Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves 9781138558533, 9781003056232

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of boxes
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Community radio in South Asia: a roadmap for media democracy
Part I The policy terrain
2 Deliberating community radio in India: a policy ethnography
3 Community radio in Bangladesh: policy and practice
4 Community radios of Nepal: trajectory of a cultural movement
5 Community radio in Sri Lanka: need for legal recognition and community ownership
Part II Issues in practice
6 Beyond the development trap: NGOisation of community radio in India
7 Radio spectrum management: implications for community radio in South Asia
8 The paradoxes of technology: reflections on community radio in South Asia
9 Women and community radio in South Asia: the participation and empowerment conundrum
10 Community radio in times of disaster: contemplations for South Asia
11 Not quite there yet: sustainability of community radio in South Asia
Part III Case Studies
12 Conflict and community radio in India: solutions possible and impossible
13 Evaluating community radio: an analysis of a toolkit for self-assessment
14 Mapping material media practices: Sangam Radio at DDS
15 Grassroots democracy via community radio: a case study in rural India
16 Community radio for creating communication channels: theoretical musings emanating from Himalayan rural locales
Index

Citation preview

COMMUNITY RADIO IN SOUTH ASIA

This book explores the state of community radio, a significant independent media movement that began about two decades ago, in different parts of South Asia. The volume outlines the socioeconomic and historical contexts for understanding the evolution and functioning of community radio in an increasingly globalised media environment. It provides a ring-side view of how various countries in South Asia have formulated policies that enabled the emergence of this third sector of broadcasting (public and private being the other two) through radio, rendering the media ecology in the region more pluralistic and diverse. The chapters in the volume, interspersed by practitioner perspectives, discuss a range of key issues related to community radio: radio policies, NGOisation of community radio, spectrum management and democratisation of technology, disasters/emergencies, gender issues, sustainability, and conflicts. One of the first of its kind, this volume will appeal to scholars and researchers of community media and independent media studies, cultural studies, as well as sociology and social anthropology, and South Asian studies. Kanchan K. Malik is Professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, India. She is also a faculty fellow with the UNESCO Chair on Community Media since 2011 and Editor of the newsletter CR News. Vinod Pavarala is Senior Professor at the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, India, where he has also held the UNESCO Chair on Community Media since 2011. They have previously authored Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India (2007) and several joint articles and research reports on community radio in leading publications.

“This volume, put together by two of the leading researchers of community radio in South Asia, is an authoritative and rich collection of articles from a mix of esteemed and emerging scholars. This is a timely and important follow-up on Pavarala and Malik’s much-cited 2007 book, Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India.” Jo Tacchi, Loughborough University London, UK “Kanchan K. Malik and Vinod Pavarala, two of South Asia’s leading experts on the subject, have pulled together an impressive collection that shines a light on the complexity and contradictions of community radio in the region. Like all good books, it raises as many questions as it answers. If policy processes are slow, as they often are, might we be better off without policy? Why are there fewer community radio stations in India, which has a policy for supporting and encouraging them, than in Nepal, which doesn’t? What differentiates participatory and populist media? But the questions asked, and the answers offered, are fascinating and full of insights that will help define the next steps for community radio, development communication, and participatory communication for years to come.” Bruce Girard, Author of A Passion for Radio

COMMUNITY RADIO IN SOUTH ASIA Reclaiming the Airwaves

Edited by Kanchan K. Malik and Vinod Pavarala

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Kanchan K. Malik and Vinod Pavarala; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Kanchan K. Malik and Vinod Pavarala to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-55853-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-05623-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of boxesviii Notes on contributorsix Acknowledgementsxiv   1 Community radio in South Asia: a roadmap for media democracy

1

KANCHAN K. MALIK AND VINOD PAVARALA

PART I

The policy terrain

19

  2 Deliberating community radio in India: a policy ethnography

21

PREETI RAGHUNATH

  3 Community radio in Bangladesh: policy and practice

44

MOHAMMAD SAHID ULLAH

  4 Community radios of Nepal: trajectory of a cultural movement

65

SUDHAMSHU DAHAL

  5 Community radio in Sri Lanka: need for legal recognition and community ownership

82

M.C. RASMIN AND W.A.D.P. WANIGASUNDERA

PART II

Issues in practice

101

  6 Beyond the development trap: NGOisation of community radio in India

103

VINOD PAVARALA

v

C ontents

  7 Radio spectrum management: implications for community radio in South Asia

117

RAM BHAT

  8 The paradoxes of technology: reflections on community radio in South Asia

132

HEMANT BABU

  9 Women and community radio in South Asia: the participation and empowerment conundrum

147

KANCHAN K. MALIK

10 Community radio in times of disaster: contemplations for South Asia

165

ASHISH SEN

11 Not quite there yet: sustainability of community radio in South Asia

184

N. RAMAKRISHNAN AND VENU ARORA

PART III

Case Studies

199

12 Conflict and community radio in India: solutions possible and impossible201 PRADIP NINAN THOMAS

13 Evaluating community radio: an analysis of a toolkit for self-assessment215 VASUKI BELAVADI

14 Mapping material media practices: Sangam Radio at DDS

232

MADHAVI MANCHI

15 Grassroots democracy via community radio: a case study in rural India BIDU BHUSAN DASH

vi

253

C ontents

16 Community radio for creating communication channels: theoretical musings emanating from Himalayan rural locales

268

PRIYA KAPOOR

Index

287

vii

BOXES

1 Community radio that matters 2 Let CRs not be poor copies of mainstream radio 3 Community media is making the media landscape of South Asia more pluralistic 4 A policy conundrum: the case of CR in Nepal 5 Sri Lanka govt. revives dialogue on community radio 6 Time to redefine and refine CR policies 7 Spectrum: its price, value & meaning 8 The technological passage of CR 9 Chahat Chowk: breaking the silence on sexual health 10 World Radio Day 2016: CR for emergency and disaster 11 CR sustainability: a social, institutional, technological and financial conundrum 12 Voices for peace & change in South Asian region 13 Manifold participation to be the headway for CR research 14 Three years and counting: new paths ahead 15 Inclusion for all: community radio for the unheard 16 When will India’s first emergency radio get a permanent license?

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16 41 61 80 98 115 129 145 163 182 197 213 230 250 266 285

CONTRIBUTORS

Venu Arora is the Founder/Director of Ideosync Media Combine, a New Delhibased not-for-profit organisation working on social and behaviour change communication, community media, freedom of expression, and voice equity. She has extensive experience in communication strategy development, media research, radio and video with script, and direction and production credits on broadcast radio and video series as well as wide-ranging training experience for community media. A published poet and lyricist, she is also the author of research papers, book chapters, and manuals on community media. She teaches radio and voice at the Jindal School of Journalism, Jindal Global University, India. Hemant Babu is a communications and open source technology enthusiast. He worked as a journalist for a decade and a half. Later, he branched out to create an open source technology environment that enables free and independent media ecology. He founded Nomad, an organisation that helps community groups start local radio stations. Nomad is also known for its flagship lowpowered FM transmitter that powers many cars in India, Africa, and Bhutan. Vasuki Belavadi is Professor in the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad, India. He obtained his MA (communication) in 1993 and his PhD from the University of Hyderabad in 2016. He worked for about 11  years in  the print, TV, and NGO sectors and has taught at Manipal Institute of Communication and Tezpur University, India. He specialises in video and radio production. His research interests include the pedagogy of video production and community media. He is the author of Video Production  (2008). He conducts capacity-sharing training in  participatory video, particularly for children and adolescents. Ram Bhat is the co-founder of Maraa, a media and arts collective based in Bangalore and Delhi, India. He is also currently serving as the President of AMARC Asia-Pacific. He has more than a decade of experience working in the community radio movement in India, including capacity-building, field research, and policy advocacy. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science, Department of Media and Communications, United Kingdom.

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Sudhamshu Dahal is Visiting Professor at the Central Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Tribhuvan University and Faculty of Media Studies at Languages and Mass Communication, Kathmandu University, Nepal. He teaches strategic communication to undergraduate and graduate and guides PhD scholars in the area comprising new media, ICT for development, and community communication. Before moving to academics, he worked with various media and on development projects for I/NGOs, including UNICEF and UNDP, in South Asia and Nepal. His research interests include social, cultural, and political empowerment and media in South Asia. Bidu Bhusan Dash is Assistant Professor and Course Coordinator at the School of Mass Communication, Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India. He was Charles Wallace India Trust Visiting Fellow at SOAS, University of London (2015–2016), and CRY National Child Rights Research Fellow (2013–2014). He obtained his PhD from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and taught at Savitribai Phule Pune University. Based on his fieldwork in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Maharashtra, he has presented papers in institutes of international repute, such as Indian Institute of Advanced Study, University of Kelaniya, and University of Warwick. Priya Kapoor is Professor of International and Global Studies at Portland State University, USA. Her research direction includes critical cultural theories in communication; globalisation and transnationalism; grassroots movements; international media, community-based and commercial; and intercultural communication using intersectional approaches. She is an affiliate researcher at Hankuk Foreign University for their multi-year grant (National Korea Foundation) to establish the Institute of Indian Studies in Seoul, S. Korea. Her recent publications include “Communicating gender, race and nation in the Purvi Patel case: The state, biopower, and the globality of reproductive surveillance” in Gender and Women’s Studies, 2018; 1(1): 4. Kanchan K. Malik is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, India, where she also served as the Head from January 2017–2020. She is also a faculty fellow with the UNESCO Chair on Community Media since 2011 and Editor of the newsletter CR News. She has taught postgraduate journalism and mass communication courses for twenty-three years. She obtained her PhD in communication from the University of Hyderabad in 2006. With a dual master’s in economics and mass communication, she worked as a journalist with The Economic Times, New Delhi, for two years before choosing a career in academics. She has worked on several research projects and published research papers on media interventions by non-governmental organisations for empowerment at the grassroots level. Her research has contributed to policy advocacy efforts for community radio in India. Her scholarly articles on the gender dimension of community radio as well as the codes of practice for community media, amongst others, are widely cited. Her scholastic and research interests include women in

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community communications, community media, journalism studies, media laws and ethics, and communication for social change. Madhavi Manchi received a PhD in social sciences from the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. She now lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and currently works for the University of Auckland. Here, she has held research positions at the Schools of Psychology and Environment and was previously a teaching fellow in the Gender Studies Department. Her research interests are interdisciplinary, tying together ideas related to media, politics of food, and environment. Vinod Pavarala  is Senior Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Hyderabad, India, where he has also held the UNESCO chair on community media since 2011. He has a dual masters in sociology and communication and a PhD from the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, USA), and IIT-Bombay, India, before joining the University of Hyderabad, India, in 1995. He was a visiting fellow at Princeton University, USA, from 1998 to 1999. Through two decades of research and policy advocacy, he has been at the forefront of the struggle for the freeing of the airwaves in India and South Asia. He has addressed several international forums on community media, including UNESCO, AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broacasters), CMFE (Community Media Forum of Europe), and national and regional networks in Cyprus, Germany, Austria, and East and West Africa. He serves as the Chair of the Community Communication and Alternative Media (CCAM) Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) and is on the boards of several international journals. Preeti Raghunath is Assistant Professor at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC), Pune, India. Her research work and praxis are located at the intersections of global media and communication policies, community media and oral cultures, transitional societies, human security, and deliberative democracy in South Asia. She received her PhD from the Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Her doctoral thesis, Deliberating community radio in South Asia: a critical policy ethnography, is a critical, reflexive, multi-sited ethnographic study of policymaking for community radio in four countries of South Asia – namely, Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. N. Ramakrishnan is a writer, radio producer, filmmaker, media trainer, and CoFounder/Director of Ideosync Media Combine, an internationally reputed SBCC and media advocacy organisation. A former office bearer of the Community Radio Forum of India, he has facilitated the establishment and training of several Indian CR stations and has conducted CR capacity-building workshops across India, South and Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. He has written training manuals on community media and participatory

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communication. He also received the Katha Award for literary translation. He currently teaches a course on radio, voice, and journalism at Jindal Global University in Sonepat, India. M.C. Rasmin is the Deputy Chief of Party (DCOP) of IREX-Sri Lanka Mission, driving its Media Development Program for Sri Lanka. He is a development communication specialist, with over 15  years of experience in transitional and post-conflict settings. He was the Founder of the Sri Lanka Development Journalists Forum (SDJF), where he served as the CEO/Director for eight years. Currently, he is a PhD scholar at Assam Don Bosco University, India. He received a master’s in developmental communication at the University of Peradeniya (PGIA), Sri Lanka, and has completed a master’s-level course on media studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. Ashish Sen is an independent media consultant, trainer, and journalist with more than 30  years of experience in communications for development in print, radio, and theatre. He has worked extensively with community media in India and Asia-Pacific. Formerly President of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), Asia-Pacific Region, and a member of AMARC’s Governance Council, he is currently Adviser to the AsiaPacific Board. He is also a core member of the International Commission on Survivor-Centred Disaster Recovery and a Trustee of the Dev Nandan Ubhayeker Foundation for the Arts in Bangalore, India. Pradip Ninan Thomas is at the School of Communications and Arts, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. He has written extensively on the media in India, including a trilogy published between 2010 and 2012. His research interests include the political economy of communications, religion and media, and communication and social change. His 2019 publications include  Empire and post-empire telecommunications in India: a history and The politics of digital India: Between internal compulsions and external pressures. Mohammad Sahid Ullah is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Communication and Social Change at the School of Communication and Arts, University of Queensland, Australia. His major areas of research include new media and public engagement, journalism education, communication and social change, and political economy and empowerment. He served as Vice-Chair and Co-Chair for the Law Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) for a decade (2006–2015). W.A.D.P. Wanigasundera obtained his PhD in agriculture extension and rural development from University of Reading, United Kingdom. He is Professor at the Department of Agricultural Extension, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He currently serves as a member of the Study Board in Agricultural

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Extension of the Postgraduate Institute of Agriculture (PGIA). He has 25 years of experience in university teaching, research, and curriculum development, together with over 15 years of practical experience as a field extension and rural development worker. He has served as a consultant to many state and non-governmental organisations and conducted several evaluation studies for various rural development organisations.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

When we started our community radio journey in early 2000, it was still a phantom we were chasing across South Asia. Even as private television and radio made their entry into the mediascapes of various countries in the region, radio frequencies were, for the most part, kept out of reach of grassroots communities. While in India the civil society movement for reclaiming the airwaves had just begun at a small village in Telangana, there were a few stations up and running in Nepal, including the much-vaunted Radio Sagarmatha in the Kathmandu Valley, even without a formal community radio policy. In neighbouring Sri Lanka, apart from the experiment conducted against the background of the famed Mahaweli Development Programme, the largest such programme in the country’s history, there was only the Kothmale community radio station in the central hill region, celebrated, despite it being an affiliate of the state broadcaster, for its community broadcasting ethos and the Radio Browsing programme. Twenty years later, we have over 500 community radio stations in India and Nepal altogether and another 25 or so in Bangladesh and Bhutan (which, again, started its community radio adventure without a specific policy). Nepal and Sri Lanka, too, struggling as they are with civil strife and constitutional uncertainties, have yet to forge a policy facilitating the emergence of community radio in their countries, although it has not stopped the former from boasting of a sizable number of community radio stations within the broad ambit of private broadcasting. One can say with certainty that the worldwide deregulation and liberalisation processes in the broadcasting arena have also had a perceptible impact on the South Asian radio scenario, which began moving towards thirdtier community broadcasting in fits and starts. This collection of chapters by academics, activists, and advocates from South Asia addresses a range of issues that have arisen over the last two decades in the community radio domain: the pitfalls of the dominant development orientation, the challenges of ensuring diversity in programming and management, the struggles for further liberalisation of state policies, the conundrum of sustainability, the negotiations over technological choices, and the trials and tribulations over conflicts and natural disasters. We are indeed grateful to all our contributors for sharing their valuable perspectives on community radio and helping us piece together the multi-layered and complex reality of community broadcasting in

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A cknowledgements

South Asia. As editors, we take responsibility for the gaps and unevenness that still remain in terms of themes explored as well as countries covered. Over the years, we drew a lot of sustenance from fellow travellers Sajan Venniyoor, Ashish Sen, Ramnath Bhat, Hemant Babu, Arti Jaiman, N. Ramakrishnan, and Venu Arora, who, as part of the now defunct Community Radio Forum (CRF), doggedly pursued a vision, although at times we all felt we were clutching at straws. Our thanks to all the numerous community radio stations we visited in the region, who, by opening their doors to us and sharing their experiences, kept us grounded in the everyday realities of community radio. Shantaben at Rudi no Radio; Fakat Husain at Alfaz-e-Mewat; Sharmila of Gurgaon ki Awaaz; Algole Narsamma of Sangham Radio; Preeti Soni, formerly of Ujjas; R.J. Priyanka of Radio Active; Radha Shukla at Waqt Ki Awaaz; and many others are the true heroes and heroines of the community radio movement in India. We will remain forever indebted to them for all the learning we get by interacting with them and listening to their narratives of empowerment as the foot soldiers of community radio. We have benefited much from our engagement with the following facilitators and nonpareil advocates: A.H.M. Bazlur Rahman of the Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC); N.A. Shah Ansari (Community Radio Association of India); Raghu Mainali (ACORAB Nepal); Suman Basnet (AMARC Asia-Pacific); M.C. Rasmin (formerly, Sri Lanka Development Journalists’ Forum); P.V. Satheesh (Deccan Development Society); Wijayananda Jayaweera (formerly, UNESCO); Sanjaya Mishra (Commonwealth of Learning); Iskra Panevska, Al-Amin Yusuph, and Anirban Sarma (UNESCO); and Supriya Sahu (formerly, Joint Secretary MIB). At the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, we owe much to Vasuki Belavadi, comrade-in-arms, who, with his blunt and forthright outlook, often keeps us within reasonable and realistic workload limits. We have been fortunate to have the support of bright young research assistants, some of whom have gone on to carve out their own academic paths. These include Preeti Raghunath, Aditya Deshbandhu, Arun John, Taijrani Rampersaud, Aniruddha Jena, Pranay Rupani, and Jharna Brahma. We are grateful to Antara Ray Chaudhary and Shashank Shekhar Sinha of Routledge for facilitating the entire process, from the stage of the concept note, proposal, and signing of the agreement to the various levels of reviews, right up to the approval of the manuscript. From there on, Brinda Sen took on the task of making the manuscript publication-ready, and it has been a pleasant experience working with her. Thank you also to Prof. Jo Tacchi, Loughborough University, London, and Bruce Girard,  author of  A passion for radio, for their generous words of endorsement for the book. We feel privileged to be part of the University of Hyderabad, which provides us with the ecosystem to carry out good-quality academic work as well as the administrative backing for all our endeavours. All our colleagues in the Sarojini Naidu School of Arts and Communication and, especially, the Department of Communication have been a source of strength, giving us the intellectual ambience in which our community media work could thrive. Rambabu, Ramu, and

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Ganesh at the Department of Communication and the UNESCO Chair always provide crucial support for project management and office administration, without which we would be in considerable disarray. Kanchan K. Malik: A substantial part of the work in bringing together and editing this volume happened during the vacation time I spent at home in Lucknow, as my father, the late Mr. K.R. Kumar, and my mother, Mrs. Kiran Kumar, provided me with the same privileges I got back when I was preparing for the board examinations. Without all the good food, the complete freedom of working hours, and the lack of demands placed on me by them, the book would not have been possible. Also, for any task I take up, I draw positive energy from my sister, Kavita Mohindra, who has the knack of making me feel good about the work I am doing, helping me give it my best and take pride in accomplishing it. Parul Malik, when you have a daughter as precious, endowed, loving, supportive, and caring as her, you seldom need to look elsewhere for inspiration. I want to make a special mention here of my friendly neighbours, the Das family (especially Meera and Ina), for being unconditionally affectionate towards me and ever so considerate about my work commitments and schedules. In addition to the PhD scholars named earlier, who have done research or projects with us on community radio, I am also thankful to Ram Awtar Yadav, Annapurna Sinha, Anila Backer, and Sreeju Viswanadh, my PhD scholars working in other spheres, for their intellectual companionship and encouragement for my academic pursuits. Vinod Pavarala: Having a fellow academic as a spouse means that Aparna Rayaprol has to bear with a lot of my community media angst and provide critical inputs that have always come in handy. My daughter, Saranya, who was barely in primary school when our first community radio book came out, now goes to college. She follows all my public engagements related to community media and, I suspect, quietly admires the work I do (“So, you are talking about community radio again?”). Kanchan K. Malik Vinod Pavarala

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1 COMMUNITY RADIO IN SOUTH ASIA A roadmap for media democracy Kanchan K. Malik and Vinod Pavarala Over the years, community radio (CR) has gained credence worldwide as an alternative to the mainstream broadcast media, as an entity owned and managed by marginalised groups, and as a tool for sustaining development, giving voice to the voiceless and contributing towards strengthening the communication rights of people. Many countries in South Asia, especially those who are members of the intergovernmental regional body, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, the Maldives, and Afghanistan, have been making efforts to promote community broadcasting as a legitimate sector within their respective mediascapes, with a view to further media democracy, social change, and freedom of expression.1 There is a lot of buzz around CR in the whole of South Asia today, with India leveraging its potential in facilitating electoral literacy during the 2019 General Elections, besides other projects that seek to augment democracy and social change. Some examples of these include Bangladesh utilising the potential of community radio stations for mainstreaming participation of women, youth, and marginalised populations in national development; Nepal seeking a distinct policy that recognises its 300-strong community radio sector; Sri Lanka lobbying the government to set up autonomous community radio stations; and Bhutan, the Maldives, Afghanistan, and Pakistan experimenting with the concept to explore its long-term prospects in their respective contexts. However, the beginnings of this ferment for a CR sector in the various South Asian countries can be traced back to a little over two decades ago, when the Bangalore Declaration was signed in India in 1996, followed by the Pastapur Declaration in 2000, both advocating for a third, independent tier of broadcasting, outside of the state and the market, that would signify democratic media spaces. Representatives from Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka were also present when these two declarations were formalised. Even before this, there was a community radio station set up to serve settlers in the Mahaweli Development Project in Sri Lanka in 1980, but as it functioned within the state broadcasting system, it is not considered to be genuine CR even though its community-based

1

K anchan K . M alik and V inod P avarala

programme production process was a celebrated approach during the early period of the development of CR in South Asia.2 Although Nepal did not have a policy for CR at that juncture (and is still struggling for one), the establishment of Radio Sagarmatha in 1997 in the Kathmandu valley as the first ever community radio station in South Asia anticipated the eventual freeing of airways from government monopoly in the region3 Around the same time, in India, too, initiatives by grassroots non-governmental organisations (NGOs), such as the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS) in Gujarat, Alternative for India Development (AID) in Jharkhand, Deccan Development Society (DDS) in Andhra Pradesh, and Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA), in partnership with VOICES in Karnataka, served as a conduit for propelling the formulation of CR policy in India, which in turn sketched the roadmap for media democracy and giving voice to the people (Pavarala and Malik, 2007). At the Kathmandu South Asian community radio practitioners and policy makers meeting, held in February 2002, it was resolved that in light of recent trends in the region towards deregulation and liberalisation of media ownership, “community radio has an important role to play in giving expression to the community’s needs and aspirations in order to make development efforts meaningful and relevant.”4 This book is an effort to understand the state of community radio in South Asia through a perusal of its historiography, policy processes, characteristics, and underlying principles, in addition to its linkages with both the conceptual issues of media democracy and the pragmatic concerns of daily practice and outcomes. Amongst the chapters included in the book are those that analyse the pressing policy concerns crucial for the sustenance of community broadcasting in the region and link them back to the media environments in different national contexts. While some of the themes examined in the book are technology-centred, such as spectrum allocation and transmission issues, others deal with the day-to-day practices and struggles related to the community radio sector – for example around issues of licencing, capacity-building, networking, sustainability, and inclusivity. The subjects tackled in the book also explore CR vis-à-vis discourses around gender, identity, ethnicity, and multiculturalism, in the context of social change and participatory governance. CR is a medium supported by multilateral agencies and one that requires constant negotiation between the state and civil society for its existence. All the chapters included in the book seek to make theoretical interlinkages that contribute towards a more nuanced understanding of community radio in South Asia within the context of media globalisation and its ramifications for access and control of communication spaces.

