Santa Kalita, a newspaper hawker, started his journey with Jnan Taranga 90.4 seven years ago. At the time, he worked at a photocopier’s sho...
Santa Kalita, a newspaper hawker, started his journey with Jnan Taranga 90.4 seven years ago. At the time, he worked at a photocopier’s shop in Dispur, Guwahati’s political district. One day, while tuning a radio in the shop, Kalita, he stumbled upon a new FM station. It was Jnan Taranga (Wave of Knowledge), a community radio station that had started life in Assam in 2009.
Kalita approached the station and began participating in a community programme titled “Manar Khabor” (Mind Matters), making 2,000 telephone calls in five years. His voice became familiar to people running the station and its listeners. Whatever happened, Kalita would never fail to tune into or participate in the programme at 5pm every day.
As Assam went into lockdown to contain the coronavirus, the show became a lifeline. Forty three-year-old Manoj Kumar Deka, an empanelled “katha bandhu”, anchor, single-handedly ran 333 hours of broadcasting in 37 days.
But in May, transmission had to stop. For a decade, the community radio station had been run by the multimedia production unit of the KK Handiqui State Open University from its campus in Dispur. In its official note, the university said it was shifting campuses, which is why transmission had to be stopped, at least...
