Developed by Shubhranshu Choudhary, a Knight International Journalism Fellow and freelance producer for the BBC, this audio-based citizen journalism service allows residents of a tribal community in Chhattisgarh, India, to produce and share audio news reports simply by calling a number on any fixed or cell phone. Residents can listen to reports on important issues, such as school closures, evictions, elephant tramplings, and police and government abuses. Users respond to voice prompts, so they can access the reports even if they cannot read.
Citizens also can call in their own news. Three professional journalists act as moderators and verify (or admit they can’t verify) the news that is called in, then edit, and publish it.
Called CGNet Swara, it is believed to be the first source of news in the state, a primarily poor, rural area in central India. It is especially useful because the 80-million-strong Adivasi tribal community has limited access to computers and electricity, and India bans all radio news except the government-run station.
The CGNet network, which was deployed in February 2010, receives about 3,000 calls per month, said Choudhary, who grew up in Chhattisgarh.
“The response is well beyond our expectation, so it looks like the right model for those areas,” Choudhary said. “We get around 10 messages a day, of which we release around three after cross checking the facts.”
And it is making an impact, Choudhary said. One citizen report documented that the government had failed to pay teachers for more than six months. Within 10 days of the story going live on the system, the teachers were paid.
The technology used for CGNet Swara is AudioWiki software developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Latif Alam and Microsoft Research India’s Bill Thies. It was customized for CGNet by an MIT team to allow only two options: record or listen.
The MIT team wanted to find a way for people in Chhattisgarh to discuss news in their own language. Most speak Gondi, an endangered language without written literature.