Community radio in South Asia – resilience and reform The socio-political, economic, and cultural diversity of South Asia is suitably mirrored in the community radio scenarios found in the region. With over 300 community radio stations to flaunt, including the first ever established in the region, Nepal exhibits assorted ownership models, including by NGOs,

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C ommunity radio in S outh A sia

cooperatives, local government authorities, and even commercial organisations, but the country still awaits a clear-cut policy on community radio (ACORAB, 2015). In India, the policy guidelines for community radio that were issued in 2003 allowed only educational institutions to set up stations. This was modified in 2006 to include other civil society organisations, with over 200 CR stations today. Bangladesh also witnessed a decade-long advocacy effort by development organisations, and the policy for community radio was announced in 2008, leading to the 17 CR stations currently on air today. Active deliberations have been held in the other South Asian countries, including Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives (with Pakistan and Afghanistan also weighing options), and efforts are on to convince policymakers of the exciting prospects and variety community radio can bring to their respective national development goals and expanding media outlets. The entire South Asian region, at present, is going through a period of unprecedented economic, social, and political shifts and challenges. While a few of the countries are dealing with constitutional complexities and political upheavals, others are having to deal with the difficulties of reconstruction after years of conflict played havoc with their economy and the social circumstances of their citizens. While in some countries the materialisation of democracy is taking forever, in the so-called established democracies, such as India, the governments in power are struggling to gain legitimacy from people who are raking up issues of livelihoods, corruption, and gender justice. There are countries in the region that are still grappling with providing basic entitlements for their citizens, such as peace and safety, affordable housing, basic education for both boys and girls, and food security. In such a cultural and social context, people’s voices and ability to influence decisions that affect their lives become significant, and so do community radios, which are owned, produced, and operated by the people themselves. However, the formation of a dynamic and autonomous community radio sector in South Asia seems to be perpetually “in progress,” in the sense of being a slow/gradual revolution that has not yet managed to fully realise its potential to open up and democratise the media landscape of the South Asian region (Pavarala, 2015). There is an urgent need to facilitate a policy environment in the South Asian region that enables access to media by people and thereby recognises their voices. This will help to address the issue of “voice poverty,” i.e. of denial of voice as a consequence of systemic restrictions on modes of selfexpression that provide people opportunities to participate in decision-making (Tacchi, 2009). Although CR has become a reality in some of the countries of South Asia, it is not difficult to identify the challenges that make the sustainability of this third tier of broadcasting a daunting task in the region. Hurdles are many, including bureaucratic delays in the issuing of licences, prohibitive costs of technology, vanishing spectrum for communities, and declining volunteer support. While some of these are addressed in various chapters of the book, let us consider here the issue of the macro-level institutional environment, which forms the basis of the democratic and sustainable community radio sector in South Asia.

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The democracy dividend: To nourish a sustainable, autonomous, and vibrant community radio sector in South Asia, it is imperative that the democratic ecosystem in the region is reinforced. Political scientists speak of six different models of democracy: electoral, liberal, majoritarian, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian (Coppedge et al., 2011). Following this typology, we can affirm that, in spite of the chequered trajectory of democracy in South Asia, the region has not been found deficient in substantive and procedural democracy. However, for community radio to find fertile ground, take root, and grow in a healthy manner, it is essential that ruling dispensations promote a concept of democracy that is more participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian (Pavarala, 2015). The need is not just to build the scaffolding of procedural democracy but also to imbibe the soul of democracy through greater citizen engagement and participation in the rough-and-tumble issues that matter to them. Only then will the domain of community radio and alternative media get energised and reinvigorated. In Nepal, with the volatile political situation not permitting the formal adoption of the new Constitution until four years ago, community radio does not have recognition as a distinct entity or a clear policy regulating it (Raghunath, 2014). In Sri Lanka, the much applauded Kothmale community radio station (an initiative of the state broadcaster, Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation), backed by UNESCO, never paved the way for establishing a sovereign tier of community broadcasting. The extended years of civil war and the steady dwindling of civil society in the country have made it quite challenging for Sri Lanka to evolve an autonomous community radio space. After the presidential elections in 2015, new possibilities opened up for civil society, and yet there remain persistent human rights concerns (Civicus, 2019). In this atmosphere, some Sri Lankan activists have expressed fresh hopes for the emergence of genuine community radio in Sri Lanka (Rasmin, 2015). In Bangladesh, incidents of violence targeting independent secular bloggers and media persons have been interpreted as suggestive of a divided political milieu that is muzzling free speech and expression and upsetting deliberative democracy (Civicus, 2019). In Bhutan, there have been attempts to kick-start the community radio sector in the country after the transition from an absolute monarchy and subsequent progression towards electoral democracy. In India, which boasts of an energetic civil society exercising a constructive role in social movements and representing the concerns of the marginalised, there are disenchantments within the CR sector because not only are the numbers growing at a slow rate (barely reaching 250 compared with the original projection of about 4,000), but there are also fewer licences granted to civil society organisations, with a majority being handed over to educational institutions. Narrow development perspective: While community radio is identified with civil society groups, and NGOs are the legitimate actors in the establishment and operation of community radio in all countries where the sector is recognised, this phenomenon, too, has led to some anomalies. Whereas “media as a tool for development” is a justifiable vision for community radio, the construction of community radio as simply a means to communicate “development” makes it fall into the trap of the post-colonial nation-building project in which media are

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mobilised for “national development” (Schramm, 1964). This dominant paradigm of development communication involves a top-down linear transmission of information to people who are considered passive recipients. The NGOs then take on a pedagogical role of proffering appropriate instruction to the masses, giving short shrift to people’s right or ability to express themselves as citizens or failing to recognise people’s role as active drivers of change. The compulsions of financial sustenance, the policy accepting only registered NGOs as eligible applicants, and the overall developmental imperative for the sector have resulted in the NGOs playing a primary role in directing the growth of community radio in India. While some of them adhere to the democratic and participatory principles of genuine grassroots community radio in India, other NGOs entering the arena have transformed themselves into development diplomats of sorts, extracting grants from various sources to further their own programmatic agendas. Such initiatives end up adopting methods that are not participatory or people-centric and come under pressure from donors to demonstrate the impact of their work on large numbers of people. Pavarala has written elsewhere and in this volume about the NGOisation of community radio, which, amongst other things, leads to “a stultifying adoption of standardised genres and formats” (Pavarala, 2015: 15). In Bangladesh, where community radio is conceptualised predominantly as a tool for development and disaster management, the situation is not much different, especially as NGOs that form a crucial part of the social sector depend heavily on international donors. Nepal, by contrast, is witnessing widespread politicisation of community radio in the absence of a regulatory framework guiding its CR sector, and there are clearly distinguishable ties with established political parties that are influencing the editorial policies of the stations (Pringle and Subba, 2007). When NGOs, or even CRs, are used increasingly by the government for service delivery, there is always a danger that they may be reduced to what Geoffrey Wood (1997) characterised as a “franchise state,” losing, thereby, their activist political edge and sovereign voice. Therefore, if community radio initiatives are to result in the forging of a truly democratic public sphere, with space for the articulation of marginalised voices, the civil society groups and advocates in South Asia must work towards shifting the focus of the CR movement from a purely developmentalist agenda towards a more radical, communication rights paradigm. A matter of right: According to the World Association of Christian Communicators (WACC, 2006: 67), communication rights “go beyond mere freedom of opinion and expression, to include areas such as democratic media governance, participation in one’s own culture, linguistic rights, rights to enjoy the fruits of human creativity, to education, to privacy, peaceful assembly, and selfdetermination. These are questions of inclusion and exclusion, of quality and accessibility. In short, they are questions of human dignity.” Thus, community radio must go beyond just providing communicative spaces where people can openly participate in discussion and debates and act as arenas for power contestation to challenge the spiral of silence induced by standardised global media. However, the political anomie in Nepal meant that no progressive regulatory

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framework could surface for shepherding community radio. In Sri Lanka, the protracted internecine conflict did not allow the government to even concede to the need for community radio in the country. Bhutan, too, has not ventured on the path of formulating any resolute policy for community radio but has introduced the process for setting up a few community radio stations within the existing regulatory framework. Even in those South Asian countries where there is a formal recognition of the community radio sector and an inclination to give it legislative sanction, the prevailing policy provisions continue to be restrictive. A critical part of communication rights is the right to report freely on one’s own environment, independent of state or commercial controls. News and current affairs are still on the prohibited list of content on community radio in India – perhaps the only instance of this kind of policy outside of the subcontinent. The Bangladesh community radio policy, modelled closely after the Indian one, also has a restrictive “development” function for community radio. At a time when news is permitted to be transmitted through all kinds of media, radio still faces this anachronistic ban. It is ironic that in some African countries the policy “requires” stations licenced as community radio to devote minimal time to broadcasting news and current affairs to its audiences. Genilo et al. (2013: 67) have pointed out that despite the apparent enthusiasm for the medium, the Bangladeshi authorities continue to be wary of community radio as a “potential source of opposition and dissent.” It perhaps explains, in part, the cautious approach and “planned growth” of community radio in the country, with only a couple of new community radio stations going on air in the last five years despite promises to permit a community radio station at every upazilla (488 sub-districts). In Bhutan, too, there is a tentative opening for about eight organisations to start community radio stations, with some support for capacity-building and technology being provided by UNESCO. The approach by the Bhutan government can be aptly summarised as “extreme caution,” with no transparent, publicly announced policy under which organisations can apply for CR licences. Reaching the unreached: The somewhat constrained and guarded opening of airwaves in South Asia can also be attributed to apprehensions about security arising out of disruptive activities of a variety of non-state actors in the region. While ethnic conflict has for decades entirely obstructed the advancement of community radio in Sri Lanka, other countries of the region are also vexed by similar circumstances. Although scholars from several regions of the world have carried out research that validates the peace-building role of community media in conflict prone or post-conflict societies, most governments in South Asia remain suspicious of its potential. Clemencia Rodriguez (2011), in her exceptional study on community media in Colombia, provides a persuasive rationale to substantiate the position that citizen media help communities “reconstitute symbolic universes that have been disrupted by violence.” The Ministry of Home Affairs in India, with a tendency to filter everything through an internal security prism, has only recently begun, albeit hesitantly, to shed its opposition to permitting licence applications for community radio from regions in the country it classifies as “disturbed areas.” This step has come

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about as a consequence of assertions by those advocating for democratic media that many of the places that are denied licences are the so-called “media-dark” areas in historically deprived rural or border regions, where the provision of community-based media service is the fundamental obligation of the state. However, recent tensions between different countries of the region and continued civil strife within the various countries of South Asia make one pessimistic that the security discourse that defines the lives of citizens in these countries will recede any time soon. Resources for sustainability: Sustainability of community radio as a social entity was always meant to be considered a matter of practices that would draw on social and human capital. However, a principal focus of all sustainability deliberations within the sector in South Asia is on the physical and financial resources of the stations. Raghu Mainali (2008: 46), a leading crusader for community radio in Nepal, mentions with a tinge of unease that in their “stampede for resources,” stations make liberal concessions with the “spirit and values” of community radio, triggering even the “death” of the sector. The exorbitant cost of establishing and maintaining community radio has made the sector rely heavily on state schemes, NGO projects, and donor aid, all of which have tangible consequences for the editorial freedom of the CR stations. India witnessed a well-meaning attempt by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) to address the matter of financial sustainability of community radio through a package to empanel stations to obtain government advertisements (ads) that propagate state welfare schemes and their accomplishments. The low rates at which these so-called public service ads are supplied and the steps involved in procuring the remuneration may not have disentangled the sustainability conundrum, but they have led to the community radio sector, ideally envisioned as forging alternative public spheres to counter hegemonic overtures of the state, seeking government handouts to essentially promote its achievements and agenda – a function that state-owned radio is well primed to perform. A Community Radio Support Scheme was also introduced by MIB to subsidise the acquisition of equipment by stations, but the Delhi-centric processing mechanisms, as well as the copious prerequisites, did not make it popular with CR stations. Public funding of community radio is a desirable phenomenon practised in other parts of the world, too, but it has been effective only where it is autonomously administered and government control of the pursestrings is minimal. In India (and also in Bangladesh), government departments and ministries have to move beyond viewing community radio as a cost-effective, last-mile delivery service for information on their development schemes and programmes. The onus is also on CR stations to codify their own terms and not become, under pressure of financial sustainability, a willing partner in taking on an uncritical transmission role. Culture of self-regulation and peer review: Finally, as the South Asian region gears up for a network of thousands of autonomous community radio stations, it becomes important to define a set of codes of practice for this third tier of broadcasting so that it contributes to the strengthening of civil society and democracy in the region. It is also essential to enhance the integrity of the sector

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by adhering strictly to the core non-negotiable principles that define the sector, such as community ownership, not-for-profit status, and community participation in production and management. Thus, CR stations in South Asia must identify self-regulatory norms and make ethical choices that put them in a strong position to resist external regulation (Malik, 2015). Any steps to bolster the social and financial sustainability of community radio in South Asia must also be accompanied by periodic performance audits of radio stations. Anxious about encouraging accountability to the community amongst CR stations and ensuring adherence to the foundational tenets of community radio, the Community Radio Support Centre in Nepal brought out the Community Radio Performance Assessment System (CR-PAS) in 2011. Positioning it as an index for “process assessment” instead of “impact assessment,” CR-PAS is intended to assist stations in periodically assessing their own strengths and weaknesses (CRSC, 2011). Similarly, in India, the UNESCO Chair on Community Media developed, through an elaborate, participatory process, a toolkit (Pavarala et al., 2014) for self-assessment and peer review of community radio stations and also trained a cadre of peer reviewers to facilitate its application at the station level. A  sector-wide peer review process that was facilitated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting in India recommended the use of the toolkit. The toolkit has since been adopted by the community radio sector in Bangladesh and also validated for use in East Africa. Aimed at continually improving community radio and instilling a culture of self-assessment amongst radio stations, these reflexive exercises not only help ward off misdirected efforts at external monitoring by the state but also create conditions for the long-term sustainability of the sector in South Asia (Pavarala, 2015). To sum up, creating a favourable environment for nurturing a sustainable community radio sector in South Asia requires a strengthening of participatory and deliberative democracy, an energetic civil society, avoidance of the drawbacks of NGOisation, advocacy for communication rights that goes beyond the development discourse, lifting restrictions on news and political content, catering to areas underserved by media, recognising CR’s role in conflict resolution and peace-building, setting up an autonomously administered public fund to support CR, and promoting a culture of self-regulation and peer review amongst community radio stations. Borrowing from Atton (2002: 8), the authors understand that even within South Asia “there is much heterogeneity (of styles, of contributions, of perspectives)” in the area of community radio. Thus, even though the genealogy of community radio in most South Asian countries relies on distinctions such as that between state-owned and independent or commercial and non-commercial or development and entertainment media, the identity of community radio in the region could best be described through a rhizomatic approach to alternative media as theorised by Bailey, Cammaerts, and Carpentier (2008). This approach acknowledges that alternative media tend to cut across borders and build linkages not only with other civil organisations but also with sections of the state and the market. This does not necessarily make them lose their identity or become incorporated but enables them to sometimes critique hegemony

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vehemently and other times to strategically use and abuse the dominant order (Bailey et al., 2008). Thus, pursuing the notion of rhizomatic media, and given the challenges discussed earlier in this section, community radio in South Asia must aim to be a form of mediated communication that is an alternative, not only in relation to the mainstream but also in its potential to voice ideas that are significant and distinctive in their own right and that may not be necessarily counter-hegemonic but still critical to the lives of different communities (Bailey et al., 2008). The resilience of the sector does not lie in being alternative per se, but in reclaiming the spaces that allow for a renewal of what constitutes the practices that empower ordinary people who do not have access to media and the public sphere.

About the book In this book, we have endeavoured to integrate content that creatively captures the hubbub around community radio for a holistic understanding of the sector in the South Asian region. Structurally, the book is distributed into three parts. The first section walks the reader through an analytical policy terrain of community radio in South Asia through chapters that closely assess the policy ecology in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The second part comprises chapters that contend with the macro-level, techno-social, and politico-economic concerns faced in the implementation and practice aspects of community radio by the sector as a whole in the region. The third and final segment of the book deals with ground-level experiences, and the chapters foreground subjectivities and lived realities faced by grassroots stakeholders of specific community radio stations. What follows is a sneak peek of the chapters included in the book to give an idea of the range and complexity of issues dealt with in the pages of this volume. Preeti Raghunath (Chapter 2) attempts to go beyond the traditional approach to the study of community radio policy. Using critical policy ethnography as a methodology, the chapter unravels the policy history and practice of community radio policymaking in India. She attempts to bring to the fore the deliberative process of policymaking for CR in India and examines the various actors involved in policy formulation within the larger context of the broadcasting sector in the country. Positing Bangladesh as a developing South Asian nation facing increasing social, economic, political, and cultural development challenges at the rural level, Mohammad Sahid Ullah (Chapter 3) looks at community radio as having emerged in response to these challenges. The Bangladesh CR policy adopted in 2008 states that CR stations may be established and operated in the oral languages of “marginalised communities as well as with their full participation and management, which will reflect their hopes and aspirations, the indigenous knowledge, resource and culture of local communities and will combine modern knowledge and technologies.” How does Bangladesh incorporate a participatory approach in CR planning, management, and programming to raise

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the voice of marginal communities? This is a major concern of the author, and he argues that community ownership and participation, capacity-building, fair operations, and sustainability are the crucial areas that must be addressed. Nepal has been a pioneer in establishing community radio in South Asia, and Sudhamshu Dahal (Chapter 4) claims that it was the presence of alternative voices that significantly contributed to the emergence of community-specific radio stations in the country as a potential tool for community empowerment. The 2015 Constitution of Nepal abandoned the idea of “nation” as a monolithic entity founded in one language, one religion, one identity, and one culture, with the monarchy as the unifying force, and instead espoused an idea of “nation” as a dialogue amongst diverse ethnic and cultural identities. This background, conducive to openness and democracy, was reflected in the establishment of citizen media by the various communities in Nepal, who were previously marginalised. On the policy front in Sri Lanka, M.C. Rasmin and W.A.D.P. Wanigasundera (Chapter 5) point out that the Mahaweli and Kothmale community radio projects are no longer functional in Sri Lanka and the stations labelled as CR, such as Uva Radio, Dambana, and Pirai, are controlled by the state broadcaster. Gemidiriya Foundation established Saru Praja Radio as a community-driven community radio station, but it could not survive beyond the test transmission. The authors examine the need for legal recognition of CR and also identify the impediments in the path of community ownership. Putting this in the historical context of how CR in Sri Lanka was always under the control of SLBC, inhibiting any efforts to initiate a truly community-owned CR sector in the country, the authors advocate for freeing of airwaves, to be taken up by civil society groups, so that community radio can emerge as an autonomous tool of community communication. Vinod Pavarala (Chapter 6) makes the case that civil society organisations, media activists, and advocates, who ran a campaign for the opening up of airwaves from the mid-1990s to early 2000s, emphasised the potential of using community radio for development, rather than foregrounding what seemed to be the more radical framework of communication rights. However, the research done by the author and his colleagues at the UNESCO Chair on Community Media compelled him to reflect critically on the role of civil society organisations in the development of community radio in India. This chapter critiques the pitfalls of NGOisation of community radio, with some concrete cases, and explores the possibilities for saving CR from being beholden to NGO goals and donor agency agendas and rendering it a true people’s medium. Electromagnetic spectrum and its use are often seen as a technical issue, without going into the social and cultural implications of the media and communication sector that uses spectrum as its backbone for wireless distribution. However, Ram Bhat (Chapter  7) maintains that technology is rarely neutral or innocent; rather, it is a reflection of the wider political economy and discursive formations surrounding and shaping all technology. This chapter examines the politics and design of spectrum allocation for community radio and traces how it shapes some of the key policy and programming issues. While the chapter focuses specifically on community radio spectrum allocation in India, some

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of the processes and principles that guide spectrum allocation policies could be used to draw broader conclusions about how technologies are deployed as well as their social, political, economic, and cultural consequences in any given society. Hemant Babu’s chapter (Chapter  8) examines the paradoxical emergence of democratic and inclusive media in a monopolistic and exclusive technology environment in the context of community radio in South Asia. In its philosophy and practice, community radio promises to give equal access and control to communities. However, the medium is heavily dependent on technology, which is historically known for creating a hegemonic relationship amongst practitioners and technology providers. This has been evident in the growth  – or lack thereof – in the community radio sector in South Asia. The chapter stresses that, for independent media, open and independent technology is an absolute prerequisite. The chapter attempts a comparative analysis of regulatory approaches towards transmission and audio technology prevalent in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Kanchan K. Malik (Chapter 9) delves into the conceptual insights that critically assess the dynamics of gender and participatory development as well as the complex process of women’s empowerment in South Asia. The chapter presents an overview of the engagement of women with community radio in South Asia. The chapter looks at the capacity-building efforts being carried out to mentor women to participate in programme production and management of CR stations in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, even as there exist challenges posed by social structures within the communities that hinder the construction of democratic “we” spaces by women. She concludes by arguing that CRs within South Asia, as well as globally, must strive to become instruments that boost the complex process of women’s empowerment through strengthening what the author calls the “voice capability” amongst women. Ashish Sen (Chapter 10) writes that despite community radio’s proven credentials in addressing disaster mitigation, its potential has been grossly underestimated in South Asia. The absence of appropriate policy reform in the region contrasts sharply with that of other countries like Indonesia and Japan. The lacuna is ironic given that South Asia is increasingly vulnerable to disasters. He emphasises the need for a proactive community radio environment in South Asia that would address disaster mitigation effectively. Examining both anecdotal evidence and documentation-based data, the chapter builds its premise through a case study of Kalanjiam Vanoli community radio station – India’s first community radio station for disaster preparedness, which was set up after the 2004 tsunami in Nagapattinam district, Tamil Nadu. N. Ramakrishnan and Venu Arora (Chapter 11) outline the two critical learnings emerging from recent studies done on the sustainability of CR stations in the region. The first involves the impact of policies on sustainability and the advantages and disadvantages of having a formal policy for community radio. The second involves the institutional character of CR stations emerging in the South Asia region. CR stations in both India and Bangladesh, in comparison to those in Nepal, are less local media institutions and more an extension of public

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radio with a “service” or “welfare” oriented, information provision mandate. This chapter discusses a strategic design for ensuring the sustainability of CR as a local media resource – a way to amplify local voices and prioritise marginalised concerns while imparting information critical for development. Pradip Ninan Thomas (Chapter 12) explores the possibilities for community radio in India to be used for reconciliation of conflicts faced by communities. The chapter focuses on the diversity and complexity of religions and cultures and the secular fabric that is under strain from the pressures of majoritarian and minoritarian identity politics in India. These pressures have also begun to impact the CR movement in India given moves to grant licences to religious bodies and organisations, some of which have explicitly religious and communal agendas. The author also goes on to deal with the possibilities for CR to be used by communities on the edge in India, especially Dalits. The chapter makes the case for the grounding of CR in India in values that are supportive of the interests of communities and that strengthen local values and livelihoods. Vasuki Belavadi (Chapter 13) recalls how the announcement by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) that it was keen on introducing a process of performance evaluation of CR stations generated debate on the methods to be adopted to carry out such an exercise. After some discussions, MIB agreed, in lieu of an external evaluation of the sector, and in the spirit of co-learning, to a process of self-assessment and peer review by CR stations. By then, three toolkits for self-assessment had been developed by different agencies that had academic as well as altruistic stakes in the sector. MIB adopted them as part of what it called a “peer review” process. This chapter examines the participatory processes that went into the development of one of these toolkits, i.e. the Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT). Madhavi Manchi considers her chapter (Chapter  14) an attempt to move away from an anthropocentric understanding of media technologies. She draws on ideas from material media ecology practice, affect theories, memory studies, and ethnoecology to study the case of a CR station in Telangana, India, that is embedded within a larger biodiversity movement in the region. Working through women’s collectives, the community seeks to gain autonomy over five major aspects of their lives: food production, seeds, natural resources, market, and media. The author believes that Sangam Radio, which lies within a unique interlay of memory, media, and biodiversity, serves important archival and mnemonic functions within the larger movement and that such spaces as community radio need to be recognised and celebrated, as they provide a real alternative to the homogenising tendency of neoliberalism. Bidu Bhusan Dash (Chapter  15) brings out the complexity of the production process of a community radio programme where participation must be the core principle. The juxtaposition of the “implied” meaning of “Choupal” as an open public space with its role as a site of power hierarchies in its day-to-day “functioning” in a village system reveals the challenges faced in programme production. The chapter, based on an ethnographic study of a CR station in the Bundelkhand region of India, explores the role of CR in the promotion of grassroots democracy where the society, culture, and economy are not quite

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democratic. The programme, Gaon ki Choupal (Village Choupal), produced by two community reporters, appears to have improved people’s involvement in CR programmes. However, he asserts it is not simple to produce and broadcast such programmes in a feudal society. Priya Kapoor (Chapter 16) examines how the Himalayan communities whose youth are mobilised by the Tehri Dam and Chipko movements have indigenised the seeming globality of climate change to help their communities during recurrent disasters, especially floods. The author studies community radio sites that assert identity and agency of local youth from the Tehri Garhwal region to serve as indispensable intermediaries when floods paralyse life in the region. The author provides theoretical insights into the confluence of scholarly discourses of disaster and risk, climate change, and community media to assert that CR has strong synergies with issues of climate change, especially during natural disasters. She suggests that unless the CR sector is recognised as a close ally of local and national governments, climate change and disaster cannot be mitigated, nor communities made resilient. Each chapter in the book is followed by a boxed news story about community radio that is  broadly  related to its theme. These stories, some in the form of interviews and others reports, appeared in CR News, an e-newsletter put out by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media. Apart from serving as interesting chapter separators, the idea behind these boxed features is to give a flavour of the real-world happenings in the CR sector in South Asia over the last decade and also to foreground the voices of some of the significant actors, grassroots practitioners, and enthusiasts in the field. After all, as the late Zane Ibrahim, the legendary South African community broadcaster, put it: “Community radio is 99% about community and only 1% about radio.” This volume brings together contributions from 17 authors, including the two editors of the collection. The contributors, residing in seven different countries of the world, are a mix of academicians, researchers, experts, and followers of CR. The editors have ensured, amongst other things, that all chapters in the book are written in a language that is academically inclined and yet accessible. However, the opinions expressed by the authors in their chapters are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors. The presentation is such that the book can be part of an academic curriculum on community media while at the same time being of interest to CR practitioners, advocates, or enthusiasts.

