Shri Raghu Menon, Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Government of India was elected as Chairman of the Inter-Governmental Council of the International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC). This is for the first time in the history of IPDC that a developing country will be in the chair of the Inter-Governmental Council of the IPDC. Since its inception, the Chairmanship had always remained with developed countries. The candidature of the India, endorsed by Asia Pacific Regional Group and supported by countries from Africa, Arab and Lain American Region, won the election with 23 out of 37 votes against Switzerland who got 14 votes.





The Inter-Governmental Council of the IPDC was established in 1980 and implements national, regional and inter-regional projects in the areas of promotion of freedom of expression and media pluralism, development of community media, capacity building and promotion of international partnership.




In his acceptance speech, Shri Raghu Menon thanked the members of the Inter-Governmental Council for reposing faith in his leadership and assured his full commitment for strengthening programme implementation under IPDC’s mandates. Apart from media development as a vehicle for fostering good governance, democracy and transparency, he also highlighted the need for media to be inclusive so as to ensure spread, reach and coverage of media accessibility to all the citizens. Inclusiveness would result in bridging the urban rural divide, reaching economically under-privileged sections of the society and to make full use of the technological advance to provide access to information at affordable costs. Shri Menon underlined the spin-off effect of the projects under implementation by IPDC in influencing policy formulation by Member States and underlined the importance of greater generation of resources for IPDC.

India has contributed US $ 1.4 million to IPDC Programme since its inception and is strongly committed to the Fund and its programmes. India will be Chair of the Inter-Governmental Council of IPDC till its next Session in 2012