Radio Quarantine

Radio Quarantine is an Indian internet based community radio and podcast. It was founded in response to social isolation protocols imposed as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak and has two stations namely, Radio Quarantine Kolkata (abbreviated as RQK) and Radio Quarantine Bangalore (abbreviated as RQB).

Radio Quarantine
CityKolkata, Bangalore
Broadcast areaInternational
Programming
Language(s)Bengali, Hindi, English
FormatCommunity radio
History
First air date
March 25, 2020 (2020-03-25)
Links
WebcastZeno FM Stream

Podcasts on Spotify

RQK on Youtube

History

Radio Quarantine was launched on 25 March 2020 in the city of Kolkata, West Bengal.[1] It was founded by a group of professors, directors and PhD students in response to social isolation protocols following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic in India.[2][3] The group was formed after the Government of West Bengal had announced that a lockdown in the state was to be imposed and its launch coincided with the imposition of the national lockdown by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi,[3][4] which had been ordered a day before on 24 March.[5] The station began operation as a community radio run from studio setups at homes with 10 administrators for technical and editorial oversight.[4][6]

The broadcast were hosted on the free of cost radio streaming platform ZenoRadio,[7] and went live from 4 pm onwards on 25 March. The inaugural programme on the station was a 30-minute reading session by Sujaan Mukherjee, a researcher on the urban history of Kolkata at the Jadavpur University.[6] The radio station had a second launch in the city of Bangalore, Karnataka on the following day, operated by a network of composers and instrument makers.[1] The Kolkata station had begun as a 24/7 service with a mixture of pre-recorded original programmes and repeat programmes at other times, gathering around 5,000 listeners within the first 9 days of its launch.[7]

On May Day, the station held a collaboration with the Udichi Shilpi Goshti, the largest cultural organisation in Bangladesh and hosted a show featuring revolutionary songs and commemorated the 1886 Haymarket massacre by chronicling its history. It featured a show with a series of interviews on women workers from West Bengal and Bangladesh. The first half of the show included interviews with domestic workers from West Bengal who described their loss of livelihood due lack of regulations or an labour union to represent them in midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, while the second half of the show featured an interview with Taslima Akhter, the president of a Bangladeshi solidarity group for garment workers, who spoke about their exploitation and how the pandemic had made situation worse by forcing workers to either starve or risk infection.[2]

According to Kasturi Basu, one of the administrators, the idea for collaborating with Bangladeshi individuals on May Day had come about during their planning of shows for the birth anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore on 7 May 2020. Basu states that the decision was taken "because Bangladesh fought for their right to celebrate Tagore’s body of work, which was accused of hosting anti-Islamic values". The station aired the show called Bangladesher Hriday Hote (transl. From the Heart of Bangladesh) that featured interviews with individuals like the novelist Azizul Huq, biographer Jatin Sarkar, sociologist Anupam Sen and Moinul Abedin, the son of Zainul Abedin who had chronicled the 1943 Bengal famine through his paintings. On 19 May 2020, the station also hosted programmes narrating and discussing the Bengali Language Movement in the Barak Valley of Assam.[2]

The station organised a memorial on 20 May 2020 to commemorate the death of the Bengali journalist and freedom fighter Kamal Lohani who was the founder of the Free Bengal Radio Station and had died of COVID-19. It stopped airing shows for a few weeks following the landfall of Cyclone Amphan and resumed streaming after electricity and connectivity were restored in Kolkata. The radio station produced over 350 episodes by the end of August and gathered an international audience. The relaxation of the lockdown led to fewer original programming being broadcast by the station and by September, it had begun producing original programming in the form of podcasts with monthly six to ten episodes.[2]

Format and shows

Radio Quarantine Kolkata

The station broadcasts various programs and episodes for 24 hours every day, featuring original programmes between 5 pm and 2 am.[8] It includes shows related to health advice which feature medical professionals.[3] One of the popular segments of the station is Quarantine Diaries, which a daily news summary and includes analysis of the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act and the associated National Register of Citizens amid the pandemic.[4][8] Darshan Mitra, a professor at the National Institute of Juridicial Science is associated with the segment.[8]