Notes 1 Let us hasten to clarify that the South Asia focus of this volume has nothing to do with any specific intergovernmental conceptualisation of community radio in the region. There have been several South Asia–level civil society deliberations on community radio over the past decade, with the intention of forging a common sense of purpose and action. Some of these meetings were indeed facilitated by the SAARC Secretariat. As far as we can tell, community radio has yet to get on the agenda of a regional policy platform of any kind. In fact, at the time of this writing, political tensions between and among member states have prevented the holding of even a summit meeting in the last five years.

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2 See UNESCO (1983) for an evaluation report on Mahaweli, prepared by the Government of Sri Lanka. Also, David (2001) for a detailed account of the project. 3 Details about these landmarks in the community radio movement in India as well as other South Asian countries are available in some of the chapters of this book and also in the earlier book by the authors, Pavarala and Malik (2007). 4 www.mediasouthasia.org/communityradioworkshopforwebsite010604.htm Accessed on April 20, 2019.

References ACORAB (2015). Association of Community Radio Broadcasters. Nepal, www.acorab. org.np. Accessed on 30-4-19. Atton, C. (2002). Alternative Media. London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi: Sage. Bailey, O., B. Cammearts, and N. Carpentier (2008). Understanding Alternative Media. New York: Open University Press. Civicus (2019). State of Civil Society Report 2019, www.civicus.org/index.php/state-ofcivil-society-report-2019. Accessed on 30–4–19. Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, Steven Fish, Allen Hicken, Matthew Kroenig, Staffan Lindberg, and Kelly McMann (2011). “Conceptualizing and Measuring Democracy: A New Approach,” Perspectives on Politics, 9, 247–267, 10.1017/S1537592711000880. CRSC/NEFEJ (2011). Community MHz: Assessing Community Radio Performance in Nepal: A  Pilot Assessment of 15 Stations. Kathmandu: Community Radio Support Center (CRSC)/Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ with the Support of UNESCO, Kathmandu). ISBN: 978-9937-2-4148-9 David, M.J.R. (2001). “Mahaweli Community Radio,” in Bruce Girard (ed.), A Passion for Radio: Radio Waves and Community. Originally published in 1992 by Black Rose Books. Electronic edition, 2001 by Girard and Communica, http://comunica.org/ passion/pdf/passion4radio.pdf. Accessed on 29–4–2019. Genilo, Jude William, Bikash Ch Bhowmick, and Brian Shoesmith (2013). “Radio in Bangladesh: Growth, Decline and Transformation,” in Brian Shoesmith and Jude William Genilo (eds.), Bangladesh’s Changing Mediascape: From State Control to Market Forces. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Mainali, Raghu (2008). Radio Pledge. Kathmandu: Community Radio Support Centre (CRSC)/Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) (Nepali original 2002). ISBN: 978-99946-856-3-9 Malik, Kanchan K. (2015). “Our Media, Our Principles,” Journalism Studies, 16(5), 750–764, doi:10.1080/1461670X.2015.1054195 Pavarala, Vinod (2015). “Community Radio ‘Under Progress’: Resuming a Paused Revolution,” Economic & Political Weekly, December 19, 1(51). Pavarala, Vinod, and Kanchan K. Malik (2007). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. New Delhi: Sage. Pavarala, Vinod, Kanchan K. Malik, Vasuki Belavadi, Aditya Deshbandhu, and Preeti Raghunath (2014). Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT), Version 2.0. New Delhi: CEMCA, http://uccommedia.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ CR-CIT-Version-2.0.pdf. Accessed on 30–4–19. Pringle, Ian, and Bikram Subba (2007). Ten Years On: The State of Community Radio in Nepal. Kathmandu: UNESCO. Raghunath, Preeti (2014). “The Unfinished Business of Nepal’s Community Radio Policy,” Media Asia, 41(1), 22–23, doi: 10.1080/01296612.2014.11689995

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Rasmin, M.C. (2015). “Sri Lanka Government Revives Dialogue on Community Radio,” UNESCO Chair on Community Media, May 6, http://uccommedia.in/news/sri-lankagovt-revives-dialogue-on-community-radio/. Accessed on 30–4–19. Rodriguez, Clemencia (2011). Citizens Media against Armed Conflict: Disrupting Violence in Colombia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schramm, Wilbur (1964). Mass Media and National Development: The Role of Information in the Developing Countries. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press. Tacchi, Jo (2009). “Finding a Voice: Digital Storytelling as Participatory Development in Southeast Asia,” in John Hartley and Kelly McWilliam (eds.), Story Circle: Digital Storytelling Around the World. Wiley-Blackwell. UNESCO (1983). Mahaweli Community Radio: Project Findings and Recommendations. (FIT/510/SRL-70 Terminal Report). Paris: UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco. org/ark:/48223/pf0000055973. Accessed on 29–4–19. WACC _World Association of Christian Communicators (2006). “The No-nonsense Guide to Communication Rights,” Media Development, 53(1), 67–72. Wood, Geoffrey (1997). “States without Citizens: The Problem of the Franchise State,” in David Hulme and Michael Edwards (eds.), States and Donors: Too Close for Comfort? New York: St Martin’s Press.

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Box 1  Community radio that matters Fifteen years of civil society movement,  ten years of policy, four national Consultations along with Sammelans, several awareness workshops, many  independent creative interventions,  and setting up of 170 CR stations later,  community radio sector in India  seems to be making waves not just in the social sector but also in the echelons of the government. Everybody, who wants to be somebody openly supporting freedom of expression, democratic communication forms, and meaningful use of media, cannot ignore community radio. However,  whether it is the Ministry of Information  & Broadcasting, other social welfare ministries, multilateral agencies, development organisations, media collectives, CR advocates, or researchers – all seem now to be concerned  with fundamental questions  such as  – Is CR fulfilling the mandate for which it came into existence? And at a more ideological level – Is the CR sector as a whole sticking to and internalising the core principles that characterise its essence and purpose? If yes, then how? And if no, what are the encumbrances leading to non-performance? In this issue, the TRAI consultation  piece by Vinod Pavarala highlights some of these anxieties and the responses from stakeholders on the different  issues facing the CR sector. TRAI  would soon come up with its recommendations for CR policy reform that could open opportunities to make the sector more effective and vibrant. Rukmini Vemraju’s writeup talks about how different organisations and groups such as CEMCA, UNICEF, UNESCO, UNESCO Chair on Community Media, CRA, CRF, and others are collaborating with the government to ensure that while the CR sector remains autonomous and participatory in its approach, there ought to be a mechanism in place to make it accountable to its own peers and community. This would usher in continuous learning and improvement of CR stations. Ashish Sen reiterates that the role of CR during disaster must not be overlooked, while Suman Basnet flags the need for CR to work in synergy with other social movements, a proposition that has also been underscored in previous issues of CR News. While the sustainability conundrum still needs to be addressed by CR stations as Venu Arora’s project is seeking to understand, another research article by the Ideosync Media Combine team points towards the importance of how programme making process can become a means of engagement with and by the community. Other than the focus on India, this issue also has updates from the CR sector in South Asia and a serialised story about the free radios in Germany. Many of the subjects discussed in the present issue of CR News also find  a place in the agenda of the IAMCR  pre-conference that is being organised by UNESCO Chair on Community Media in collaboration with

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the Community  Communications working  group of the IAMCR at the University of Hyderabad on July 13–14, 2014. The conference is bringing together scholars and practitioners, academics and activists working with community, citizen  and alternative media to explore  how these diverse media platforms facilitate  the building of communities  and in shaping change. On the sidelines of the pre-conference on community media, the UNESCO Chair on  Community Media is also organising a  one-day Roundtable Consultation on “Towards a South Asia Network for Community Media” in Hyderabad on July 12, 2014 with a select group of participants from the South Asia region to deliberate on the need for a regional network among community media practitioners and advocates. All the efforts articulated above are  directed toward strengthening the movement for communities’ access to airwaves in India and the South Asian region. They signify a need not only for an enabling and equitable environment for community radio in the region but also for a sector commensurate with international standards of community media practices so that we have community radio stations not just in numbers but those that matter in the struggle for free and open people’s media. Kanchan K. Malik University of Hyderabad Source: CR News Vol. 5, No. 2, Jul-Sept 2014

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Part I THE POLICY TERRAIN

2 DELIBERATING COMMUNITY RADIO IN INDIA A policy ethnography Preeti Raghunath India’s tryst with community broadcasting can be traced back to the colonial era, when village broadcasts were allowed under the watchful eye of the colonial government. Independent India’s tryst with modernisation saw the fortification of the colonial imperative for surveillance and its perceived rationality in a nationalist broadcasting system that held the reins of airwaves. This chapter charts the policyscape for community radio (CR) as a narration of the deliberative nature of the policy process – a contestation between competing rationalities of national security and communication rights, top-down and participatory development processes, and, ultimately, the ideological state apparatus and the cultures of communities and their radio in a world ushering in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Critical media policy studies The traditional study of media policy has focussed on allowing the nation-state to occupy centre stage, with the study of policy documents and its pronouncements being the mainstay of the policy research endeavour. In defining media policy, Des Freedman (2008) talks about the plurality of media policies and suggests that there is no such thing as a “singular” media policy that can be said to represent all those mechanisms that streamline media structures and systems. Media policy, says Freedman, is, at best, an umbrella term to refer to a wide range of discourses and methods that impact the functioning of media. Myth of neutrality: Scholars like Marc Raboy, Des Freedman, Paula Chakravartty, and Kathryn Sarikakis examine the myth of neutrality that plagues the theorising of media policy. Drawing on Streeter’s observation that it is only the English language that allows for a distinction between the words “politics” and “policy,” Chakravartty and Sarikakis critique Harold Lasswell’s conception of policy as an apolitical process. Chakravartty and Sarikakis assert that a separation of politics from policy is not only artificial but is also ideologically loaded, in that it rather inaccurately allows for neutrality. It also does not serve the purpose of critical reflections on the processes and contexts that shape

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policy (Chakravartty and Sarikakis, 2006). The coming of the information society and the accompanying international governance structures only ensure that media policy is further embedded in “multilateral politics and the debates that surround it” (Raboy, 2007: 346). Des Freedman talks about going beyond seeing media policy as either depoliticised or technologically determined. Instead, he sees it as an arena where competing political leanings, ideological standpoints, and power plays operate. Policymaking becomes political when some viewpoints get preference over others, and critical reflections on policy call for unearthing those marginalised viewpoints (Freedman, 2008: 5–6). Media policymaking, then, is anything but a neutral, apolitical process. It operates in and emerges out of specific circumstances that are created due to the interaction of varied actors across levels, with diverse intentions and influences at play. The nation-state and beyond – moving away from the traditional approach to policy: Media policy today, consistent with all the advances in global governance mechanisms, does not work solely within the ambit of the nation-state’s activity. The levels of analysis are now stacked, with multiple layers of settings and embedded actors playing crucial roles in influencing the making of media policy. Media policy, Sandra Braman (2004) says, increasingly is becoming venue-agnostic, with a range of actors and institutions influencing and adding to the framing of policies from varied organisational setups: international, national, non-governmental, academic, regional, and more. Freedman, while comparing the neoliberal and liberal pluralist models of media policies, talks about how policy is indeed formulated by the government department in question. However, it is also formulated in boardrooms, passageways where lobbyists congregate, academic conferences, seminars where stakeholders assemble, and think tanks where reforms are suggested (2008: 23). Petros Iosifidis looks at how policy and regulations have been “professionalised” and points out that think tanks, expert groupings like policy advisers, and industry players have all contributed to the professionalisation of policymaking (Iosifidis, 2011). Evidently, the traditional approach to media policy as the study of policy documents and legislations underserves the purpose of unravelling the settings, the practices of various kinds of actors wielding different degrees of power and promoting particular values and motives. The critical approach to the study of media policy attempts to include the many kinds and levels of processes of policymaking, the varied types of actors and their standpoints, the diversity of settings, and the normative elements that collectively construct media policy (Iosifidis, 2011; Raboy and Padovani, 2010; Freedman, 2008; Chakravartty and Sarikakis, 2006; van Cuilenburg and McQuail, 2003). From the 1970s, when the “Third World” came together and spearheaded the call for the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), to the coming together of civil society at the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) and the process of multi-stakeholderism that underpins internet governance today, there has been a huge shift in processes of media policymaking. The shift from the “international” to the “global” is a case in point, with non-state actors, activist groups, academics, and civil society being part of global governance mechanisms in varied capacities.

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The Indian community radio (CR) scene lends itself to an excellent case study of a hybrid actor environment, international organisations, national and regional NGOs, localised communities, CR capacity-building, and training setups  – a transnational epistemic community, all working together in varying degrees of engagement, leading to a vibrant space for the formulation of discourse and advocacy with the state even as commercial players continue with their incessant lobbying efforts. The ethnographic study incorporates the whole gamut of CR policymaking processes undertaken by actors, both formal and informal, across a variety of venues, from formal to latent to invisible, invoking a range of ideologies, normative principles, and interests (Raboy and Padovani, 2010).

Understanding CR in India: approach and methodology Ethnography, deliberative sites, and policy histories: The ethnographic method allows the researcher to embed herself in locales that serve as sites for accessing data on lived experiences. In the policy enterprise, the ethnographic method becomes difficult due to restricted access to formal venues of policymaking. A critical approach to the study of policy demands that policymaking be seen as a discursive process that transpires not just in “formal” spaces in offices located in ministries and government buildings. Informal sites like regional and national conferences and seminars, track-two dialogues, and meetings between international donor agencies and their local development partners serve as deliberative sites for the policy process (Braman, 2004; Raboy and Padovani, 2010). In addition, ethnography is conducted in short bursts over time to stay abreast of changes and shifts in policy – a perceived necessity for a researcher involved in studying an ever-changing policy enterprise. This spatial-temporal dimension attains importance in the current study since it is deemed imperative for the researcher to be present and to tie ethnography to key informal policy venues that are conceived as sites integral to the ongoing policy process for CR. Two South Asia–wide seminars conducted in 2013 served as venues that allowed for introductions and initial interactions with policy advocacy groups, international donor agencies, government representatives, and media practitioners. The first seminar was “Voices for Change and Peace: Taking Stock of Community Radio in South Asia,” jointly organised by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media and AMARC Asia-Pacific in New Delhi in January 2013. This seminar allowed researchers to connect with and access key actors involved in the CR policy space and to conduct interviews and also allowed for engagement with their ideas and experiences. The actors ranged from government officials to advocacy groups, community radio stations, and organisations that had been denied licences for CR. This allowed researchers to comprehend the diverse perspectives and rationalities emerging from these actors. Similarly, the “Seminar on Enhancing the Role of Community Radio and Promoting Positive Social Change,” organised jointly by the SAARC Information Centre and AMARC Asia-Pacific in Kathmandu in September 2013 emerged as the second such venue. This venue also allowed researchers to locate the Indian CR movement and sector in a regional framework, helping to understand further the

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experiences peculiar to the Indian scene. The study includes formal interviews and informal conversations with diverse actors who have varied experiences of being involved with CR. It therefore seeks to bridge a rather glaring lacuna in the study of media policy and community media alike – that of understanding vantage points and modes of negotiating for policies aimed at democratizing the mediascape and opening up the airwaves for the public good. As part of the ethnography, in-depth, semi-structured interviews with diverse actors in the CR space were conducted between 2014 and 2015, spanning the cities of Bangalore, Hyderabad, and New Delhi. As is typical of focused, intensive ethnographic research, the endeavour yielded a large amount of data in proportion to the number of days spent in the field. Audio recordings of interviews were conducted to supplement field observations and notes (Knoblauch, 2005). From the initial interactions that emerged out of the seminars, researchers went on to connect with and interview some key policy actors. Through the process of snowball sampling, more such policy actors across groups and affiliations were contacted. Policy histories are rich sources of data for interrogating the origins of policies, replete with particular incidents and occurrences, key challenges, and processes and cycles involved. They shed light on the various actors involved at multiple stages through the temporal dimension of the policy under study, allowing a critical second look at the value systems they espouse and the methods they adopt towards policymaking. Histories also allow for reflection on the correlation between larger political, social, and economic conditions in which policymaking and remaking occur. A critical study of policy histories allows room for understanding dominant ideas and events that are recognised as official histories and to explore incidents that are often omitted from the historical narratives on said policy. Therefore, adopting the study of histories of media policy helps unravel the various dimensions to the process of media policymaking. Evidently, this approach adds immensely to the critical media policy approach, moving away from single-narrative histories that often get reinforced as the dominant narrative, thereby overshadowing other experiences. Keeping this in mind, this chapter is structured as an exercise in critical policy history that is linear (Pickard, 2013), laying out thick description (Geertz, 1973) of experiential narratives constructed from the vantage points of various policy actors, interspersed with deliberative-analytic passages. At times, the interplay of temporalities allows for policy narratives that are multi-dimensional and defy linearity.

Broadcasting imperialism and the post-colony and its radio: understanding the Indian state Radio entered colonial India, a former British colony, in the early 1920s with a few experiments with private radio clubs in Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras in 1923–1924 (Jeffrey, 2006). This was followed by the Indian Broadcasting Company (IBC), a private entity, running two radio stations in Bombay and Calcutta, in 1927. Set up within months of the initiation of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), colonial radio in India began reaching more people with the

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introduction of the short-wave service by the BBC. The IBC collapsed in 1930, and the British government took over the few stations operational at that time. Zivin (1998) provides a historical account of the presence of village broadcasting set-ups before their consolidation under All India Radio in 1936. They were seen as set-ups to preserve what were viewed as authentic reflections of community life in the subcontinent and also “uplift” hapless villagers through the injection of messages of modernisation. Zivin highlights the colonial ideological apparatus and its essentialising of a “remade” village before Gandhi incorporated them as self-sufficient expressions of nationalism. He writes, “Brayne’s uplift project was a progenitor both of post-war colonial development schemes and India’s green revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Yet Brayne’s reforming energies were just as powerfully directed at the social ills of rural life, particularly what he saw as the undervalued role of women and the effects of poor hygiene. At the same time, too much modernity – particularly of the political sort – was clearly not desirable and Brayne insisted that traditional governing organizations be conserved.” Contrasting the dominant colonial perspective with a divergent philosophy of radio broadcasting, Zivin (1999) provides an alternate account challenging the idea of the “subservient” British civil servant. In writing about India’s first Controller of Broadcasting Lionel Fielden, who came from “offstage” (Zivin, 1999: 196), he refers to his anonymous article that appeared in the Times in 1937: “[T]hat the Government of India was ‘acting from duty rather than pleasure’ and intended to develop broadcasting mainly for fear of unwelcome interlopers” (Zivin, 1999: 198). He further writes, “Fielden persistently used liberal claims for a free information system against his conservative supervisors. Only if the broadcasting system served as a forum for political debate could it maintain its integrity, he argued, both in the ethical sense of making a positive contribution to the life of the nation, and in the structural sense of discouraging competitors; otherwise, it would always be viewed as a forum for official propaganda.” By 1947, independent India inherited six stations, and with the assimilation of princely states and more radio stations, that number reached 25 by 1950 (Kumar, 2003). Jeffrey (2006), in talking about the Indian National Congress governments’ approach towards media and policies around them, highlights the continuance and reliance on the culture and practices of control over media, set in motion by the colonial masters. Concerns over national security, the national project of post-independence modernisation and a welfare state model that afforded a paternalistic attitude set against the backdrop of “India’s inflammable social fabric” (Jeffrey, 2006: 215) served as the context for furthering the colonial mindset of control and top-down development. Foreign technical assistance programmes ensured that funding crept in to facilitate modernisation of the post-colony. Manyozo (2012) talks about the rhizomatic development (Bailey et al., 2007) of media in terms of funding models, with Bretton Woods Institutions playing a role in facilitating the injection of modernisation in agriculture. Of the late 1960s, B.G. Verghese (2010), in his autobiographic account, First Draft, offers insight into the goings-on with Indira Gandhi’s leadership, first as Minister of

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Information and Broadcasting (I&B) and later as Prime Minister. Not happy with the role and structure of the Ministry of I&B, the Chanda Committee was appointed to review the functioning of all the departments and to allow for greater autonomy. He devotes a chapter to the “Mandate for Change,” just before the elections of 1967, which he put together as “a prospective policy guide.” Interestingly, he writes, “[T]he past policy was not dogma that could defy the laws of growth and change. ‘Nehru reduced to (an ideological) Nehruism would become the mumbo jumbo of dogmatists’ whereas ‘we have our own responsibility and make our own opportunity,’ ” making a pitch to break new ground and moving beyond ideologising an approach to policy that was a product of its own time (Verghese, 2010: 114–115). In a self-reflexive vein, he acknowledges the need for him to have been consultative even as he attempted to go against the orthodoxy the system had become. He narrates episodes such as the barring of a Labour Day speech by a West Bengal CPI labour minister in 1967, as the minister was critical of the political system and had criticised the judiciary for being subservient to the ruling party. The AIR Code was revised, and the Chanda Committee recommendations for greater autonomy of the broadcast system were brought back into focus again. The narration goes on to highlight the tension between those who wanted shifts towards broadcast autonomy in the system and those who argued for continued government control. To counter the popularity of Radio Ceylon, Vividh Bharati, the entertainment channel was allowed commercial advertisements. The Bretton Woods Institutions continued to provide foreign aid, and radio and satellite technology was put to use with instrumental reason – in the uplift and development of the masses – by the Indian state. UNESCO’s funding in 1956 allowed the setting up of Rural Radio Listeners’ Forums to provide assistance with agriculture. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw the SITE and Kheda rural television projects aimed at rural development being initiated by the Indian government and involving Doordarshan and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), incorporating research and content through community participation. These experiments with technology were efforts in moving beyond a “neo-luddite” position, which, as Verghese (2010: 110) talks about, was a concern of an establishment that did not want to miss the technological revolution they saw the world at the cusp of. This brief account of the Indian state’s tryst with new technologies, starting with radio, underscores the real tension between the two competing constructs of state control and democratic participation. India’s colonial past and the remnants of the structure and culture of British imperialism continue to shape broadcasting in the country today, with amended versions of the 1885 Telegraph Act still in place, licencing dominated by the fear of and desire to control the “speech of subjects,” and state perception of its citizens solely as hapless, uninformed masses. In the wake of India’s independence, the state’s understanding of its role as a new post-colony in a democratising world order as well as its understanding of the systemic calculations of a mixed economy approach replete with socialist underpinnings and the need to assume a role amongst non-aligned third world countries, domestic challenges of poverty, and low productivity was definitive in its instrumental approach to technology and

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policy. The role of international foreign technical assistance agencies and Bretton Woods Institutions elucidated earlier allows for an appreciation of the role of diverse actors in the policy process, often beyond the ambit of the nationstate. It also provides an inkling of individuals emerging from offstage, chipping away at the establishment’s fortified ideas and performing roles (Goffman, 1959) of democratising agents. This also sets the stage for understanding personalitydriven policy manoeuvres, which recur in the policymaking for CR in India and the larger South Asian region. The dialectics of a utilitarian approach to the state’s instrumental rationality and contesting efforts in argumentation and deliberation provide the basis of further study of media policy beyond traditional rational choice underpinnings.

