Minister for Information & Broadcasting Ambika Soni on July 13, 2010 inaugurated the 1st Regional Conference of Media Units in the North-East at Guwahati. Speaking on the occasion, Soni said that all efforts would be made to innovate communication tools and processes in order to address the communication needs of the North-Eastern region. For this purpose, the initiatives of the I&B Ministry would aim to empower the people with quality information, while at the same time looking into issues related to infrastructure upgradation for media units, manpower requirements for enhancing information dissemination , programming and content creation for effective outreach.
Elaborating further, Soni said that the initiative of convening the 1st Regional Conference provided a platform for comprehensive discussions on outlining the future communication roadmap for the region and facilitated a face-to-face interaction with the key principals of the State Governments. Such interactions also served as a guiding tool in designing the outreach programmes in the media units during the 12th Plan. This platform also provided an opportunity to State Governments to understand the working of the media units in the context of the recent policy initiatives undertaken by the Ministry for the region: namely, digitalisation, funds for software development, increasing the bouquet of channels under DTH services under DD Direct Plus from 57 to 97 in Phase-I, policy support for small and medium newspapers in local regional languages. The Minister specifically mentioned that media units such as Directorate of Field Publicity and Song & Drama Division would be strengthened from both the infrastructure and human resource perspective so that the awareness of Government’s schemes could reach the far flung areas of the country.
In her deliberations, Soni also mentioned that through the Phase-III policy of FM radio, an attempt was being made to invite the participation of private players in the segment. Incentives were being provided to facilitate the partnership of private stakeholders.
The Conference discussed in detail the initiatives undertaken by the media units for the region. For Doordarshan, the initiatives highlighted included its efforts to promote free to air DTH service of DD Direct Plus by distributing 25,000 DTH receiver systems through the nodal officers appointed by the State Government. Rs 25 crore have been allocated to Doordarshan for the year 2010-11.