MUMBAI: India's first rural Community Radio station will go on air on 15 October 2008, World Rural Women's Day. Named Sangham Radio, the station will be launched in Machnoor Village in Medak District of Andhra Pradesh.

Sangham Radio is an initiative by the DDS Community Media and the first radio to be owned and managed by all women from marginalised communities  It is also a historic justice that the DDS Community Radio will be manned by women from the margins of the Society, people who have been excluded and rendered voiceless in any public forum.

Sangham Radio will be inaugurated by Justice P B Sawant, the Supreme Court judge who delivered the historic 1995 judgement affirming that â€?Airwaves are Public Property' making a history in the annals of Indian broadcasting. Justice Sawant will be joined by former Information and Broadcasting former Secretary Dr Bhaskar Ghose, International Association of Women in Radio & TV Chair Jai Chandiram, and Dr Vinod Pavarala, Professor and Dean, School of Communication, University of Hyderabad,  Mr Pothuri Venkateswara Rao, veteran Telugu journalist and former Chair, Press Academy of AP.

The DDS Community Media initiative started ten years ago on the principle that media has always ignored the rural people in particular and in particular women from marginalised sections. Therefore a media of the people, for the people, by the people is the only way to respond to this media marginalisation of the rural poor and women. Sangham Radio emanated eight years ago in the form of Pastapur Declaration by the Community Radio advocates, DDS was the first applicant for Community Radio as far back as 2000                       

Earlier, the Satara based NGO Mann Vikas Samajik Sanstha-MVSS has acquired the license to run a community radio but hasn't started broadcasting yet  Another community radio station that was issued to Development Alternatives' Bundelkhand FM in Orchha will be inaugurated on 23 October.