Indian radio and its discontents: activism for CR This section maps the initiation and socialisation (Risse and Sikkink, 1999) of the Indian state enunciated earlier into the interests emanating from diverse policy actors, including grassroots movements (Foweraker, 2001), advocacy coalitions (Sabatier, 1993), epistemic communities that allude to diverse paradigms of knowledge (Haas, 1992), and transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink, 1999). The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the world order moving towards growth of regional groupings, the third generation of democratisation and human rights, and shifts in the approach of “development” towards inclusive and participatory processes with people, instead of with governments alone. Intergovernmental organisations and international NGOs began focussing on working with grassroots organisations, local NGOs, and community bodies. For instance, UNESCO’s attention to media environments within countries began in the context of the Belgrade Conference, the MacBride Commission report, and the establishment of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) in 1980. The early 1990s saw a marked shift in India’s economic policy, with the opening up of trade barriers in favour of liberalisation. With commercial media already established in the region in Sri Lanka, and more certainly in other parts of the world, the shift was slowly beginning to occur in the Indian media landscape. In 1995, the dispute between the Ministry of I&B and the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) over granting exclusive telecast rights to a private entity and not Doordarshan led to a Supreme Court judgement pronouncing airwaves public property. Those with nascent ideas on citizen access to media defined this judgement, in making a call for community-driven broadcasting in the country, as a constitutive moment (Starr, 2004). This was the beginning of activism for community radio (CR) in India, pronouncing a marked shift from the established top-down and community-based approach to deploying technology for development and broadcasting to community-led broadcasting, which became the bulwark of the activism for CR in India. Transnational actors meet advocacy coalition for CR: Towards transnational epistemic communities: Voices, a Bangalore-based media NGO, played a key role in the early days, holding a series of consultations around these ideas

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in September 1996. Amongst other media, radio was a key point of discussion. The then head of Voices spoke about the imperativeness of the consultations in allowing the transfer of ideas and experiences from other countries. “Representatives from the state-run All India Radio, the Ministry of I&B and experts from Philippines and Latin America were part of these discussions, amongst others. Experiences from Latin America, where CR was used by citizen groups against repressive regimes, were narrated. It opened up a whole new horizon for us and helped us consolidate our initial ideas,” she recalled, indicating the nascent coalescing of transnational policy experiences. Amongst the other prominent personalities was late Prof. K.E. Eapen, a mentor to Voices, extending his support and activism for CR. Other actors included the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and multilateral organisations like UNESCO. In 1996, a diverse group of activists met at the “Consultation on Community Radio and Media Policy” to advocate for community radio in the country. The group comprised representatives from Voices, the MIB, a representative from UNESCO, media activists, other NGOs, radio practitioners, and academics, amongst others. A declaration that came to be known as the Bangalore Declaration was made and a task force on CR was formed. The declaration highlighted the need to go beyond the confines of the 1885 Telegraph Act, which continued to rule broadcasting in the country. It stated, “Centralized, one-way broadcasting . . . has a limited scope to serve the goals of development, especially in the context of pluralism and diversity which is a singular characteristic of Indian society,” also establishing the need for a three-tier broadcast system in the country. “The Bangalore Declaration was thereafter actively used and cited in advocacy efforts with different decision-makers,” the head of Voices shared. Cutting to the larger political context with relevance to media policy in the country, the I.K. Gujral government in power in 1997 introduced the Broadcast Bill, which was also to enable the setting up of an independent broadcast authority. Voices, in association with the National Law University, Bangalore, presented a recommendation to the MIB, pressing for the inclusion of community broadcasting in the bill. “[A]ny broadcasting policy must carry with it the onus to safeguard the citizen’s right to be informed, transmit varied programmes to awaken, inform, enlighten, educate, enrich and entertain all sections of the people and serve the rural and urban illiterate and underprivileged populations, keeping in mind the special needs and interests of the young women, social and cultural minorities, the tribal populations and those residing in the backward areas,” the recommendations read. Speaking about the reluctance and fears of the government, the former head of Voices also highlighted the presentations made to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Communication as another key effort. What started off as a nascent transnational advocacy grouping could be said to have emerged as an epistemic community for CR in India, espousing epistemes, norms, and values that invoked the idea of pluralism, the need to go beyond a media policy emanating from a colonial remnant, and the need for space in the emerging media system for groups historically marginalised on various accounts. Cross (2013) traces the idea of the epistemic community to ideas of a thought collective (Fleck, 1981) and Foucault’s adaptation of the Greek

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idea of the episteme (Foucault, 1973). She suggests that Kuhn (1962), in writing about a shared paradigm for scientific research, explored the notion of a scientific community. Sociologist Buckhard Holzner (1968), in his work Reality Construction in Society, used the term “epistemic community” for the first time. This was then taken up by international relations scholar Peter Haas (1992) and soon came to be used by constructivists who sought to define groupings with shared policy knowledge for a state as an epistemic community. Cross (2013) seeks to further this concept of epistemic community to understand the growing importance of expertise in a particular paradigm of knowledge, shared policy goals, and advocacy at the transnational level, highlighting the transfer and sharing of knowledge beyond the only seeming binaries of the international-national. It is important to note that a unifying feature of early entry of radio in colonial India as well as the marked shift of the 1990s is the manner in which the entry of private players served as a corollary for the espousing of radio for development. The economic reforms allowed for an influx of capital into the media sector from foreign investment and Indian business houses, leading to the consolidation of a few large commercial media houses that exert control over the media landscape of the country. The country’s new government has now sought feedback from stakeholders on a possible 100  percent foreign direct investment in the new media. In one of the early works on community radio in India, Pavarala and Malik (2007) talk of the “paradox of multiplication of communication outlets and at the same time the diminishing plurality of information” in the context of media globalisation. The Supreme Court judgement, however, provided for consolidation of notions of public interest in the same space. Public interest has often served as a check-and-balance measure, acting as a normative cornerstone for media policymakers in judging media systems (Napoli, 2001). The tension between market forces and justifying policies on grounds of public interest in a neoliberal economy, Napoli says, characterise media policymaking in many countries today. The first auction of FM frequencies took place in May 2000, with 108 licences given in 40 cities of India. This marked a shift in the kind of actors operating in the radio broadcasting sector in India and served as a fillip to activists demanding the opening up of the airwaves to the people. Following this development, in July that same year, the epistemic community comprising CR activists, NGOs, representatives from AIR, and UNESCO convened at Pastapur village of Medak district of Andhra Pradesh. The consultation, funded by UNESCO, took stock of developments since the pronouncement of the 1995 judgement. The consultation saw the demonstration of affordable, low-cost technologies and an understanding of how they could be brought in towards making a call for CR. The group passed the Pastapur Declaration, asking the Indian government to allocate frequencies specifically for community broadcasting in the country. Later that year, a conference on “Globalisation, Social Movements, Human Rights and the Law” allowed for further deliberation on community radio. Discussions around the policy frameworks of various countries and the idea of “community,” amongst other things, were held. Discussions centred on national elections and the idea of liaising with the local government, alluding to the

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notion of truly independent community radio. The group concluded that multipronged advocacy was needed. Representatives were to meet the then Minister for Information and Broadcasting (I&B), Sushma Swaraj, seeking the following: (i) Free time of up to one hour on the local radio stations of AIR for broadcasting by communities belonging to marginalised linguistic groups (or dialects), such as the Kutchi or the Garhwali; (ii) five independent, low-power FM (about 30 km radius) community radio stations, on an experimental basis, to be owned and managed by women’s groups in rural areas; (iii) limited free time on local radio stations for the visually impaired. Negotiating airwaves  – politics and policy manoeuvres: While civil society advocates were actively campaigning and advocating for CR through legal routes and by creating awareness on a plural media landscape, on-ground efforts were being made by grassroots bodies. These efforts, as discussed earlier, fed into discussions at consultative meetings. While the local radio stations of AIR were making programmes in some local languages and re-broadcasting national programmes, there was hardly any space for broadcasts by communities (Pavarala, 2003). Continuing its advocacy efforts post consultations, Voices negotiated for time for community broadcasting on local AIR stations and also called for the opening up of licences to NGOs (Page and Crawley, 2001). In 1997, AIR agreed to allocate airtime for community broadcasting on its local stations. It was two years later, in 1999, that the Chitradurga station of AIR permitted 30-minute programmes on the second Thursday of every month. This was discontinued by AIR after four months (Page and Crawley, 2001). In the same year, 30-minute programmes made by the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan (KMVS) were allowed to air on AIR Kutch on Thursdays. They also initiated narrowcasting as a means of reaching the community. In 1998, Deccan Development Society of Medak district, Andhra Pradesh, set up Sangham Radio, run entirely by rural Dalit women. With no scope for broadcasting, they pursued narrowcasting in nearby villages on a regular basis. In 2000, UNESCO agreed to provide support to Voices through an IPDC grant, for which the latter teamed up with an established NGO called MYRADA (Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency). MYRADA had been working at Budhikote village of Kolar district with female self-help groups. Namma Dhwani (Our Voice) was thus established in Budhikote in September 2001, with UNESCO providing technical capacity-building and equipment. Similarly, in 2002, the Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty was funded by the World Bank to set up a 1-watt Mana Radio (Our Radio) in Orvakal village of Kurnool district, Andhra Pradesh. The local female self-help groups began using the radio to communicate and express themselves. Understanding “practices” is a key component of deliberative policy analysis. Hajer and Wagenaar (2003) define practices as focussed “on action as a central strategy through which the individual gains knowledge of the world  .  .  . and negotiate[s] with the world by acting upon it.” They also indicate that practice is that which emerges as a result of actors in policy spaces relating to each other. Practices are informed by the values and motives that are constructed by each actor. The community radio movement essentially started as a civil society coalition comprising free speech activists, NGOs, academics, international

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organisations, journalists, and radio enthusiasts. While the crux of their demands was the opening up of airwaves for communities, especially those in media-dark regions at the grassroots, the initial years were dominated by the elite. Ashish Sen, CR activist and former President, AMARC Asia-Pacific, spoke about how the Bangalore Declaration signed in 1996 was driven by civil society. “We did not have grassroots involvement at that stage and were only reactants to the SC judgement. That was a handicap of the Bangalore Declaration. However, by the time the Pastapur Declaration was passed in 2000, we had a few examples of some grassroot [sic] engagement. Initiatives like the Namma Dhwani, Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan’s radio, Deccan Development Society’s radio had all started narrowcasting to their respective communities. This acted as tangible pressure, since we had grassroots examples to show,” Sen explained. Using participatory prototypes to nudge the government towards taking note of the envisaged potential of community radio was a strategy deployed by the group. Importantly, the playing out of the grassroots initiatives changed the contours of the activist grouping. The other push that influenced the demand for the opening up of airwaves came from IGNOU’s Gyan Vani initiative. It operated with guidelines that spoke of 40 percent of broadcast content focusing on the community.

Ushering in South Asia’s first policy for CR Competing epistemes: In August 2001, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) organised a consultation to discuss Gyan Vani (educational radio). Dr. R. Sreedher, the then Director of the Electronic Media Production Centre (EMPC) of IGNOU, spoke about how educational radio came to be part of the discourse on CR. He explained, When private players were given FM licences, the Prime Minister wanted to provide some leeway to the social sector as well. However, the Home Ministry was against this move, owing to the security situation created due to the war with Pakistan a couple of years ago then and the subsequent attack on the Indian Parliament. The PM, hence, was in favour of allocating one frequency to educational institutions and was ready to provide for 40 FMs under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, in charge of educational institutions. The Ministry is legally not permitted to run radio stations, and hence, IGNOU was made the nodal agency.” The consultation was organised to define Gyan Vani, wherein it was decided that content on Gyan Vani would be such that 60 percent would focus on educational content and 40  percent would focus on community content. “Gyan Vani was also an important step in moving towards community radio in India, since it helped allay government fears about letting go of their control on radio broadcasting to the social sector,” Dr. Sreedher said. There emerged two very different focal points in the discourse on community radio, one of community broadcasting as a necessity for the grassroots

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in a media landscape dominated by one-way communication from commercial and government radio and the other of educational and campus radio. This set the tone for debates amongst activists and advocates in the years ahead on the grouping of defining features of campus and community radio under a single umbrella. On December 18, 2002, a Union Cabinet meeting was held in New Delhi, where the then Minister of I&B announced that well-established educational institutions, universities, and residential schools would be permitted to run radios. The following month, the MIB announced the guidelines and criteria for the licencing of such radio. A debate ensued over the following months over interrogating the idea of “community” radio and evaluating the government’s policy move. Advocates of CR criticised the government’s reluctance in trusting “real communities” with licences and taking a safe detour by allowing only educational institutions to run CRs. Others contended that while the policy was restrictive, it was a big step forward, and continued advocacy would push the government to soften its stance. While many felt that the government had allowed “educational” radio in the garb of CR, others felt that the radio stations set up in accordance with the policy could act as community radio stations, serving the community in and around campuses. Because of these concerns, efforts towards legalising “community” radio continued. An interesting development was the intertwining of cable and community radio. In March 2003, Namma Dhwani, with the cooperation of the local cable operator, was made available in listeners’ homes via cable television. Similar ideas were being discussed in Mumbai. Meanwhile, Mana Radio at Orvakal was shut down by the government, citing non-adherence to licencing procedures, in early 2003. In an article published in the Washington Post, the then Secretary, MIB, was quoted as saying, “We have to tread very cautiously when it comes to community radio. As of today, we don’t think that villagers are equipped to run radio stations. People are unprepared, and it could become a platform to air provocative, political content that doesn’t serve any purpose except to divide people. It is fraught with danger.”1 This discourse of national security and the citing of risk is a recurrent trope, reminiscent of the colonial government’s distrust of Indian groups taking to broadcasting. This rhetoric invoked by the state is often contested on grounds of upholding human security of communities. Around this time, developments related to Phase Two of private FM licencing were beginning to take place at the national level. In July 2003, the Amit Mitra committee on radio broadcast policy was set up, the report of which was released in November of that year. Amongst other things, the report recommended permitting the broadcast of news and current affairs on private FMs, including “non-commercial radio” (this continues to be a bone of contention even today, with the policy banning news on private FMs and CR). In a big development for the broadcast sector as a whole, the Telecommunication Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was made the regulatory body for broadcast media in the country in early 2004. Following this, the Amit Mitra committee recommendations were presented to TRAI. The regulator released a consultation paper for Phase 2 of private FM licencing and also held an open house a month later. Activists and advocates of CR used the opportunity to make their presence felt and get their

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voices heard. “Civil society is seldom given a chance to influence public policy in India. For those who have observed the inaccessibility to public airwaves with growing concern, this is an opportunity to speak up and be heard. Both individually and collectively, we must write to TRAI and address the issues that they have raised. . . . Those attending can assert their views on non-commercial radio both for the communities they represent and, more importantly, for the communities that have no voice to be heard in big cities,”2 wrote Sajan Venniyoor, CR activist, then with Doordarshan. The activists and advocates attended the open house and put forth the demand that CR be discussed.3 In the following months, TRAI released a consultation paper on CR. The paper took stock of the 2002 policy, the establishment of the first radio station under the policy at Anna University in early 2004, and the various community radio initiatives that weren’t allowed to broadcast yet. “[A] need to expand the scope of community radio beyond educational institutions and as a medium for meeting the needs of local communities has been recognised. With this perspective the Authority recommends that any legal entity should be eligible for grant of a community radio license,”4 the paper recommended. It also went so far as to say, “An individual should also be eligible for grant of a community radio license.” An open house on CR was held in October that year, marked by debates on whether advertising should be allowed for non-commercial radio. However, there was a consensus that news and current affairs should be allowed to be aired on CR. While the legalities were playing out at the policy level, international organisations and civil society advocates continued to engage government officials and authorities in consultations and conferences as important spaces for advocacy. In 2004, UNESCO and UNDP supported the MIB in organising the workshop “Designing an Enabling Framework for Community Radio.” The press release by UNDP quotes U.S. Bhatia, the then Joint Secretary, MIB, as saying, “What we have now is good, but we need to proceed to a new model that allows communities themselves to own and run their radio stations.” A handbook, “Stepby-Step,” supported by UNDP and Voices, was also released at the workshop. In 2005, the petition “Urging the Inclusion of the Right of the Communities within the Community Radio Policy”5 was signed by civil society groups, emphasising the need to go beyond what they felt was campus radio, as allowed by the government of India until then. Calling the government’s policy “discriminatory towards communities,” the petition urged support for the opening up of airwaves to communities. Such advocacy measures on the civil society front, with support from international organisations, saw the government of India opening up the CR policy in 2006 to include non-governmental and community-based organisations.

Associational-networked deliberation and CR broadcasting The concept of civil society has been defined in a number of ways, starting from the idea of a third space between the state and the market, an associational grouping in the Tocquevillean sense, and now, increasingly, as a networked

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space (Costoya, 2007) characterised by rhizomatic social movements (Funke, 2014). Chandhoke (2003) talks about the possibilities of incivility in civil society and the need for deliberate intervention in reclaiming the space time and again. Gudavarthy (2013) provides a compelling account of the politics of what he calls post-civil society in India. He calls for a focus on interstitial transformation, on the points of convergence of various movements and extension of solidarities, and the dialectics of struggles. The plurality of definitions only reiterates the amorphous nature of civil society in an increasingly networked world. This is also seen in the activism for CR in its associational-networked character of the space. Wijayananda Jayaweera, then Director, IPDC, UNESCO, spoke about the crucial role of civil society in pushing for community radio in India. “The civil society in India dates back to independence. In contrast to Sri Lanka, where community broadcasting in South Asia started, India has a much more open political process and the civil society is a representative one,” he explained. Moving beyond either ends of the continuum of liberal and republican democracy, India and the larger South Asian region offer compelling considerations, owing to their plural social fabric, for communitarian, associational, and networked forms of connectivity, which often serve as a second layer of deliberative democracy (Achterberg, 2007). What started off as a loose group of freedom-of-expression activists reacting to the SC judgement, with a place in the larger civil society, evolved into a more networked space, with the setting up of associational bodies, while retaining larger connectivity. A  former Vice-President, AMARC Asia-Pacific, who had been involved with CR in India since 2004, pointed out that before the 2006 policy was announced, the group of activists and advocates was a nonregistered, loose grouping of individuals. However, the policy formalised a CR sector, bringing in the need for a registered formal body that could continue doing what the earlier network was doing and more. The group has since been involved in negotiating with other actors in the policy process. For instance, the CR movement has tried to engage with the Right to Information (RTI) movement in the country, participating in the National Convention for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI) in 2013 and also promoting on-air space as a site for engaging with RTI. With the Indian government opening up access to airwaves to NGOs and educational institutions, India became the first country in South Asia to have a CR-specific policy. Soon, the need for a body that represents the CRs was felt. The activists and NGOs who had applied for licences came together in a public meeting in New Delhi in March  2007 to form the Community Radio Forum (CRF). In a year’s time, CRF was registered as a trust, and the formal announcement was made in March 2008 at an AMARC meeting in Bangalore. An office-bearer with CRF spoke about the vision they had in mind when CRF was formed. “We wanted to be seen as the unified voice of community radio in India, and advocate with the government on behalf of community radios in the country. We also wanted to train grassroots activists for a more vibrant community radio scene in India,” he said. CRF continued working with the government

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on the implementation of the policy guidelines of 2006. For instance, CRF organised a national consultation of the country’s CR policy, in association with the government of India and UNESCO, in December 2010. He also spoke about the failure of the CRF in putting together a unified vision for its activities. “We failed to position ourselves better and did not understand if we were to perform the role of a think tank, or a capacity-building organisation, or be a representative body and bring everyone in the CR sector in our fold,” he said. In 2011, a group of practising CR stations decided to form a separate association of stations called the Community Radio Association (CRA). The CRA was registered in 2012 and works towards representing the experiences and perspectives of operational stations at the policy level. The views and approaches of the two organisations differ on various issues. The spectrum fee case of 2012 is a case in point. The Ministry of Communication and IT (MoCIT), which handles the spectrum allocation, decided to increase the annual spectrum fee to be paid by CR stations from Rs. 19,100 to Rs. 95,000. While the two bodies held the same view that the increase was disruptive to the idea of CR and would impact stations adversely, they chose different approaches towards negotiating and advocating for a rollback. The CRF abstained from a consultation organised by the MIB, with the understanding that dissent is also a means of participation and shapes outcomes. This involved boycotting any activities and policy processes with the government, publishing articles in the media, and reaching out to high-level contacts like the members of the National Advisory Council (NAC). The CRA, by contrast, attended the meeting and lobbied with the MIB. “We wrote a letter to and met the then MoCIT Minister Kapil Sibal, strongly urging that he consider a rollback,” said the then Treasurer of CRA. In general, both organisations participate in formal consultations with the MIB and also engage with the Ministry at academic conferences and seminars, regional forums, and the like. The bodies are present in Screening Committee meetings held at the MIB to approve applications for the award of CR licences. Beyond the close-knit policy community and larger civil society comprising journalists, academia, free speech, and right-to-information activists, climate change warriors have also been engaging with community radio in India. The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) is an international body that is devoted to the cause of CR. Active in the Asia-Pacific region since 2003, AMARC has been a part of every policy shift in the region. AMARC prioritises its activities according to the Regional Action Plan for South Asia that is made every four years. Advocacy is at the crux of AMARC’s work, and the organisation consistently works with national government and national CR bodies. The General Secretary of AMARC Asia-Pacific spoke of the methods his organisation adopts in working with governments. “The struggle for a policy is quite real, since policies create environments that are truly community radio friendly, or ban them entirely,” he said, highlighting the communicative action that assumes an intrinsic role in networked advocacy for policy. The role of UNESCO in CR has been enunciated all along, especially in the post–MacBride Commission era. Other UN bodies like UNDP have also been

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active in the CR space, as illustrated in the policy historiography. A later entrant into the CR space is UNICEF, which has been involved with community radio in India since 2008. UNICEF has been involved with funding local NGOs to run CRs and has also simultaneously been part of the policy process. The organisation’s country programme was aligned with the Indian government’s own plan for five years, from 2008 to 2012. UNICEF works in 17 districts in India, and for the purpose of CR, seven districts were identified, and local NGOs were brought on board. UNICEF has been advocating with the government on issues related to CR policy guidelines, focusing on single-window clearance and creating an environment for innovation in CR to address the issues of sustainability as well as on allowing the broadcast of news. Towards this end, UNICEF engages directly with the government in one-on-one meetings with the Joint Secretary, MIB, and presents evidence from its own partnership with NGOs and their CRs. Indirectly, UNICEF works with civil society groups, activists, and advocates on particular issues related to the policy. “Our engagement with community radio through the CRA has helped us understand where the shoe pinches. Similarly, organisations like CEMCA, Ideosync Media Combine, Drishti have the potential for innovation, and we see ourselves working with them,” UNICEF spokesperson outlined. Knowledge generation, documentation, and analysis are procured by partnering with academic institutions. She went on to add that while UNICEF’s primary focus is on children, CR emerges as a space to engage with issues related to children and adolescents and female empowerment. Contributing 4 percent of the government’s budget for social issues, UNICEF is an important international actor in the CR scene in India. “We have participated in about four policy reviews with the MIB, besides being on the Screening Committee for the grant of CR licences,” she said. One World South Asia started its work in India in 1999 and was first involved in project capacity-building. “The CR movement was gaining momentum in India, and we saw opportunity. The 2002 policy was under discussion, and we had helped conduct the TRAI consultation with stakeholders, leading to a recommendation for policy,” said a representative of the organisation. The organisation then got involved in capacity-building for stations like Hamar Radio in Solan. In 2005, it started its own radio programme, Ek Duniya Anek Awaaz (EDAA), before going on to establish its own studio set-up in Delhi. “We were a funder-driver organisation then, with support from DID and Hivos. Now, we are on our own. We use radio for advocacy on issues,” the organisation’s representative said. On the policy front, the organisation adopts the role of facilitator and does not push agendas. For instance, the Community Radio Forum was initially housed in its office. Similarly, in 2013, through a Call for Proposals, the Community Radio Facilitation Centre was set up to assist interested applicants in applying for CR licences. Drawing from the organisation’s experience in running the centre, the representative said, “We interact with different line ministries in facilitating an applicant’s licence. The Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) wing of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (MoCIT) are [sic] perhaps the biggest bottlenecks [sic]. These are systemic problems, as acknowledged by the MIB, as well. There is no

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convergence of work, as they work in silos. The problem is, at the MoCIT, CR is not a priority area since they deal with bigger players in the spectrum allocation business,” he said, adding that the facilitation centre also works towards expediting application processes at Inter-Ministerial Coordination Committee meetings.

