do
wipe out the notices for a prank,” says Shashishkala. “We scold
them and get it rewritten.” Sunil Shedge, 42, is the signboard writer
for another community group board in a neighboring slum. “This
board makes us visible. We have the right to make our voice heard.
We can't call press conferences to broadcast our local news, so
this board is our medium. It's easy, simple and cheap.”
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