MUMBAI: In order to combat the menace of dengue and malaria in the city of Delhi, Red FM Delhi has commenced the initiative ‘Red FM Bajaa, Machchar Bhagaa.’

The radio station will mix a sound along with the music played on-air at a certain frequency between 14 kHz to 20 kHz. The frequency resembles the sound of the flapping wings of a dragonfly. Dragonfly being a predator of mosquitoes could help the people curb the menace.

The initiative has been on progress on radio for a little less than two weeks. Narrating an incident, which gave birth to this concept, RJ Ashish said, “Once I was talking about the menace of mosquitoes on my show. During the show, I was contacted by an aspiring scientist Debojoti Shekhar Basu who said that the sounds transmitted at 14KhZ becomes unbearable for mosquitoes and when the listeners tune into the frequency and the radio station becomes a mosquito repellent station.”

The station soon started working on the concept and consulted the technical team, which said merging the sound of the flapping wings of a dragonfly would be possible and finally it was implemented. The radio station relays the frequency for 24 hours and according to Ashish the response for the initiative has been “phenomenal.”

“People have called to inform that the initiative of Red FM is driving out mosquitoes,” he said.

The radio station has also asked listeners to send selfies of the locations, which are prone to mosquito breeding.

Along with this on-air sound, the radio station is also emphasising on the importance of cleanliness, which will prevent breeding of mosquitoes. The mayor of Delhi, Ravinder Gupta has joined hands with the radio station and has assured that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) will implement the fumigation drive. The MCD is also running multiple awareness drives, which are reaching out to numerous localities of Delhi.

Apart from social media and on-air promotion, there is no other form of promotions for the initiative. “There are a lot of research papers that said this kind of an activity was possible, nevertheless, it was never done before. So, before promoting it extensively, we wanted to make sure that the concept works,” said Red FM national programming head Anand Raj.

According to Raj, the radio station will implement promotional activities only after analysing the responses. “This is probably the last week of the activity. We need to wait and watch the responses for the activity and only then we would think about taking the initiative to different markets,” he further said.

Other than ‘Red FM Bajaa, Machchar Bhagaa’ campaign, there is yet another civic issue based initiative that is running in Indore called ‘Deewal Pe Bawal.’ It highlights some important civic issues, which culminate into wall graphite. The radio station has picked up a few issues including littering, law and order, urinating on the streets and eve teasing.

“We wish to highlight the problem of littering, so, we bring together all the stakeholders, authorities and many others and asked them to create graphite. The graphite tells the people the right way to behave but in a humorous manner. The best of it is featured on one of the prominent walls of the city,” explained Raj.

‘Deewal Pe Bawaal’ is a three to four week long activity and if it gets good responses in Indore, the radio network will take the same to other markets as well.