State, ideology, and the dramaturgy of contestation A former Vice-President, AMARC Asia-Pacific, spoke of the siphoning off of frequencies meant for community radios to commercial radio stations at the South Asia seminar held in New Delhi. “Initially, in 2006, six frequencies were set aside for community radio in a given licence area. However, as of 2013, this has now been reduced to three frequencies, with the rest being channelised for commercial broadcasters,” he said. In addition, shifts in the policy for community radio have been more or less linked to the phased manner of frequency auctions for private FM. The frequencies allocated for community radio are often on either ends of the spectrum set aside for radio broadcasting in the country. This is viewed as an indication of the side-lining of community radio, and the need to “move from the margins to the middle” was expressed by many at the seminar. By contrast, informal conversations brought forth the notion that it would be difficult for the government to justify any further moves favouring spectrum allocation for community radio since the annual spectrum fees collected from CR stations were a token amount in comparison to the high costs private broadcasters pay in the auctioning of spectrum. This is symptomatic of the sway private broadcasters hold in a neoliberal state where policy moves are rendered unjustifiable due to the state’s construction of the utilities of the commons such as spectrum. In the Indian case, this dimension of the state assumed greater importance after the elections of 2014, with the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) winning with an unprecedented majority. Since then, the Indian state has seen the strengthening of its ideological apparatus, evidenced by the reinforcement of the BJP’s ties with its vociferous religious right-wing nationalist base. A representative of One World South Asia spoke about shifts in licencing since the new party came to power, with organisations with an ideological affinity to the government in power being granted licences. Escobar (2014) draws attention to the dramaturgy of policy as an increasingly important aspect of present-day politics and as a key component of argumentative policy analysis (Fischer and Forester, 1993). He draws on Williams (2012) to suggest that “scripting illuminates the backstage political work that sustains the springing ‘theatres of collaboration’ of contemporary governance,” allowing for a harking back to Fielden’s emergence on the theatre of politics surrounding colonial radio broadcasting from the offstage and dramaturgy evidenced by Verghese’s accounts of scripting Indira Gandhi’s radio broadcasts in chaste Hindi. Batch One of the Third Phase of FM licencing held in 2015 saw big media players like HT Media and EDIL winning the auctions for most of the spectrum up for bidding in major cities. Even as these developments were taking place,

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the community radio space registered a few historic success stories, with the first emergency licence being approved by the government for disaster relief during the Chennai floods (Thomas, 2016), especially after the Uttarakhand floods of 2013 and the creation of the CR Consortium for Environment Protection (CRCEP). Way forward: With the coming of Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the emerging contestation between the deep state, replete with its ideological state apparatus and military-industrial complex, on the one hand and the cultural politics of the Anthropocene (Boycoff et  al., 2013) on the other, the ongoing policy process for community radio in India presents an opportunity to study the dialectics and dramaturgy of the contestation between securitisation by the Indian state and reclamation of spaces for human security by communities. This would involve newer offstage political actors, private players, larger goals of sustainable development and the slew of transnational bodies working towards operationalising them, and the dialectics of their contestation with transnational networks of free expression activists and the plural cultural politics of the multitude of communities in India.

Notes 1 http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13055&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC& URL_SECTION=201.html. 2 http://indiatogether.org/trairadio-media last date of access 20/02/2020. 3 www.thehindubusinessline.in/2004/08/26/stories/2004082602160600.htm last date of access 20/02/2020. 4 www.trai.gov.in/trai/upload/recommendations/14/recom9dec.pdf. 5 Look for the petition here: www.petitiononline.com/comradio/petition.html.

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Cross, Mai’a. (2013). Rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later. Review of International Studies, 39(1), 137–160. Escobar, Oliver. (2014). Scripting deliberative policy-making: Dramaturgic policy analysis and engagement know-how. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 17(3), 269–285. Fischer, F., Forester, J. (Eds.). (1993). The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Fleck, Ludwik. (1981). Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (Originally published in German in 1935). Foucault, Michel. (1973). The Order of Things. New York: Vintage Books, (Originally published in French in 1966). Foweraker, J. (2001). Grassroots movements, political activism and social development in Latin America: A comparison of Chile and Brazil. United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD): Civil Society and Social Movements Programme Paper, Vol. 4. Freedman, Des. (2008). Theorising media policy. Paper presented to the Media, Communication and Humanity conference, LSE, 21–23, September 2008. Funke, P. (2014). Building rhizomatic social movements? Movement-Building relays during the current epoch of contention. Studies in Social Justice, 8(1), 27–44. Geertz, C. (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Goffman, Erving. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Gudavarthy, Ajay. (2013). Politics of Post-Civil Society. New Delhi: Sage. Haas, Peter M. (1992). Epistemic communities and international policy coordination. International Organization, 46(1), 1–35. Hajer, M., Wagenaar, H. (Eds.). (2003). Deliberative Policy Analysis: Understanding Governance in the Network Society. New York: Cambridge University Press. Holzner, Burkhard. (1968). Reality Construction in Society. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Iosifidis, Petros. (2011). Global Media and Communication Policy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Jeffrey, Robin. (2006). The Mahatma didn’t like the movies and why it matters: Indian broadcasting policy, 1920s-1990s. Global Media and Communication, 2(2), 204–224. Keck, Margaret, Sikkink, Kathryn. (1999). Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Knoblauch, Hubert (2005). Focused ethnography. Forum qualitative. Sozialforschung/ Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 6(3), Art. 44. Kuhn, Thomas. (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kumar, Kanchan. (2003). Mixed signals: Radio broadcasting policy in India. Economic and Political Weekly, 38(22), 2173–2182. Manyozo, Linje. (2012). Media, Communication and Development: Three Approaches. New Delhi: Sage. Napoli, Philip. (2001). Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media. New York: Hampton Press. Page, David, Crawley, William. (2001). Satellites over South Asia: Broadcasting Culture and Public Interest. New Delhi: Sage. Pavarala, Vinod. (2003). Building solidarities: A case of community radio in Jharkhand. Economic and Political Weekly, 38(22), 2188–2197. Pavarala, Vinod, Malik, Kanchan K. (2007). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. New Delhi: Sage.

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Box 2  Let CRs not be poor copies of mainstream radio Ashish Sen interviews P.V. Satheesh, Director of the Deccan Development Society (DDS), which has set up Sangham Radio, India’s first rural community radio station. Q1: Does the current CR climate in the region throw up new challenges for community radio? Is there a need for ‘good’ legislation to address these concerns? Your suggestions/views in this regard. PVS: I have a deep concern. Is the Community Radio in India following the community concerns, or is it diverting it to become a poor imitation of mainstream radio? If this is happening, I will be extremely worried about the status of CR in India. I have some reason to be so worried. I have not seen any explicit articulation by CR activist NGOs or other groups that they would use CR as a tool to bring out the community angst, their fight against their marginalisation etc. For example, why is it that the huge indigenous belt in India does not have a string of community radios that can amplify their own struggles against the corporatisation of their lands and resources? If this could have happened, would we be witnessing the kind of bloodbath that we are witnessing? If there was an opportunity for community radios to operate from the remotest corners of the country and if they had replaced guns as the weapon of resistance, would we not have a better and non-violent method of democratic expression of people’s anger and frustration? If a strong network of such CRs had been created, would it probably have replaced the corporate English media that has less than a few million viewers/readers but pretends to represent One Billion people of India, every time an anchor comes on-air? This, to me, is the major challenge for CR activists in the country. I am not sure of what CR laws are hampering this development. But there is an acute need for laws to be less stringent but regulatory enough not to allow socially divisive tendencies to take over the scene. I  must, however, say that over the last 20 months or so since the Sangham Radio is on-air we have not faced any legal or bureaucratic hassles even once. I must place this credit on the doorsteps of the government. I am an established “antiestablishment” person. That I say so is truly a credit for the government. Q2: Ban on news, cumbersome inventories, and restrictions on technology (low power transmitters): Despite these handicaps, less privileged sections of society demonstrated how independent community radio can change their lives. Could you elaborate on this, particularly through the experience of DDS and Sangham Radio? PVS: I am not unduly perturbed over the ban on news – it is not a great issue right now. Probably in future, this might become an issue, and if CR

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has grown in numbers and strength, we can take care of this situation. So is my view on low power transmitters. If a 30 km radius transmitter can cover about 100 villages and a population of about 40–50000 persons [on the plains], I think this is quite adequate. If a given CR station addresses a larger population, it will lose its close touch with its listeners and their socio cultural milieu. It will not stay as a platform on which its “community” can come together. Therefore, I am against high power transmitters [except for deserts and hill country where the population is spread out] because that might emasculate the community character of the CRs and make them poor copies of the mainstream radio. I think the fact that Sangham Radio has not been hampered by the above “restrictions” shows that its strength lies elsewhere. A news bulletin on a CR need not start with a typical “Headlines” where we start with the news of the PM addressing an Indo-Pak seminar and end with the latest scores from the day’s IPL. If Raipally Susilamma, a 34 year old farmer is participating in a discussion on the Sangham Radio, she is unpacking a number of “news items” that have great relevance to her community. She will be touching on the way weather is behaving, the impact of this weather on her crops, the way markets are responding to the weather and her crops, the new initiative of the local administration to provide weather insurance . . . she is packing as much news as she can possibly do without the help of any news agencies, specialized reporters or the ignominy of having to listen to the “expert panel of news analysts” who have no clue on what the import of that particular news on the communities that Susilamma belongs to. If this is not news, what is news? What else do we want? Q3: Sangham Radio is our first independent CRS. Your role in Sangham Radio and in advocating CR is, in my memory, the oldest in the country. What differences/shifts in emphasis do you see between then (during the struggle to get legitimacy) and now. Do we need to also hark back to some of the priorities that were at the basis of the struggle pre2005/6.? Your thoughts. PVS: I guess in 1996, at the time when we started thinking about Community Radio, our primary focus was on how to rescue marginalised rural people from being passive consumers of media and become active media producers and control its content. This is still the concern. But what has changed for us is that what was once a dream has become a reality. And what a beautiful reality this has been! More about it a bit later. Let me go back to what has changed in the larger context. In 1996 what bothered us was the fact that media was becoming more and more distant from the communities. Airwaves were being sold away to Rupert Murdochs. In spite of the Verghese Committee report and the abortive attempt of the Janata Dal Government to introduce a Community Broadcasting

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Bill in the Parliament, the government replied to the first CR application of DDS that “we have no community radio policy.” This was a moment of frustration which fortunately for us, kindled a determination to fight for the policy. Today there is a CR policy. There are at least a few genuine community radio stations. But the media context has become extremely frightening. The corporate controls and the obscene race for TRPs at the cost of trivialising media are making it irrelevant for the communities. The aggression with which the mainstream electronic media operates to dominate its audiences is still more worrying. The celeb anchors have become media monsters. They are not ready to have any open, democratic discussion even on their so called debates. They have a readymade point of view and a readymade agenda to which they drive their programmes with devastating aggression. Thus they kill all the democratic diversity of opinions and monoculture the national minds. Thus instead of being a democratic option, media is becoming an anti-democratic monster of a machine. On the other hand, their capacity to trivialise the “broadcastscape” is enormous. An FM station in Pune spent 30 minutes advising a girl how to win back an estranged lover! Over the last two years, we have seen hours and hours of live telecasts of children stuck in an open borewell. While I don’t ever say that these are not newsworthy issues, my contention is that the way media channels prime these up against the more pressing and urgent issues, completely off balance the importance of news. The less said about the elite bias of the news the better it is. Jessica Lals, Manu Sharmas and Ruchikas dominate their space whereas a million times ghastlier crimes such as the one in Nithari or the daily travails of adivasi women die very quick deaths. It is this context that makes it very urgent that the community radio brings alive a completely different media ethos into life. Something that takes up small issues of the small people without trivialising them, uses peace as a tool for all conflict resolutions, resurrects non-violent community solutions as a strategy to resolve strife, acknowledges and respects community knowledge as an instrument of wise use of natural resources, digs deep into community strengths to find lasting New Age solutions for the New Age crises such as Climate Change. Source: CR News Vol. 1, No. 1, Jul-Sept 2010

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3 COMMUNITY RADIO IN BANGLADESH Policy and practice Mohammad Sahid Ullah Introduction The operation of community radio (CR) is a contested issue since its journey in Bangladesh when people’s participation is concerned (Akhter, 2018; Anwar, 2015; Sultana, 2012). The historical philosophy of CR, though, is to use this medium as the voice of the voiceless (Tabing, 2004), the mouthpiece of the oppressed (Manyozo, 2009), and generally as a tool for development (Librero, 2004; Wabwire, 2013). It has been witnessed that the participation of communities in Bangladeshi CR is still under scrutiny. In fact, the participation of the marginal, power-poor, or the people living at the bottom of the social pyramid, is being ignored, whereas Bangladesh CR policy (GoB, 2008  – adopted on March 12, 2008, and amended and replaced by new policy 2017, adopted on February 8, 2018)1 states that CR stations may be established and operated in the oral languages of “marginalised communities as well as [with] their full participation and management which will reflect their hopes and aspirations, the indigenous knowledge, resource and culture of local communities and will combine modern knowledge and technologies.” Community radio is in its infancy in Bangladesh (Hasnat and Steyn, 2018). But radio has played a significant role in Bangladesh from as early as the War of Liberation in 1971, when the programmes of revolutionary radio (official name Swadin Bangla Betar Kendro) inspired freedom fighters and kept the populace updated with war-related news and information. Immediately after independence, radio broadcasts started under the state-owned broadcast system. Bangladesh Betar (the official name of state-owned radio stations) has provided the citizenry with social and national development messages through its 15 radio stations spread across the country (Ullah, 2010). Amid recurring criticism over state control of the airwaves, the Ministry of Information (MoI) liberalised the airwaves and opened the commercial radio sector by licencing 28 private radio stations, marking the beginning of entertainment-based, commercially (private) run FM radio in 2005. There is an inborn belief that Bangladesh Betar, the state-run radio channel, is strictly controlled by the ruling party and works as a mouthpiece of the

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government in power (Islam, 2008; Rahman, 2007), though it is run using public funds. The commercial channels also broadcast their programmes for profit using the same airwaves, which are the property of the public. Arguably, these channels deprive the real owners of the airwaves and misuse public funds, as the mass of people are not the subject of their broadcasts. Thus, the deprived grassroots classes of Bangladesh – the country’s overwhelming majority – have no opportunity to share their voices in the media. Based on these grounds, the demand for CR becomes important so that the “voice of the voiceless” can be reflected through CR. In line with development approaches of other developing countries, the Bangladesh government opened space with the launching of CR in 2011, and a good number of NGOs took the opportunity to include CRs in their respective working areas. However, the enthusiasm for establishing community radio comes as no surprise (Genilo et al., 2016). The first realisation for the need of community radio emerged in 1998, when a media NGO called Mass Line Media Centre (MMC) submitted the very first proposal for a project to the MoI requesting permission to operate community radio for grassroots people  – mainly for disaster campaigns in Patuakhali, a cyclone-prone southern district (UNICEF Bangladesh, 2015). Some NGOs and representatives from civil society started lobbying the government for community radio after the proposal. The “Advocacy Coalition for Community Radio Movement” under the leadership of Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) designed an advocacy plan for community radio, but the government did not pay any attention due to the fear of losing political control and its broadcast monopoly across rural areas. The need for and importance of community radio once again became apparent to the people and policymakers of the country in 2008, after cyclone Sidr in 2007, and community radio supporters were able to convince the government that the number of deaths during the cyclone could have been reduced had there been prior information from community radio. Arguably, this stand drew adequate attention from the policymakers of the then caretaker government (2007– 2008), and the policy initiative gained momentum. When the ruling Bangladesh Awami League came to power in 2008, it approved the “Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy” in 2009 (Akhter, 2018). Under the policy, the government approved 14 community radio stations in the first phase, on April 22, 2010. Thus, community radio, the third tier of broadcasting, started its journey in 2011 after a long-drawn-out lobbing effort by civil society (mostly NGOs) groups. In CR Policy 2017, a number of CR characteristics have been identified: (i) Owned, managed, and operated by the grassroots community; (ii) run in a nonprofit manner; (iii) works to empower the socio-economic and cultural life of particular people in the community; (iv) run in direct participation with people of the locality; (v) property of the community; (vi) reflects the thinking, mindset, and thoughts of the community; (vii) gives voice to the grassroots and helps them express themselves and develop; (viii) works as the primary communication channel of the community; (ix) strengthens the democratic process of the society; and (x) acts as a third model, beyond government-run and commercial

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broadcasters (Bangladesh Gazette, CR Policy, 2017: 1334–1335, translated from original by Akhter, 2018). The participation of marginalised people (for instance bonded labourers in farm fields, the aged, women, sharecroppers, fisherfolk, illiterate youths, and the disabled), who comprise the majority of rural people, is still a great concern in community radio broadcasting (Genilo et al., 2016; Sultana, 2012). Librero (2004), Likhi (2013), and Wabwire (2013) assert that CR plays a pivotal role in the communities because local issues are dealt with directly and are accessible to all. Everyone can share their opinion regarding the way local matters are going. Rahman (2007: 11) argues that CR in Bangladesh “may cater to the interest of a certain area and allow broadcast of material overlooked by more powerful broadcast group.” Emergence of CR in that sense is “an alternative way of expression of grassroots or marginalised people who are deprived of participation in the mainstream radio.” How CR can ensure a participatory approach in planning, managing, and programming so that the voices of the marginalised are heard is a major concern of this study. For the purpose of observing the management, ownership, community engagement, funding, and process of programme production vis-à-vis CR policy in Bangladesh, this study looks at two CR stations in Bangladesh – Lokobetar and Krishi Radio – and demonstrates how different types of challenges undermine the role of CR broadcasting in facilitating a participatory climate for people from all walk of lives in Bangladesh. This chapter discusses the current role of CR within the framework of participatory communication.

CR development and participation CR stations are in general not-for-profit radio services designed to operate on a small-scale and to deliver community2 benefits. For Manyozo (2009: 1), CR is a medium that is “pervasive, local, extensive, flexible, available, readily understood, personal, portable, speedy and efficient to reach rural community [sic].” Fraser and Estrada (2001) and Likhi (2013) record that CR, as an enabler of a socially inclusive process, has three distinct characteristics: (i) It is run for social gain and community benefit, not for profit; (ii) it has to be owned by and accountable to the community it seeks to serve; (iii) it has to provide for participation by the community in programming and management. Howley (2010) believes that a community can be many things, from a small village to a sprawling city, believers of a particular religion, or a diaspora united by a common language. Understandably, the way groups define themselves is fluid, depending on the socio-historical conditions of a particular moment, which means that defining the term “CR” with any precision is almost impossible. Despite the lacuna of lucid understanding, a community could be a physical community or a community of interest, depending upon the socio-historical conditions in any society at a given point of time. The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) thus refers to CR by a variety of names – community radio, alternative radio, rural radio, development radio – and its practices and profiles are even more varied. But whatever

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its legal status or name, it seems the word “participation” always holds a crucial position in CR. Participation is believed to enhance the engagement of local people in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of CRs, leading to changes in people’s knowledge, skills, and behaviours. For Mefalopulos (2008: 25), participation is a two-way communication model that aims to achieve “mutual understanding, building trust, and uncovering and generating knowledge, leading to better results.” Fairbairn (2009) emphasises the importance of this approach by saying, “Participation is the key defining feature of community media; it is what places community media outside of traditional media models, in which audiences are passive receivers of messages” (quoted in Myers, 2011: 7). Thomas (2015: 74) opines that in the CR movement, for example, there is a “specific belief in the validity of community-based participation in the operationalisation” of CR. Community participation is an essential factor in and step towards expected social change. Scholars such as Librero (2004), Manyozo (2009), Melkote (1991), Quebral (1988), and Thomas (2015) have argued that CR can be successfully used to foster development. Supporting two-way communication of CR broadcasting, they encourage the engagement of local audiences in programme production and empowerment of the community through access and equity. But Myers (2011), Thomas (2015), and White (1994) have noted that the concept of participatory communication lacks a definition capable of enabling a thorough understanding of the processes and outcomes involved. White (1994: 8) observed, “The word ‘participation’ is kaleidoscopic; it changes its colour and shape at the will of the hands in which [it] is held.” Neither the absence of an accurate means of capturing the essence of participatory communication nor the fluid nature of participation has reduced the realisation that the varying forms of both appear to have become useful in contexts with histories of exclusion and discrimination. Examining different CR models across the world, Wabwire (2013: 45) opines that CR has proved to be a sustainable and interactive medium for poor and marginalised populations to be heard and informed, helping to shape knowledgeable opinions, teach the give-and-take of informed dialogue, and assist them in becoming more decisive agents in their own development. It is well accepted that facilitating community participation in designing and producing the programme can turn CR into a “radio of the people, by the people and for the people.” The overall programme design of the radio, therefore, should reflect the community needs and intensive participation of all types of people. The MacBride Commission report (1980: 55) likewise emphasises the importance of community participation in programming and management. It asserts that, for the empowerment and development of marginalised communities, the need is for communities and individuals to create their own alternative communications; and that such small media “be used for social purposes, as a support to local development schemes,” which also include initiatives “where conscious involvement of local populations is felt necessary.” Myers (2011: 11), in examining CR operations in the developing world, observes that “a great degree of

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participation is possible with community radio, which, when functioning at its best, allows listeners to make their own programmes, respond to broadcasts either in person on air or via intermediary producers and presenters.” These participatory programmes can take the form of talk shows, round table discussions, reading listener letters or texts on the air, and broadcasts from public locations. With regard to participatory opportunity, the importance and positive impact of CR in any developing nation are well recorded. As a tool for social change, CR has several advantages over other forms of media: (i) It allows true participatory communication, which is essential for sustainable development; (ii) it serves a specific community that is recognisable, as regards its characteristics and needs; (iii) its programmes are relevant to the community; (iv) it is an ideal communication tool for the illiterate population, which is still huge in many countries; and (v) it is cost-efficient in terms of investment, which will facilitate its sustainability (Virtanen: 2005:1, quoted in Ullah and Chowdhury, 2006: 23). Last but not least, the convergence of CR with mobile phones and the internet is providing new content, new services, and new networking opportunities for community members. Considering participatory benefits, conventional CR can contribute in various ways to the development process of Bangladesh. Ullah and Chowdhury (2006) identified some major areas: (i) Facilitating rural development and agricultural promotion, (ii) ensuring good governance and accountability at the local level, (iii) providing disaster and crisis management, (iv) empowering women and promoting gender sensitivity, (v) establishing a demographic and participatory media scenario, (vi) minimising the divide by bridging local and national issues, (vii) empowering communities and promoting the right to know, (viii) ensuring social progress and curbing injustice in the society, and (ix) protecting and promoting local and community culture and traditions. To materialise all these identified areas, the key perquisite is “people’s participation.”