Kankan Bhattacharyya hosts a show called Asamayer Katha, Samayer Gaan (transl. Untimely Talk, Timely Songs).[2] The singer and oral historian Moushumi Bhowmik hosts a programme, which documents regional and cultural histories across Bengal including those from Purulia to Sylhet to the Sundarbans and occasionally features interviews with various folk singers.[2] The daily shows end with a music segment hosted by the writer Sudipto Sanyal called "Songs of comfort for hypochondriac and pining lovers", which features an eclectic collection of Indian and International songs and continues till 2 am at night.[1][8] The segment has featured Brazilian rock, Venezuelan folk, Bollywood songs, Palestinian reggae, American jazz and hip hop among others.[8]

The station also broadcasts reading sessions and a children's segment.[8] Recorded performances are crowdsourced from listener contributors,[1] that are aired if they meet specified criterion set by the station and include experiences of individuals isolated in their homes.[9] Some of which are gathered from minors and are aired on the children's segment.[6][9] The children's segment is allotted an hour slot,[9] which is occasionally hosted by a teacher based in the country of Norway.[7] It involves short stories readings, poem recitals and music.[9]

Since September 2020, new original programmes were shifted to a podcast featuring six to ten episodes per month. The episodes focus on educational content related to science and technology in simplified language for the understanding of untrained adults and children. It also consists of episodes related to political, social and philosophical questions, which include episodes on The Plague by Albert Camus, on Plague and Quarantine by Rajinder Singh Bedi and on Shada Prithibi (transl. White Earth) by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay.[2]

Radio Quarantine Bangalore

The Bangalore station of Radio Quarantine broadcasts music on shows called Isolation and Dancing on Your Own and discussion shows about political and social issues in India.[1] Isolation is hosted by the musician Yashas Shetty and features songs across various genres and time period. The show hosted by Shetty is compared with the one on the Kolkata station in terms of its eclecticism, and has featured both eastern and western classical composition, contemporary Japanese musicians and Hindi and English pop from the 1980s.[8]

Savita Vijayakumar has arranged invitations for a number of guest speakers on its discussion shows, which are hosted by Shetty. The show has featured discussions on the dangers posed by science with the cosmologist Martin Rees, on the crisis faced by migrants and other workers in midst of the pandemic with the activist and unionist Kavita Krishnan, and on various other topics with individuals such as the sound engineer Umashankar Mantravadi and the writer Arshia Sattar.[8]

References
  1. I. S. (17 April 2020). "The coronavirus is bringing about a boom in new radio stations". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  2. Mukherjee, Senjuti (1 January 2021). "Echoes of Resistance: How Radio Quarantine builds solidarity in difficult times". The Caravan. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  3. Bhattacharya, Ravik (26 March 2020). "Radio Quarantine an antidote for anxieties in time of isolation". The Indian Express. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  4. Akhtar, Shabina (4 April 2020). "Radio Quarantine Kolkata: Web-based radio station brings joy to people during lockdown". eNewsroom India. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  5. Gettleman, Jeffrey; Schultz, Kai (24 March 2020). "Modi Orders 3-Week Total Lockdown for All 1.3 Billion Indians". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  6. Mitra, Debraj (24 March 2020). "Solidarity comes alive on radio wave in Calcutta". The Telegraph. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  7. Chanda, Kathakali; Shekhar, Divya J. (26 April 2020). "In Times Of Social Distancing, Forming Communities". Forbes. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  8. Neurekar, Malavika (7 April 2020). "Radio Quarantine: Indian artists are trying to create a space for music and community in lockdown". Scroll.in. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
  9. "Web-based radio station set up for locked down people". Business Standard. Press Trust of India. 25 March 2020. Retrieved 4 January 2021.
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