CR in Bangladesh: at a glance There are 17 CR stations in operation across Bangladesh. Of these, 15 are run by donor-dependent NGOs, while Krishi Radio is a state-run CR station. Thus, an NGOisation of CR is observed in Bangladesh. Kamruzzaman (2015: 1) notes that CR is required in Bangladesh for four major reasons: (i) Free flow of information for sustainable development, (ii) place for the marginalised to raise their own voices, (iii) setting for exchange of dialogue and social debate, and (iv) engagement of rural people for the production and broadcasting of issues related to livelihood. These reasons indicate that CR is necessary for the provision of “community-ness” to people of the community. CR policy also stresses that CR stations are supposed to become an active ground for organising dialogues at a rural level to help the rural masses find their own voice and ensure expression of their free opinion with respect to their livelihood and other immediate needs and concerns. However, it seems that rural people have no clear idea what CR is, and they don’t organise anything to institute CR in their communities by themselves.

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According to BNNRC information as of March 2018, a total of 32 CR stations got approval from the ministry. Amongst these, 17 are on air, and the remaining 15 are expected to start broadcasting soon. BNNRC (2017, 2018) estimated that these stations cover a population of 23.8  million, which is around 14.2 percent of the country’s total 162 million, and around 27.8 percent (6.6 million) are tuning in to these stations. Altogether, these stations are broadcasting 125  hours of programming per day on information, education, local entertainment, and development motivation activities. This estimation indicates that three fourths of the people remain outside of CR listenership in the coverage area. The majority of listeners of CR programmes are youth, both male and female; labour, adolescents; farmers; children; physically challenged persons; fishermen; rickshaw and van pullers; tea stall owners with customers; and small shop keepers. Kamruzzaman (2015) claims that evening (6–10 pm), followed by 3–6 pm, is the most important listening time for CR listeners. BNNRC records claim that all CR stations broadcast a range of 473 programmes per week. The most favourite programmes are magazines, phone-ins, radio dramas, local development news, folk songs, discussions, features, and interviews. The contemporary CR scenario extrapolates that all CRs got initial funding from donor agencies like UNESCO, JICA, UNICEF, FAO, and Danida. Ullah (2010), immediately before the initiation of CR, doubted that stations in the hands of NGOs could act as citizen media, as these stations tend to publicise their own activities or disseminate information for donors. Moreover, the NGO-run stations came from power-rich as well as influential local civil society groups. CRs controlled by NGOs therefore pose barriers to ensuring the engagement of commoners where the participation of the marginal, powerpoor, in particular, is concerned. Rahman (2007: 12) therefore argues that CR “should be run, managed and owned by community, not by any NGO or other organisations . . . the NGOs can at best organise, train and provide technical support.” It is true that Bangladesh society is highly polarised and political. In addition to class and clan systems, political rivalry strongly exists in the rural areas, where poor people can hardly raise their voice in front of local elites due to fear and ignorance. Likewise, the voices of rural women – the most deprived group of this society and also half of the country’s total population – are almost unheard. Policymakers do not treat radio as a participatory medium that can be used for community development. Commoners are therefore excluded from getting sufficient benefits in the urban-biased media system (Islam, 2008; Ullah, 2010). The conventional CR mandate is one of being the potential tool for giving these power-poor people a voice. In such a climate, this study proposes “community participation” as the theoretical entry point to understanding the operation of CR in Bangladesh. But it seems that the NGOisation of the CR scenario makes this possibility problematic because NGOs for the most part “tend to replicate the logic of neoliberalism and participation, therefore tends to become the means for extending the project of neoliberalism through enabling people to participate in a variety of forms of ‘compassionate capitalism’ ” Thomas (2015: 73).

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Methodological approach The two sample CR stations are, Lokobetar, a Danida-funded, NGO-run development radio station, and Krishi Radio, the only government-sponsored, specialised farm radio station supported by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in Barguna district. To evaluate community participation with these CR stations, this author reviewed the weeklong programme schedule of the two radio stations and talked to the station managers, a number of volunteers, and some locals. The author also visited several villages and two townships to understand people’s feelings about these two CR stations as well as the people’s participation in planning, operation, and management. Station managers were asked via in-depth interviews about their station management procedures, financial capability and sustainability, community participation in programme planning and production, and the strengths and challenges of running their stations’ operational activities. The interview questions were designed using observation and review of the secondary literature relating to local and international CR experiences, while members of the communities and volunteers were consulted informally about their knowledge of CR and the nature of their participation. The findings section is designed to deal with six major focuses: (i) Community access and listenership, (ii) support and volunteerism, (iii) sense of community ownership, (iv) participation in management, (v) community mobilisation, and (vi) sustainability.

Brief Profiles of CR stations Lokobetar: Massline Media Centre (MMC), a non-profit organisation engaged in the development sector since 1995, established Lokobetar – the first Bangladeshi CR station – in Barguna on May 27, 2011, to build public opinion on different development issues using a $200 thousand financial grant from Danida. Lokobetar’s mission is to offer community-driven development approaches to bring about noticeable change in the mindset of the community through disseminating information, education, entertainment, and motivation. The aims of Lokobetar, as stated in the MMC application, are to bridge the gap between people and policymakers; create an interactive environment of communication; serve as a platform for debate, exchange of ideas, and reactions to plans and projects; preserve cultural identity; enhance emancipation and self-worth; and act as a voice for the voiceless, a mouthpiece of the oppressed, and a tool for development (Monju, 2003). According to the official claim, Lokobetar reaches around three million listeners in Barguna and its two surrounding districts. The station broadcasts six hours of programming between 3.00 and 9.00 pm daily and continues broadcasting around the clock on any special day – during natural disasters, in particular. Programming includes hourly (six) news bulletins, live radio magazines – Mogo Barguna (Our Barguna) – audience participation in programming (over telephone and via SMS), Hello Barguna, Dokhina Hawa (Southern Airwave), and Roshalo Adda (funny gossip). An 11-member management committee is

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responsible for planning the programming, while six paid staff members run the daily activities with help from 207 volunteers. Lokobetar also has 75 listeners’ clubs. An MMC-sponsored evaluation study (2013: 11) report says that radio is creating a sense of “community ownership” since various types of people visit the station and participate in different types of radio programmes. It asserts that people feel proud of having the first radio station of its kind in Barguna. The opportunity to visit the station and exchange views directly with the CR staff has honoured the local people. Such direct interaction with the radio staff has certainly increased the credibility of the radio programmes. The study claims that listeners admire the programmes on cooking, Islamic songs, and entertainment, such as tales of grandmother and grandchild as well as traditional, folk, and modern music. Claiming that existing programming does not adequately meet community demand, the survey recommends redesigning Lokobetar programming so that it is in line with community needs and expectations. The study (2013: 13) notes that 82 percent of respondents desire drama involving different socio-economic and cultural issues and 53 percent prefer discussions on different socio-economic issues, while 39 percent like to listen to interviews with subject-related experts, 38.4 percent like Jiban Tika (life histories of famous personalities), and 10 percent like debates. Krishi Radio: Krishi Radio (official farm radio name is Community Rural Radio) started its journey on January  1, 2012, under the supervision of the Agricultural Information Service (AIS) of the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), with financial support from FAO. The radio station is set up on a land donated by the local council of Amtali village, a sub-district of Barguna, worth about $300 thousand. The station broadcasts eight hours of programming, from 9.00 to 11.00 am and 3.00 to 9.00 pm, with an average of 25 different types of content every day, within a 17 km radius of its broadcast capacity. Krishi Radio conceptualises the practice of “farmcasting,” which refers to the whole system and structure within broadcasting institutions through which agricultural radio programmes are produced and disseminated to the general public, largely as part of agricultural extension strategies. The major contents include agriculture, trade, fisheries, livestock, forests, environment, education, nutrition, folk entertainment, information technology, local news bulletins, women and children’s issues, rural development, climate change, and natural disasters. The key programming includes Khet Khamar (Farm Land), Goyal Ghor (House of Livestock), Motso Jibon (Fishers’ Life), Chader Kona (Hub in the Moon), Alor Chhoa (Walking through Light), and Ekanto Alapon (Exclusive Discussion). Ten AIS officials and employees along with 60 volunteers are working to run this station. It has 25 listeners’ clubs and around 175 thousand listeners. A 20-member management committee is responsible for looking after its operation and management activities. In an evaluation, Rasheed (2014) reports that Krishi Radio brought revolutionary changes within a few months of broadcasting through information flow in the lives and livelihood of the farmers and that radio programmes impacted

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and accelerated the rural economy in the area. Voluntary groups have been formed involving local farmers and fishermen. They have been provided training on capacity development so that they can act as news workers by sending different types of information (including farmers’ problems) to radio stations using cell phones. However, no serious empirical research has been found to date in support of this claim.

Barguna and its people: lives and communication Barguna is an extreme coastal district of Bangladesh that is home to 927 thousand people, mainly farmers and fishermen. Its district profile records that the major agricultural sectors in its 1,831 km² land area are farming, poultry, homestead plantation, and cattle rearing. Farmers earn their livelihoods from cultivating paddies but face some practical problems, such as low-quality seeds, lack of knowledge of high-production paddy cultivation methods, low-quality manure and lack of availability of high-quality manure, higher cost of agricultural materials, less return on investment for agricultural goods due to low selling prices at the beginning of the season, pressure to sell other crops to meet the debts of landowners, and lack of training. The majority of rural people are engaged in sharecropping and are not getting the right share due to the unjust sharing system imposed by the landowners. Fishing is the second most popular occupation amongst Barguna’s low-income people. But the fisherman’s community is indebted to the net owners, as most of them do not own boats or fishing nets of their own. The net and boat owners manipulate these fisherfolk to a great extent, as they have to give away the majority share of their profit to the net owners under the traditional dadon (a system under which a person must sell their crops/products until debt incurred by borrowing for production has been met) system. In sum, a high number of landless people are engaged as daily labourers, both in farming and fishing, with very low wages. Thus, people are dependent on traditional moneylenders or NGO-run micro credit to overcome their economic hardships. Women are perhaps the most vulnerable group because the rate of young widows is high as a result of frequent deaths of fishermen due to cyclones. These widows and their children suffer most from economic crises, as they have no source of income after losing their male breadwinner. In addition, genderrelated hardships, in the form of early marriage, dowry, frequent divorce, desertion with young children, and physical humiliation, are common. Political conflict amongst people – mainly elites – is very pronounced. River erosion, subsequent emergence of char (silted land), and the forceful takeover of khas (government-owned) land are the key reasons for social conflict and political rivalry. Local political elites allegedly use young boys for their own political interests, which creates an unruly situation in the region. Political leaders allegedly create influence over law enforcement agencies and administrative authorities very often to harass or suppress their opponents, including the poor. The physical infrastructure of the communication system of Barguna is also worth mentioning. Cyclones hit this belt each year and disrupt the lives of a

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large number of people. Due to such environmental catastrophes, regular disaster preparedness programmes have become a burning need for this district, but this is lacking in the media. The information dissemination system through conventional radio and television is developed for a general audience, not for circulation amongst every community at the micro level. For instance, the nonfriendly weather bulletins transmitted by conventional broadcast media fail to communicate with the general citizens (Raj et  al., 2010). Some information regarding fisheries and overall agriculture is published in the newspapers, but as a result of the prevailing illiteracy, it does not come to the aid of the people. The information dissemination system of the local government is also very weak. All these factors cause the farmers and fishermen as well as other vulnerable communities to grow up as uninformed citizens, and the number is just multiplying with time.

Results and findings How Lokobetar and Krishi Radio ensure a participatory approach in planning, managing, and programming to raise the voices of the marginalised is the major concern of this case study. Therefore, this section deals with six major focuses: (i) Community access and listenership, (ii) support and volunteerism, (iii) sense of community ownership, (iv) participation in management, (v) community mobilisation, and (vi) sustainability. These issues are described here separately. Community access and listenership: This study shows that the audience of the two CR stations studied is around 2–3  percent of the district population of 3.7  million. There exists a contrast in listener trends between villages and towns. In town, almost six out of ten are aware of these CR stations, while the level of awareness is comparatively less in rural areas. It has been observed that most rural listeners are either members of listeners’ clubs or closely related to radio operational activities, such as volunteers. The general population does not listen to these radio programmes for a number of reasons: non-popularity of radio as a medium, usage of the polished Bangla language in programming, and overemphasis on music programmes. Though it is presumed that mobile phones would be used for tuning in to the CR stations in the absence of radio sets, it has been found that in every case most people use “mobile memory cards” for entertainment and passing leisure time instead of tuning in to the CR stations. In addition, ear phone devices, which make listeners uncomfortable, are necessary to listen to CRs programmes. For instance, Chomir Mridha, a day labourer at Dhalbhanga, a village 8 km away from a district town, says, “I need computer or headphone or mobile to listen to Lokobetar. It is boring; therefore, I do not listen.” Dozens of people, mainly farmers, makeshift vendors, boatmen, fisherfolk, tea stall owners, votvoti (locally made vehicle) drivers, and students from Lotabaria and Kakchira villages, some 15–20 km from Barguna, including dwellers in townships, informed the author that they are aware of Lokobetar, and some of them often listen to the programming of this station. They also instantly mention Dhokkina Hawa and news broadcasts in the local dialect. However, it is

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noticed that youths are more enthusiastic about Lokobetar programming, while older adults and women are less aware of the station. Listeners’ clubs put radio transistors in makeshift village shops and keep transistors on during broadcast times. They also put registers there, but when checked, it is noticed that while some people sign almost every day, no new listeners’ signatures are found within the same week. Similarly, villagers, both young and old  – mainly labourers on agricultural farms, road and highway repair labourers, radio listeners’ club members, housewives, and fisherfolk from Urashitola and Dokkhinkanda villages near the river Paira basin – an area between the Amtoli and Barguna Sadar border that includes Kachuptra – and a border village between Patuakhali and Barguna informed the author that they know of Krishi Radio; however, they knew nothing about Lokobetar. It has also been witnessed that the listening rate is not as expected. On average, four out of ten occasionally listen to Krishi Radio programming. Listeners mentioned that during cyclone Mahasen, Krishi Radio was the only medium available to listen to, as the whole area was without power for several days. Aged people are very enthusiastic about particular programmes – folk songs and Waaj Mahfil (religious sermons) – whereas youths favour phonein programmes. Access is still limited to local elites and to people in townships, but people in villages do not even know the location. Kalam Shiekh, a boatman from Urashitola, 15  km away from Krishi Radio station, says, “I  never visit station and have no idea whether this station is either government- or community-owned.” Lokobetar and Krishi Radio distribute a good number of ten-band radio transistors amongst people to enhance listenership. But it has been noticed that those transistors are mostly guarded by rich elites, thereby preventing common people’s access to CR programmes. For instance, in Kachuptra bazaar (local market), Krishi Radio provided a radio transistor, which was formally handed over to the president of the bazaar committee, and he put the radio set in his shop. “If it would be put in committee office or nearby tea stall, more people could have got scope listening,” Krishi Radio volunteer Tania Akhter said. For development programmes, it is important that producers receive feedback from listeners so that they can modify the programming structure according to listeners’ tastes. But SMSes and call-ins are the only two major ways of recording listeners’ expectations. Abida Sultana, a volunteer-turned-Lokobetar-producer, says, “We received around 150 SMSes daily and almost one-third are from women/girls from rural areas.” During the author’s stay, this station received a total of 4,903 SMSes, and a few listeners sent 10–15 SMSes almost every day. But there are no records of these SMSes in the Krishi Radio archive. Both CR bosses, however, informed the author that they use informal mechanisms to understand people’s expectations with regard to programme design. Support and volunteerism: CR stations provide an enduring platform for programme production with the involvement of local people. For instance, Carlos Arnaldo writes that CR is “a social process or event in which members of the community associate together to design programmes and produce and air them, thus taking on the primary role of actors in their own destiny, whether this be

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for something as common as mending fences in the neighbourhood” (Fraser and Estrada, 2001). The Chitradurga experience of India shows that participation as a volunteer, reporter, personality, or staff member in and through radio has allowed community people to realise or reaffirm their relationship with the community, thereby contributing to increased interest in their community. By sharing information, they understand what people in the community really want to know and tell (for details, see Likhi, 2013). It has been found that Krishi Radio manages donated land from the local political elite, but Lokobetar operates its activities from a two-story rented house. No other support – for example cash donation – is reported for these two stations. Two types of volunteers are seen in Lokobetar: volunteers for news reporting and programme artist volunteers. Krishi Radio does not have a large number of volunteers, but many college students help the station in various ways: writing scripts, composing stories, writing news bulletins, and occasionally presenting programmes. Munir Kamal, Lokobetar station manager, says, “The key problem is to manage the volunteer, as trained volunteers shifted cities to pursue higher education. Without a good honorarium, how can I expect contribution from them?” Krishi Radio national coordinator Dr. M. Jahangir Alam agrees with this view and says, “As Krishi Radio is operated under government supervision, the maintenance of volunteer [sic] is a technical problem, as they will not take any responsibility for any fault; thus, we are very cautious in taking them.” Mehadi Hassan, non-paid volunteer of this station, says, “Encouragement from station officials will boost volunteerism, but I  sense a reservation, whereas Lokobetar announces frequently to recruit volunteers for the station, and they never suffer from lack of volunteers.” Sense of community ownership: CR is the voice of the local public. On the one hand, it gives the common people access to information. On the other, it has increased the common people’s awareness about governmental and nongovernmental services. To stay consistent with the local people’s demands and desires, these two CR stations are playing a vital role in providing entertainment, education, agriculture, health, weather, and awareness-building news as well as daily market prices, government and non-government information services, and information about the activities of local government and other sectors. This study found that the local community people are at least aware of these two radio stations now. Community people – mainly township dwellers – are now considering CR as a good medium. But with regard to sense of ownership, except committee members, volunteers, and members of listeners’ clubs, all others have no idea about the ownership of these two CR stations. According to Munir Kamal, 98  percent of people don’t know whether these radio stations are government- or non-government–owned. He says, “Only two percent, mainly in township, are aware of ownership issue. Still, we’ve got no mechanism to mobilise locals for feeling as if they are owners of Lokobetar. People are still distant listeners.” In case of Krishi Radio, all staffers are government officials and not from the local community. As an outsider, they don’t have a rapport with the locals, and the locals consider them temporary staff at this station.

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Participation in management: Lokobetar operates through three committees: a 15-member advisory committee headed by Deputy Commissioner (district administrative chief); six-member monitoring committee headed by the Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO); and an 11-member management committee headed by the President of the District Cultural Association. Male-female representation in the committees is 9:6; 5:1, and 8:3 respectively. The first two committees are headed by government officials as per the policy, while the local civil society organiser heads the management committee. The management committee incorporates representatives from communities like fisherfolk, farmers, slum dwellers, labourers, and cultural activists. Krishi Radio has two committees. A  17-member advisory committee is headed by the Director of the AIS, and a 20-member management committee is headed by a local college principal. The advisory committee includes 12 government officials along with representatives from local elected bodies and NGOs, but there is no female representation. The management committee, however, includes three female representatives along with some farmers, fishermen, youths, and rakkhin (a small ethnic minority group that resides in this district). The management committees of both CR stations sit once in a month, but participation of the different representatives is not satisfactory. The Lokobetar management committee secretary-cum-station-manager says, “Members showed interest earlier, but not now; because we could not provide conveyance to the members to attend.” Similarly, the Krishi Radio management committee faces severe problems, as most members cannot maintain the meeting schedule because of other official commitments. As such, in both cases, community voices and participation are not reflected in management, though these two CR stations officially state they have representation from different community members on the committee. In every case, the station managers play a key role in designing, producing, and even broadcasting. Community mobilisation: The development impact of CR stations in raising awareness about and access to felt needs pertaining to civic engagement, social services (education and health), agricultural productivity, and human rights requires strong community mobilisation. This has been possible due to the dynamics of region-specific programming in local dialects as well as its participatory nature – communities making their radio programmes and interacting on air through talk shows and round table discussions from accessible public locations. For such, usage of local language, preferably dialect, is one of the key strengths of CR in reaching communities. This strategy helps mobilise communities in favour of CR. It has been found, except for the Friday bulletin, that Lokobetar does not produce any programmes in the local dialect. Krishi Radio does not produce or broadcast any programmes in the local dialect. All interviewed volunteers are against programming in the local dialect. Fakrul Roni, technical director and volunteer presenter of Lokobetar, says, “Mixing of dialect in polished Bangla is harmful, translating the text into local dialect is difficult. Furthermore, having a good reader of dialect is a problem too.” Under such conditions, it can be asserted that, regarding the use of language, these two CR stations are a clone of mainstream radio.

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Two station managers feel the necessity for a short- and medium-term mobilisation plan. MMC, the Lokobetar initiator, made a detailed plan for lobbying for CR stations in Bangladesh, but it did not prepare any community mobilisation plan for the aftermath. The station shares its schedule of activities with the local NGOs and seek their cooperation in getting community engagement. It also pursues local political leaders and other influential personalities to visit the station. It changed the programme schedule after consultation with the local community through volunteers. Krishi Radio authority, however, does not take any community mobilisation steps, as the planners of this radio station come from the outside, and they also consider the station a government apparatus. Sustainability: Financial constraint is ubiquitous in both CR stations. Technical difficulties of broadcast equipment are also noticed where the sustainability of station is concerned. Myers (2011: 18) suggests five basic options for funding radio where the financial capability and sustainability of CR stations are concerned: advertising, donors (international aid and loans), community-based income generation (including diaspora contributions), patronage, and state aid. Bangladesh’s CR policy encourages public participation and generation of funding for CR sustainability and facilitates adequate training for volunteers and CR broadcasters. After the phase-out of FAO and Danida support, both Krishi Radio and Lokobetar faced a severe funding crisis. All four regular employees left Lokobetar within a month of the crisis. Krishi Radio, though it enjoys privilege, as all employees get their salaries from AIS, faced a resource crisis in programme production. Both radio stations, however, continued operations even after the phase-out of direct donor funding, as they receive some technical and financial support from BNNRC. To stay in existence, Lokobetar organised a lottery with permission from the district administration. The lottery helps raise a good amount of money. It also broadcasts a limited number of local advertisements with nominal fees. Krishi Radio struggles a lot to arrange operation costs, as the government does not consider this station a wing of the agricultural ministry. It also does not allow any commercial advertisements. It seems that sustainability of Lokobetar depends on popularity and worthiness, while government patronage is the lifeblood of Krishi Radio. With such drawbacks, both CR stations will require a regular state fund to run all activities till they gain a level of sustainability. In addition, CR stations seek assistance and donations, especially from philanthropists, to keep functioning. But the mobilisation of the community is still a great need. For instance, in both CR stations, young volunteers present music and magazines, as they prefer playing their favourite tunes, and this discourages listening by the older generation.

Discussions and conclusion Two philosophical approaches to CR exist. One emphasises service and community-mindedness, focusing on what the station can do for the community. The other stresses involvement and participation by the listener. In the service model, locality is valued. Unlike a larger operation, CR, as a third tier,

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can provide content that is focused on a more local or particular community. The studied stations prove that these two CR stations are following the service model and can be called “development radio,” “radio for [intended] social change,” or “one-way local radio.” These stations depend on donor funding for sustenance – not the community – as a result of this lack of community consultation in rethinking financially viable models, they tend to compromise on community access and participation. This strategy again proves that any donor-driven initiative has, to some extent, the potential to create opportunity for the powerrich in making plans or using CR in alleviating poverty, thus, the net impact of these interventions on transforming the social order has been somewhat limited. Bangladesh’s CR policy also mentions that CR is non-profit community media run by community ownership and control. CR will serve a certain community bonded together via similar geographical, linguistic, social, cultural, and traditional characteristics. CR programmes will be relevant to the community and produced and delivered in the local dialect, with high community participation. The policy ensures that the areas of CR programme coverage include community education, health and society, women’s rights, rural and community-based development, environment, weather, and cultural aspects. The studied CR stations cover these issues through their programming, but control is in the hands of the NGO or government organs and, like other initiatives, this fails to ensure expected community participation. Moreover, the studied CR station operations indicate that participation of the common people is not yet properly mobilised. In other words, power-poor community people (e.g. landless farmers, illiterate men and women, wage labourers on farms, sharecroppers, the aged and disabled, and those who are usually deprived of access to government services) do not feel any necessity to establish CR stations in their community; rather, local elite and a government organ are doing it. At the management level, all members are locally well known and usually exercise power over others as power-rich local elite in a patron-client social context. Producers and volunteers are locally educated youths. As such, elitism is sensed in both cases. The experience of these two CR stations indicates that weak community ownership of CR broadcasting; unrealistic and irrelevant capacity-building in management, programming, and marketing; inadequacy of scientific audience research and of information and communication technology (ICT) use; and financial constraints make the CR station scenario critical. Finally, it seems from the programme schedule that these CR stations try their best to incorporate community issues in programme contents and include a representative from different segments of the population at the management level. The attempt brings community involvement through participatory attitudes to some extent, but the true CR needs more proactive participation from localities, for which CR stations need to plan and vision in advance. Perhaps this is the big challenge for these two CR stations when stations run unsustainably or face abandonment by donors and community members. In addition, CR broadcasting is a new experience for Bangladesh, but the CR policy asserts that CR is a non-profit community media run by community ownership and control. These conflicting situations make the total CR broadcast scenario problematic.

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Notes 1 The official name of the policy is Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy 2017; the original policy was adopted on March 12, 2008, and replaced by new policy 2017, adopted on February 8, 2018. 2 Community can be defined with either terrestrial or social parameters based on contexts and perspectives. Community in this instance, however, is understood as a terrestrial or geographical construct because all community radio stations in Bangladesh operate primarily in a specific geographical area, serving audiences within a 17  km radius only because of frequency limitations.

References Akhter, R. (2018). Unaddressed Arena of Community Radio Study in Bangladesh. Paper presented in the First International Conference on ‘Media, Communication and Journalism: Prospects and Challenges in Bangladesh and Beyond’, July 17–19, 2018. University of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Anwar, M. (2015). Women’s Participation in Community Radio in Bangladesh. Unpublished Masters of Science Thesis, The University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. Bangladesh Gazette (2018). Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy 2017 (pp.  1333–1347). Dhaka: Bangladesh Government Press. No: 15.00.0000.022.34.022.13–28; Published on February 08, 2018. BNNRC (2017). Community Radio, what is on air – a Policy Brief. Dhaka: BNNRC. BNNRC (2018). Social Dialogue for Achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Community Radio. January 2. Available at: http://bnnrc.net/social-dialoguefor-sdgs/ (Accessed on March 25, 2019). Fairbairn, J. (2009). Community Media Sustainability Guide: The Business of Changing Lives. Arcata and Washington: Internews. Fraser, C. and Estrada, S.R. (2001). Community Radio Handbook. Paris: UNESCO. Genilo, J.W., Bhowmick, B. Ch. and Hossain, M.S. (2016). Giving Voice to the Voiceless: Community Radio in Bangladesh. In Dr. Vikas Kumar and Dr. Pawan Gupta (Eds.), Media and Communication in Sustainable Development (pp.  142–163). Haryana, India: Society for Education and Research Development. Government of Bangladesh – GoB (2008). Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy. Dhaka: Ministry of Information, Gazette Notification, March 12, 2008. Available at: www.moi.gov.bd (Accessed on December 27, 2018). Hasnat, I. and Steyn, E. (2018). Community Radio in Bangladesh: Limited Reach with Unlimited Impact. In Eric Freedman, Robyn S. Goodman and Elanie Steyn (Eds.), Critical Perspectives on Journalistic Beliefs and Actions: Global Experiences (pp. 69–79). Oxon, UK: Routledge. Howley, K. (2010). Understanding Community Media. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Islam, S.M.S. (2008). Growing Opportunities in the Field of Social and Developmental Communication Using Radio as an Instrument for Change: Bangladesh Perspective. Available at: http://bazlu1968.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/growing-opportunities-in-fieldof.html (Accessed on December 27, 2018). Kamruzzaman, M. (2015). Why Community Radio Matters in Bangladesh. Dhaka, Bangladesh: NGOs Network in Community Radio and Communication (BNNRC). Librero, F. (2004). Community Broadcasting: Concept and Practice in the Philippines. Singapore: Marshal Cavendish International. Likhi, A. (2013). Community Driven Development in Developing Countries: The Need for Community Radio in Supporting Access, Voice and Accountability. New Delhi: Observer Research Foundation.

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MacBride, S. (1980). Many Voices One World: Communication and Society, Today and Tomorrow. Paris: UNESCO. Manyozo, L. (2009). Mobilizing Rural and Community Radio in Africa. Ecquid Novi: African Journalism Studies, 30(1), 1–23. Massline Media Centre – MMC (2013). Promotion of Community Voices through Community Radio: An Impact Assessment of Lokobetar on Barguna People. Final report by Robaet Ferdous, Dhaka, August 2013. Mefalopulos, P. (2008). Development Communication Sourcebook: Broadening the Boundaries of Communication. Washington, DC: World Bank. Melkote, S.R. (1991). Communication for Development in the Third World: Theory and Practice. New Delhi: Sage. Monju, K.H. (2003). Use of Community Radio in Bangladesh, Jonoporisore Gonomadhyom Onnanno Prosongo, (Media in public sphere and other issues – in Bengli). Dhaka: MMC. Myers, M. (2011). Voices from Villages: Community Radio in the Developing World. A report to the Centre for International Media Assistance, Washington DC, CIMA and NED. Quebral, N. (1988). Development Communication. Lose Banos: Laguna, UPLB College of Agriculture. Rahman, G.R. (2007). Bangladesh: Much Scope for Alternative Media, but is there Political will? In Kalinga Seneviratne (Ed.), Media Pluralism in Asia: The Role and Impact of Alternative Media (pp. 1–27). Singapore: AMIC and NTU. Raj, S.J., Ullah, M.S. and Akhter, R. (2010). From Dissemination to Response: In Search of New Strategies for Broadcast Media in Terms of Cyclone Warnings for Bangladesh. Journal of Science Communication, (Jcom), 9(4) A03. Rasheed, A.A. (2014). How the Community Radio in Bangladesh are Going On? ABC Radio, Dhaka, Personal Contact [[email protected] on February 15, 2014]. Sultana, N. (2012). Participation in Community Broadcasting: The Case of Community Radio Stations (CRS) in Bangladesh. Unpublished master’s thesis. University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Tabing, L.N. (2004). How to do Community Radio. New Delhi: UNESCO. Thomas, P.N. (2015). Communication for Social Change, Making Theory Count. Nordicom Review, 36(Special Issue), 71–78. Ullah, M.S. (2010). Community Radio Movement in Bangladesh: Will they Work as Citizens’ Media? Global Media Journal, Indian Edition, University of Calcutta, June 2010. Available at: www.caluniv.ac.in/Global%20media%20journal/Article/m%20s%20ullah%20banglades.pdf (Accessed on December 27, 2018). Ullah, M.S. and Chowdhury, M.A.A. (2006). Community Radio Movement in Bangladesh: In Search of Lobbying Strategies. Journal of Development Communication, 17(2), 20–32. UNICEF Bangladesh (2015). National Strategy for the Implementation of Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operations Policy in Bangladesh. Available at: www.sancomonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/National-strategy-BangladeshCR.pdf. (Accessed on March 25, 2019). Virtanen, T (2005). Community Radio and Video Narrow-casting. Workshop presentation, AIBD/ UNESCO/ FES/ WRTVC Workshop on Citizens Media, Asia Media Summit-2005, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Wabwire, J. (2013). The Role of Community Radio in Development of the Rural Poor. New Media and Mass Communication, 10, 40–47. White, S.A. (1994). The Concept of Participation: Transforming Rhetoric to Reality. In Shirley A. White, K. Sadanandan Nair, and Joseph Ascroft (Eds.), Participatory Communication: Working for Change and Development (pp. 15–32). New Delhi: Sage.

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Box 3  Community media is making the media landscape of South Asia more pluralistic AHM Bazlur Rahman is an iconic figure in the community radio movement in South Asia. As the CEO of Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC), Rahman energised the government and civil society in his country to establish a dynamic community radio sector, within a distinct policy framework. He is well-travelled, imbibing experiences and models from around the world and advocating for change in the media landscape not only in Bangladesh but also in the rest of South Asia.  Vinod Pavarala  and  Kanchan K. Malik  met him at the BNNRC office in Dhaka and discussed the growth of community radio in Bangladesh and other parts of the region. Excerpts from the interview: VP:  Could you please tell us about the status of community radio in Bangladesh today? BR: In Bangladesh, there are 17 community radio stations on-air and another 15 stations are awaiting spectrum allocation. We hope by the end of December all 15 will join. Now, 17 community radio stations produce 125  hours of programmes per day, most of which come from the local community, and by the local community. About 1000 youth men and women (52%) are working with these stations as community radio broadcasters. The programming line is development – there are basic four areas: to inform, to educate, development motivation, and local entertainment. All programmes basically originate at the local level with consultation and participation from the local communities. It is our estimate that these 125 hours a day are being produced with the participation of a minimum of 4000 people. Side by side, local government officials are seen as partners of the community radio station. This is one of the strengths of community radio in Bangladesh. At the central government level, our Ministry of Information has already revised the Community Radio Policy 2008 after examining our practices and experiences. This revised policy is now awaiting final declaration. VP: What will be some of the key features of this new policy? BR: One key feature will be permitting of commercial advertisements – up to 10% of airtime – that are in line with National Broadcasting Policy Advertisement Guidelines. Now, community radios broadcast only some development advertisements. I think will be a great area, because through this our radio will more sustainable. Our volunteers and staff can get better honorarium and wages through this. Another feature of the new policy would be that the government will allow community campus radio as part of universities. A third area is that the government would like to allow a minimum of two community radio

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stations per district. We have 64 districts, and if each government will have at least two radio stations, then we will have more than 100 community radio stations in Bangladesh. The Ministry has already issued a D.O. letter (demi-official letter) to all ministries so that they can provide their development advertisements through community radio. This way, the government can utilise the potential of community radio for promoting development issues, such as health, family planning, environment, and other safety net issues. In the future, I  think, the information related gap will minimise between the rural community and the government, especially with safety net issues. VP: What about campus radio? Will it be treated as a sub-category of community radio, or will it be a separate category all together? BR:  In India, you have a lot of experience with campus community radio. So, we hope in Bangladesh; there will be a separate campus radio policy for the universities in the future. But, right now, the government’s intention is to make it part of the community radio policy. KKM:  Is there any provision in the new policy on permitting news broadcasting in community radio? BR: We have provision for what we call development news. We have some embargo regarding political news, political party news. Otherwise, our community radios do a lot of news on community problems, community unrest, community solutions, which can all be seen as political. Only, we cannot broadcast party-based news. The revised policy will maintain the same. We are okay with this because, as a growing sector in Bangladesh, community radio needs more time to build its capacity to handle political news. VP: Now, most of the first round of stations, the initial 14, have experience of about five years of being on-air. What has been the learning from the ground level that BNNRC and you could gather? BR:  I would like to share with you some findings. CR stations have started addressing issues of disadvantaged communities like Dalits in our programmes. Secondly, community radios in Bangladesh have been playing a good role in the area of disaster risk reduction. When disasters struck power lines in coastal areas, and television was off, it was basically radio that saved the coastal people. Local administrators went to stations that were struggling to operate through diesel powered generators and told them, “please do not interrupt your broadcast, we will provide you diesel.” This is the trust and credibility that are enjoyed by community radio today. Another learning I would like to share with you is dialogue, a process established at the community level through radio  – a dialogue between local government and civil society, with other issue-based organisations or campaign groups. Community radio has been promoting dialogue among different stakeholders in development. Take a typical magazine format

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programme that runs for 30 minutes to one hour, the community radio station always invites, engages the relevant local stakeholders. One person comes from the government, another from civil society, and another a beneficiary group. Through a dialogue between the three of them, they move towards a solution. KKM: One of your big achievements has been the training of the youth women, and you won a WSIS award also for it. Please tell us about this initiative. BR: Basically, this initiative is in line with community radio journalism. While our youth seem to be interested in working with community radio, our rural press has no women. There is a big vacuum in raising rural women’s voices in the media. To address that we started a programme called ‘Youth Women in Community Radio’. We set up a 6-month fellowship programme and selected youth women by announcing on radio and distributing leaflets in the local community. Our objective was that with this training and working with mentors, the rural woman community radio journalist would also develop some news for the local press. Now, 59 such youth women, including 40 from Dalit communities, are with community radio stations. After this process, our staff members, community radio station managers, and also community radio well-wishers realised the dynamism of the daily lives of Dalits and that they are a neglected section of our society. VP: Now, caste discrimination is quite a big issue, not only in Bangladesh but also in some other parts of South Asia. Do you think that community radio must play a role in addressing discrimination and inequality in other parts of South Asia as well? BR: Nepal community radio is already doing something on this issue, I think. You perhaps know about Jagran Media group’s efforts in Nepal. It is now time to act throughout the South Asian region, sharing experiences regarding disadvantaged communities, especially Dalits. I think we need some empirical research on how radio is already addressing the issue and how radio can address it in the future, followed by a dialogue. VP:  BNNRC and you personally have been pioneers in community radio in Bangladesh. But, you also have played a remarkable role in South Asia through sharing and learning. How do you see the future of community radio in South Asia as a whole? BR: It is a very important question for me also. For me, South Asian future is community media. This is my realisation because the sector is growing in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, maybe Bhutan will join and Sri Lanka, Maldives, Myanmar. If we want to address the issues of the disadvantaged communities, the real poor people of South Asia, we need a strong community media movement. We need community radio, community television and community film.

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VP: How do you think it will transform the media landscape in South Asia? BR: I think community media has already changed the media landscape of South Asia. Besides civil society movements, governments in India, Bangladesh and Nepal have now realised the potential of community media. They are providing policy support to make the media landscape more pluralistic. Source: CR News Vol. 7, No. 2, Jul-Sept 2016

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4 COMMUNITY RADIOS OF NEPAL Trajectory of a cultural movement Sudhamshu Dahal Introduction Airwaves opened in Nepal gradually after the introduction of parliamentary democracy in 1990. The new constitution promulgated in 1990 in the changed political environment explicitly guaranteed the fundamental rights of the people, including freedom of expression. As in other democracies, the Nepali Constitution of 1990 accepted the right to information as a directive principle of state policy. It acted as a safeguard for freedom of print and publication, which are believed to be necessary for human development. Although the constitutional rights did not explicitly mention the right to broadcast, it was inherent in the line of media and press freedom as set forth in the Constitution. Formulation of the National Communication Policy and enactment of the National Broadcasting Act in 1993, in the spirit of the Constitution, paved the way to possible involvement of the private sector in establishing free and independent radio in Nepal. Moreover, the Supreme Court of Nepal interpreted that unrestricted and guaranteed rights to information were essential for a democratic system (Mainali, 2007). The 1990 democracy had many failed experiments  – in particular, dealing with the people’s aspirations in guaranteeing constitutional rights. The height of political tension intensified with the waging of the “People’s War” by the then CPN (Maoist) party in 1997 and ineptness of the mainstream political parties to contain the conflict, and this was blown to its fuller strength in successive years. However, the rehearsal of the medieval power grab evidenced by the bloodless coup d’état by the then King Gyanendra Shah in 2005 ended with the coming together of the CPN Maoists (who were engaged in the 10-year-old armed conflict) and the alliance of seven main political parties to wage a peaceful yet potent democratic movement in 2006. This political movement was both supplemented and supplanted at different stages and progressed with the help of fervent emancipatory protest activities, including those on Dalit rights as well as the Madhesh and indigenous identity movements. The coming together of the Nepali people for the cause of democracy and sustainable peace (in overcoming the armed conflict) helped establish Loktantra (People’s Democracy) in 2006

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and ultimately the removal of the monarchy in 2008 after a reign of nearly 240 years. The detailed analysis of this unique socio-political mix in Nepal is a subject of other research, but a cursory acknowledgement is required here to establish the link between cultural movements and community radio. This means that the Loktantra became a contested yet ever demanding platform for furthering rights and identity movements. However, the latter movement has two sides, one political and violent exaction and the other a softer one, as expressed in cultural identity creation and rights assertion. I  call this softer movement of identity reclamation a cultural movement. The cultural movement has contributed significantly to the recent explosion of the community radio sector in Nepal. The overall policy environment after the successive political movements in Nepal was favourable to the growth of independent Nepali broadcast media, and so was the popular and cheap FM technology for radio broadcasts. Radio became readily available to prospective private as well as community operators in Nepal. However, the delay in the formulation of successive acts and regulations hampered the expansion of independent broadcast media. It hindered the creation of a platform for greater community participation. This slow progress in both democracy and the community radio sector limited any meaningful engagement of the community. We could see that the period between 1997 and 2005 witnessed a lethargic growth in community radio licencing, with some years witnessing a no-licence period (Dahal and Aram, 2011). It was the availability of alternative voices through community radio that has significantly contributed to the emergence of specialist community radio stations in recent times. Women-specific, Dalit-specific, indigenous community– specific, and faith-based community radio stations are part of the growing community radio sector in the country. In the realm of the situation mentioned earlier, this chapter investigates the phenomenal growth of community radio in Nepal and observes whether such growth is a conscious brainchild of cultural movements or is just specific to the fervent politico-social mix. The chapter examines indigenous community radio stations in Nepal to find the answer. It is necessary to be reminded here, as Chantal Mouffe put it, that “only by coming to terms with the double movement of inclusion-exclusion that democratic politics entails can we deal with the challenge with which the process of globalization confronts us today” (Mouffe, 2000: 57). The sections following begin with an introduction to community radio in Nepal, with the next section arguing for community radio as social movement media. After the theoretical deliberations on social movement media and identity politics, the following section maps identity reclamation through community radio in Nepal. Finally, the chapter concludes with the finding that the opportunity to create their own media will not only help indigenous communities preserve their language and culture but will also allow them to create their own history on their own terms.

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Nepal: a South Asian pioneer With the establishment of Radio Sagarmatha in 1997 as the first community radio in South Asia, Nepal marked the transfer of control over broadcasting from the government to the people. But radio was based in the national capital Kathmandu, where the people had access to many other media for education, information, and entertainment. At the same time, independent radio was not available to the communication needs of the larger part of Nepali population living outside the capital city, Kathmandu. After continuous struggles for expanding access to the rural and peri-urban communities, gradually, independent radio stations were established outside the capital. Within one year of commencement of the broadcast of Radio Sagarmatha, Radio Lumbini in the southern Terai district of Rupendehi and Radio Madanpokhara in the western mid-hill district of Palpa were actualised, away from the country’s centre. Radio Sagarmatha underwent more than half a decade of embryonic struggles before obtaining its broadcast licence with 17 pre-conditions,1 which it must adhere to while operating. The very first “independent” radio broadcast in South Asia was not quite free from state control. Radio Sagarmatha was strictly restricted from expressing “critical” or “alternative” views of the government. It is interesting to note that such state control was not fabricated under any policy-related framework; rather, it was an ad hoc decision by the licencing authority – in this case, the Nepali Ministry of Information and Communication (Dahal and Aram, 2010). The story and context both have changed after nearly two decades of the first airing of independent radio in Nepal. But what remains the same is the ad hoc nature of regulation for community radio governance by the government. Now, nearly 300 community radio stations in the country possess a huge potential to be exploited for rural empowerment in the changing social and political context. Yet there is no policy addressing the specialities of the large and growing independent radio sector in Nepali media (ACORAB, 2009). Due to the lack of policy, radio stations in Nepal are self-declaring as either “community” or “commercial” based on their publicised mission, vision, goal, and radio programming ideology. Including the self-declared perspectives, there are three types of radio broadcasts in Nepal: State, community, and commercial radio. Except for the state broadcaster, Radio Nepal, all the radio stations are regulated under National Broadcasting Act, 1993. The radio broadcast licence granted by the government does not per se differentiate community radio stations from other independent forms of radio broadcasting in Nepal (Martin and Wilmore, 2010). Amongst 600 independent radio stations issued licences so far, a clear majority have been issued to the community radio broadcasters. But looking at it from the regulatory stance reveals that there is no existence of a single community broadcaster in the country (Dahal and Aram, 2010). It means, according to the current broadcasting law, that all forms of independent radio stations have the same status and are treated as equal, be it for control or a rare tokenism of governmental assistance in the form of public service advertisements.

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In spite of radio being a one-way medium, due to its adaptability and existence in the local information ecology, community radio stations have high interactivity through involvement and participation of local communities (Dahal and Aram, 2010). They form a counter-hegemonic presence to state and commercial radio broadcasts available to the broadcast community. The public broadcasting characteristics upheld by community radio stations are so distinct that they clearly demand special acknowledgement amongst all other forms of broadcasting. Thus, to ameliorate community broadcasting, a detailed community radio distinction needs to be outlined within a broader broadcast policy, if not a separate policy, for community radio sector in Nepal (Dahal and Aram, 2010).

Community radio as social movement media The community radio stations in Nepal were started in the environment created by post-1990 democracy, which took the form of social movement during the fervent of political change in 2006. The political movement in Nepal was also social, in the sense that it wanted to mitigate the country’s larger sociocultural issues prevalent in the society, such as discrimination against women, Dalits, and indigenous nationalities. Indigenous peoples in Nepal call themselves “indigenous nationalities” (NFDIN, 2003). The issue of socio-cultural movement was also strongly associated with the Maoists’ decade-long political insurgency. After the success of the 2006 political movement, the movement of the country onto the path of sustained peace also meant that social and cultural discrimination would be alleviated through the effect of cultural tools such as community radio. The most important point about social movement is that it creates collective action through “a more or less stable, composite, collective identity” (Melucci, 1995). Creation of collective identity and action cannot be instantaneous. It has to be built up within a society, through participation in a certain distinctive culture, over a long period of time. Therefore, it is an ongoing process through which social movement leaders communicate with actors within the communities before taking it up as an agenda with the wider society. Hence, new social movements are necessary for cultural identity re-establishment. In Alberto Melucci’s (1995) view, the struggles of new social movements are struggles over identity, which is cultural. They act to push others to recognise something that they themselves recognise by struggling to affirm others’ denial over the issue. In this sense, identity cannot be constructed outside the relationships that give it meaning. Contemporary social movements like the community radio movement are “new social movements” that are not concerned with struggles over the production of material resources or with their distribution or control through the state in citizenship rights, but rather with access to information and the contestation over symbolic cultural resources. Social movements are principally concerned with solidarity and conflict in the cultural realm. As they are highly suspicious of the conventional political process, they are radical. Social movements point the way beyond the limits of the present system toward a new form of democratisation appropriate to complex

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societies. They embody the need for new public spaces between civil society and the state, spaces in which movements can articulate and publicise themes and dilemmas to the rest of society and to the political actors who make the final decisions about how they will be dealt with (Nash, 2010). Community radio stations as a part of the new public space take the societal agenda beyond the status quo of mediascape (Rodriguez, 2001). As a part of social movements, they offer an ample opportunity for varieties of other movements to contest their agenda in the independent public space, equating the state and civil society at the same level. Community radio stations are part of the system through their adherence to the country’s broadcast laws, if any, and their ability to be a platform independent of it. Hence, they initiate healthy debates on a range of issues addressed by the social movements. Social movement is also a network of informal interactions between a plurality of individuals, groups, and organisations “engaged in a political or cultural conflict on the basis of a shared collective identity” (Diani, 1992: 13). Social movements are often engaged in activities designed to influence governments, political parties, and policymakers. It is possible that some may not be concerned with politics in this sense but solely with the conflicts in civil society. They are, however, always engaged in the politics of cultural contestation: “It is the understanding of social movements as continually engaged in cultural politics which makes them so central to contemporary political sociology” (Nash, 2010: 123). New social movements represent solutions – not symptoms – to the crisis of contemporary society. The role of media in social movements is important in the sense that it allows the movement to communicate to different sectors of public opinion, thereby overcoming its local base (Hannigan, 1985). Social movements are emerging in a broader political process where “excluded interests try to get access to the established polity” (Diani, 1992: 5). Collective identity plays an essential role in defining the boundaries of a social movement. Only those actors sharing the same beliefs and sense of belongingness can be considered part of a social movement. However, “collective identity” does not imply homogeneity of ideas and hegemony of the orientations within social movement networks. Within any movement, a wide spectrum of different conceptions may be present, and factional conflicts may arise at any time, which also determines the health of the movement. Therefore, the construction and preservation of a movement’s identity imply a continuous process of realignment through “framing” and “negotiation” between movement actors (Diani, 1992; Melucci, 1989; Snow et al., 1986). Theorising social movements from the perspective of “framing” as rooted in the symbolic interactionist and constructionist principles, Snow (2004) explains that “meanings do not automatically or naturally attach themselves to the objects, events, or experiences we encounter, but often arise, instead, through interactively based interpretive processes” (p.  384). Accordingly, the framing perspective focuses attention on social movement activists and participants engaged in meaning construction along with other parties, such as elites, media, counter-movements, etc. The extent to which political opportunity structures

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facilitate or constrain social movement activity is affected by how they are framed by movement actors and others (Gamson and Meyer, 1996). Sudden increases in the opportunities for cohesive, aggrieved groups can lead to the formation of movements. It is not because of grievances created by the “revolution of rising expectations but because these changes reduce the costs of mobilization and improve the likelihood of success” (Jenkins, 1983: 532). The influence of social movements at a given political phase is dependent on their structural position, which means on the solidity of the linkages within the movement sector as well as the bonds amongst movement actors, within their social milieu, and with cultural and political elites. Community radio in Nepal is a part of the social movement to make people empowered through identity re-establishment and reclamation. In this sense, it is a Social Movement Organisation (Diani, 1997). Social movements have therefore shifted from classical Social Movement Organisations (or classical SMOs) with indigenous leadership, volunteer staff, extensive membership, resources from direct beneficiaries, and actions based on mass participation towards professional social movement organisations (or professional SMOs) with outside leadership, full-time paid staff, small or non-existent membership, and resources from conscience constituencies. It is more of an “actions that speak for rather than involve an aggrieved group” (Jenkins, 1983: 533). But critics argue that decision-making in social movements is typically treated as “black box” processes within SMOs (Haug, 2010). This argument correlates with some of the finding on community radio in Nepal on the basis of access and participation, which is highly skewed towards the empowered in societies (Dahal and Aram, 2010). At the same time, critics also warn of using mass media merely as an advocacy tool. Relying on mass media only for news value offers more risk for social movements because news stories emphasise action rather than context, leaving readers ignorant of the causes and goals of the movements (Jenkins, 1983). Hence, in the long run, media-based mobilisation is a weak substitute for more direct methods in effective social movement communication strategy. Media coverage also tends to make superstars out of movement leaders, aggravating internal rivalries and tendencies towards showmanship, thereby weakening mobilisation (Gitlin, 1994). But community media  – particularly community radio, which acts directly through interactions with communities – would be as effective as any other direct method of social movement mobilisation. Identity is driven by the interplay of powerful social forces. Empirical research suggests that “a strong sense of self-esteem can overcome negative stereotyping of one’s ethnic identity” (Hoover et al., 1997: 37). Individual choices are not made in isolation; rather, they are cued, shaped, and constrained by powerful influences emanating from greater or smaller social forces. Independent of economic advantage or disadvantage, considerations of identity have the potential both “to tear communities apart and bring them together” (Hoover et al., 1997: 61). Culture never can be neutral, and it is an active component of every identity. Identity is always constructed and shaped by prevailing social norms and

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values, which cannot be abstract. The more adequate and representative form of democracy is practiced with a method for making social decisions while reserving the right to change them in view of new conditions, knowledge, and perceptions. Pluralist democracy would facilitate the transformation of an indigenous marginalised identity, which would otherwise be defined as a pejorative of the majority. Meaning is always constructed, and the aspect of social, that fixes it, thus defines it within a hegemonic articulation, making it political. Carl Schmitt indicates that even in modern democratic states, where universal human equality has been established, there is a category of people who are excluded as foreigners or aliens (Mouffe, 2000: 41). This conflict is part of any culture or society. The best way for the representation of many (if not all) would be to recognise the existence of the other and make the system open for amendments. Chantal Mouffe (2000) calls it “agonistic.” It is the dialectical understanding between adversaries that may overcome the antagonism. Here, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe define hegemony and agonistic pluralist democracy as a point of confluence between objectivity and power (Laclau and Mouffe, 2001). The theory of agonistic pluralist democracy helps us understand the identity politics within the social movements. Identity construction is related to power within a society – an approach to conceptualise power not as an extended relation taking place between two pre-constituted identities, but rather as “constituting the identities themselves” (Mouffe, 2000: 40). The structure of biases in media coverage of social movements was already addressed in a few studies in the 1970s (Downing, 2008) and has become a core issue in social movement research in recent years as a result of the advance of media-based protest event analysis as a central methodological tool for the analysis of contentious politics. Although the media now occupy centre stage from a methodological point of view, they have as yet not been given their due place in theorising on social movements (Koopmans, 2004). There is no doubt that movements need the media to broaden the scope of conflict. The global transnational media’s bounded communicative space can only accommodate a small minority of the variegated candidates for entry. The strong state-industry nexus of “gatekeeping” facilitated an evolutionary model of alternative media as seen during the Ministerial Conference of World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999 (Downing, 2001). It gives the importance of community media as having variegated candidates for entry, visibility, resonance, and legitimacy through participation in local mass media. Instead of viewing technology as the end of social development, new social movements hold out the possibility of transforming the production and consumption capacities of new communication technologies into a new socio-technical paradigm. This is similar to what Paschal Preston terms a social holism (Preston, 2001). It is possible because social movements are based on notions of equity, inclusivity, social justice, and radical notions of democracy (Mouffe, 2000). The mass media are not simply a site that an observer can use to assess relative success or failure in cultural contests. They are not merely an indicator of broader cultural changes in the civil society. They also spread changes in

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language use and political consciousness (Gamson, 2004). Although limitedly acknowledged as a social movement, mass media have been seen as a potential source for the success of social movements. Advocacy tactics used by social movements, including persuasion, constraint, and inducement, build around mass media as “a central instrument to make it work” (Gamson, 2004: 254). Consequently, a number of movements are tempted to enter a relationship with commercial enterprises running media without realising that for these enterprises profit-making is done through the selling of an audience to advertisers. From the 1970s, in studies of popular culture and social movements, the mass media have been viewed as a key site of political contention in advanced capitalism (Carroll and Ratner, 1999). This is the case even today and also in a primitive-capitalist society like Nepal. Social movements are still in the predicament of reducing dependence on mass media by making use of alternative media outlets or developing their own, provided that they can mobilise sufficient resources from within their own ranks. “This tactic, however, usually restricts the target population and is therefore most effective for ‘affirmative’ SMOs engaged in the politics of recognition and community development” (Carroll and Ratner, 1999: 28). Here, the indigenous nationalities in Nepal using community radio to engage in the politics of recognition at the same time also make these radio stations act as SMOs for community development. A single-volume encyclopaedia on social movement media anchors alternative media projects in social movements (Downing, 2011). Media could not only be a part but also a leader in social movements. In this context, the ongoing but almost unnoticed social activism of groups and communities in re-establishing their identities and agenda in the alternative public sphere of community radio is the fertile soil of political activism. The concepts of “alternative media” and “counter-public” emphasise the plurality of the media and public in any modern society. In particular, they have been used to refer to historical phenomena neglected by Habermas (1989) in his early book on the transformation of the public sphere. To keep democratisation processes in a society alive, there must be a space for a public discussion accessible to all who are affected by political decisions. In any given historical context, as the public sphere relates to dominant media, counter-public spheres are created by alternative media like community radio stations. Taking the case of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, Hakan Thorn (2007) asserts that the development of alternative media, particularly through the use of radio by the African National Congress, and the emergence of a diversity of alternative public spheres within support the Habermasian theory of the fragmentation of the public sphere. In place of a single public sphere there are many public spheres created by many different alternative media. Research also shows the many different indigenous nationalities with different agendas within identity re-establishment are creating different public spheres where others are also equally participating (Dahal and Aram, 2013). The flourishing of social movement media is crucial because they are pivotal vehicles within which global civil society can collectively chew on solutions, float and discard them, track their trajectories, and evaluate them, from the

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most local and immediate to the international and long-term. If defiance to the existing order is to be effectively mobilised, and if other “worlds” are to become realistically possible, then reflecting critically on the experience and potential of these protean media is nothing less than crucial (Downing, 2010: xxvi). Community media content are often regarded as counter-hegemonic textual products. Community media help in re-establishing identity as it is “constituted through performance, materiality, practice, social relations and signification” (Carroll and Hackett, 2006: 88). Each indigenous community merits its own discussion, and there is no reason to think that what one indigenous community has decided to do can be generalised to other indigenous communities. They will do as they have so often done – provide their own specific cultural answer. As in Colombia and in many other parts of the world, the democratisation of the airwaves in the form of more legitimate citizen radio has emerged at the intersection of social movements and policy reform (Rodriguez and El Gazi, 2007). Nevertheless, the indigenous communities can reflect their work through the production of media contents as found in the research from the case study of two indigenous radio stations in Nepal (Dahal, 2013). The Constitution of Nepal 2015 left behind the idea of “nation” as a monolithic entity founded in one language, one religion, one identity, and one culture, with the monarchy as overall unifying force, and espoused an idea of “nation” as a dialogue amongst diverse ethnic and cultural identities. Clemencia Rodriguez (2001) has drawn on the theory of radical democracy proposed by Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau (1985), which suggests that attempts by non-mainstream groups to contest legitimate discourses and to redefine their identity in their own terms should be interpreted as political action. The availability of local community radio would be one way to increase participation and empowerment. Like a rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), community stations are a network of connections across which things flow and disperse. If the connectedness is properly established, including the proximity qualifier, community radio as a technology hub fits into the life and doings of the various communities it serves.

Identity reclamation through community radio The novelty of modern democracy is that with the advent of the “democratic revolution” the old democratic principle of people power re-emerges. However, this time it would be within a “symbolic framework informed by the liberal discourse, with its strong emphasis on the value of individual liberty and on human rights” (Mouffe, 2000: 2). It opens up discussions on people’s representation in democracy, which was always taken for granted in the exercise of Westernmodelled democracies in Nepal and elsewhere in similar conditions. Nepal is undergoing transitions at multiple levels: from monarchy to republic, from authoritarianism to democracy and human rights, from a hegemonic to a participatory system of governance, from a state wholly pervaded by one religion to secularism, and from a highly centralised unitary system to one characterised by federalism and autonomy. The indigenous movement takes up the

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agenda, which is seen as affecting the three realms of life spheres during the process of new nation-building and of state restructuring in Nepal. Firstly, in the political realm, the movement wants to overcome poor representation and subjugation in governance to establish proportional representation and ethnic autonomy. Secondly, on the socio-economic front, the movement seeks to mitigate low literacy and unemployment through a targeted education programme and affirmative action. Finally, there is the cultural realm of the sphere, where indigenous nationalities want to address religious and linguistic discrimination through the formation of a secular state and earning official status for their respective languages. The use of community radio revolves around all three of these agendas taken up by the indigenous identity movement in Nepal. Some of the highly marginalised indigenous communities in Nepal are using space available through community radio in a progression towards their empowerment. One aspect of the silent but effective approach taken up by the indigenous movement is the assertion of their lost (discriminated) identity by establishing their voice in the virtual space created by new media like community radio (Dahal and Aram, 2013). Many indigenous nationalities are using community radio stations as cultural tools to re-establish their identities. For them, it is to reclaim cultural identity through the symbolic space of community radio. Indigenous nationalities have attempted to establish their own media in the past, but their dream couldn’t materialise at that time because the country was witnessing an armed conflict and media were vulnerable and misappropriated by the state and non-state parties to the conflict. When the country finally managed to return to democracy in 2006, the indigenous youth initiated campaigns to form associations to set up their own media. It was their attempt to utilise the plural spaces created by the booming community radio expansion in Nepal. Community radio stations have different purposes and missions than the mainstream media. They have become instruments and forums for local people in bringing hitherto hidden concerns to public, educating them on various social, cultural, political issues. Moreover, radio stations have worked as motivator, inspirer, and promoter of marginalised identity and culture. Hence, community radio is an agent of social and cultural change. Making radio programmes in a language that is dying and that also talk about the culture and values to which one has become unaccustomed has not been easy for Kamala Danuwar and her team of Doné Awaz radio volunteers. “The main component we lack in our programme is music and songs. We have managed to collect much information related to our culture and traditions, but lack of music makes programmes monotonous,” complains a volunteer working as a programme producer. Danuwars are one of the highly marginalised indigenous nationalities in Nepal (Dahal and Aram, 2013: 20). The radio programmes in indigenous languages are helping communities rediscover their indigenous identity, which was lost due to infusion with other larger language communities. One such example is news, which has the potential to make them learn new words and uses in day-to-day life (Dahal, 2013). Many indigenous populations by and large take pride at finding their identity is

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being re-established through radio. They also consider taking up the space provided by the local community radio further by utilising it for the benefit of their own population in general and the youth in particular (Dahal, 2013) A study found that the majority of Athpahariyas, a minority indigenous people found in only two villages in Eastern Nepal, reiterate that only the elders in the community know their language and culture, putting their identity on the verge of extinction. Some young enthusiasts began producing an Athpahariya radio programme in Radio Makalu to re-establish their identity, promote the culture, and preserve the language, which has been on the list of “potentially endangered” languages of Nepal. And in broadcasting Amiga Mundhum, they are directly contributing to the preservation and promotion of Athpahariya culture and identity, which were at risk of extinction (Dahal, 2013). This shows that indigenous identity itself became the cause for starting their own radio programme. The indigenous values are part of their radio programme. Their values are also associated with indigenous lifestyles, and being indigenous is a source of pride in the sense that, despite being located very close to one of the country’s ancient market areas and the regional/district headquarters, and also having continuous exposure with other communities, most of the indigenous communities have managed to keep their language and culture undiluted. With the availability of new media like community radio stations, the young indigenous population is dedicating its time and resources to protecting, promoting, and expanding its values and identity through the language of radio. In general, ethnic Nepali people have become more aware of their unique identities from past years due to the Maoist insurgency  – also known as the “People’s War” – which was started in 1996 (Onesto, 2005). The mainstream indigenous nationality movement prioritised cultural reform and settled for gradual political change, whereas the Maoists sought immediate political and economic change through the use of violence. Some ethnic activists involved in the mainstream ethnic movement joined the Maoists. Others, lured by the proposed quick remedy, began openly supporting them. The paucity of accessible channels through which ethnic groups could communicate their political demands may have contributed to their support for the armed Maoist rebellion (Hangen, 2007). At the same time, many ethnic activists have been apprehensive about the Maoist agenda, as they could easily see their presence within the party was limited to the rank and file, whereas the top brass of the party were high-caste Hindus (Lawoti, 2003). In response to the considerable involvement of indigenous nationalities in the insurgency, the Maoist adoption of this platform has made the indigenous movement in Nepal highly political (Hangen, 2007). Hence, the later indigenous movements, after the establishment of Loktantra in 2006, have also used forceful and violent means of demonstrations to press for their demands. In this context, re-establishment of identity through media using community radio deserves appreciation because it will help a particular indigenous nationality gain empowerment to the extent that it facilitates the creation of discursive

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space, which will ultimately help establish what Mouffe (2000) calls a pluralist democracy. There is ample evidence that a radio programme made in an indigenous language is not just another radio broadcast. It also includes a socio-cultural mix for forging an undivided identity and promoting culture and traditions that are on the verge of extinction. Indigenous identity and sociology include intricacies of lived experiences. Here, identity is related to population, culture, marginalised group status (with some groups being further marginalised within their own indigenous nationalities), and unique language. At the same time, many indigenous identities are contradictory, primarily due to camouflaged identities fused within the larger socio-cultural mix of Nepal.

Conclusion The role of community radio in identity re-establishment of indigenous communities involves promoting, protecting, and preserving their culture through the medium of language. When indigenous peoples are provided with the opportunity to create their own media, it will not only help them preserve their language and culture but will also allow them to create their own history on their own terms. A radio programme in an indigenous language is not stand-alone content but acts as a cultural mix that helps marginalised indigenous communities assert their space along with other empowered communities. Combining language programming from community radio with their scriptures, many indigenous nationalities are helping future generations not only learn the language but also, and most importantly, keep abreast of cultural values and identity (Dahal and Aram, 2013). It is an example of the larger community becoming interested, if not involved, in the empowerment process of the marginalised through the space created by local community radio. Since Nepal desires to become a federalist republic, the rights of each and every community need to be ascertained so that they can be woven into a single Nepali identity within the country. Nepali identity has multiple ethnic groups, and many indigenous nationalities are seeking their own ways to re-establish the identity. A community radio station with a clear mission and vision to promote, preserve, and protect local culture and identity is not an option but a necessity for minority communities. Hence, a minority language radio programme is not a radio show intended to “fill the space” but cause and effect for social and cultural change. The power of community radio as a space for challenging hegemony cannot be denied; hence, it is empowering. The community radio stations are facilitating a variety of identity movements, each in its own indigenous way. For some who are small in numbers and concentrated in a particular location, local community radio is re-establishing their roots, not only amongst themselves but also as a part of the diverse nation of Nepal. For other, sparsely distributed indigenous communities who have lost their identities in the majority mix, ascertaining even a single language has been problematic. After agreeing on a single language and single community paradigm, such communities are using

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available local community radio stations for the formation of undivided identity and socio-cultural advancement. It is also interesting to observe community radio stations as spaces where many different indigenous nationalities with different agendas within identity re-establishment are creating diverse public spheres within Nepal.

Note 1 Radio Sagarmatha website, http://radiosagarmatha.org.np/ (accessed on March  25, 2019).

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Snow, David A. (2004) ‘Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields’. In David. A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesie (Eds.), Blackwell Companion to Social Movements. Malden: Blackwell, 380–412. Snow, David A., Rochford, E. Burke, Worden, Steven K. and Benford, Robert D (1986) ‘Frame Alignment Processes, Micromobilization, and Movement Participation’ American Sociological Review, 51, 464–481. Thorn, H. (2007) ‘Social Movements, the Media and the Emergence of a Global Public Sphere: From Anti-Apartheid to Global Justice’ Current Sociology, 55(6), 896–918. doi:10.1177/0011392107081992.

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Box 4  A policy conundrum: the case of CR in Nepal Nepal is widely credited for being the first country in South Asia to open up its airwaves to community and private broadcasting. The country’s tryst with community radio broadcasting started after the First Jan Andolan (people’s movement) of 1990, which established constitutional democracy in Nepal. This provided impetus to some individuals and organisations that came together, fascinated by the possibilities of the then new FM technology and bolstered by the idea of opening up the media to people. Some key actors who came together were the Nepal Press Institute, the Himal Group, Worldview Nepal and the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ), and an application for a license for community radio (CR) broadcasting was made in 1992, with NEFEJ as the license-holder. Community radio in Nepal draws its legitimacy from the National Media Policy of 1992, the National Broadcasting Act of 1993 and the National Broadcasting Regulation of 1995. After years of lobbying and advocacy, South Asia got its first community radio station in Radio Sagarmatha, with NEFEJ as the license-holder, in 1996. Ever since, Nepal’s pioneering tryst with community radio broadcasting has often found mention in the advocacy and lobbying efforts for the opening up of airwaves to communities, in India and Bangladesh. From being the pioneer in successfully lobbying for the opening up of airwaves to communities, Nepal’s CR landscape today leaves much to be desired. The policy governing CR itself allows for discrepancies, with a singular policy in place that places community radios on par with private radios. When operationalised, the policy calls for taxation of CR stations on par with private FMs, among similar such blanket clauses. As a result, Nepal’s non-government radio sector has, over the last few years, witnessed a spurt in radio stations that stake claims to call themselves ‘community radios’ or ‘commercial FMs’, the onus of which is on them as per the policy. There seems to be a growing understanding and desire for an amendment or revamp of the FM policy in the CR sector, with CR bodies like the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters Nepal (ACORAB) and Broadcasters Association of Nepal (BAN) often calling for demarcation in the singular policy that is in operation. However, the problem is only compounded by the lack of institutional mechanisms like a fully functional Constitution or legislative machinery that can legitimately enforce the policy shift, since 2008, when the Constituent Assembly failed to draft a Constitution. The presence of international donor agencies in the post-civil war transition period since 2006, only adds dimensions to the functioning of CRS

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in Nepal. These funding bodies often liaise with radio associations to reach out to individual CRS with packaged content, impacting the final programming aired by these stations. Clearly, the post-civil war transition period has impacted the Community Radio landscape of Nepal rather deeply, with dysfunctional democratic institutions and inflow of international funding for democratic and development assistance playing key roles. At the time of writing this piece, the country is on the verge of some crucial changes. Even as the elections held on November 19 saw record voter turn-out, news about the United Communist Party of Nepal Maoists’ demand for a boycott of the post-poll process citing irregularities is now trickling in. Either way, the next few weeks promise tectonic shifts in the country’s political scene. The subsequent changes that these shifts would engender in the Community Radio sector in Nepal certainly make for an interesting study! Preeti Raghunath University of Hyderabad Source: CR News Vol. 4, No. 3, Dec 2013-Feb 2014

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5 COMMUNITY RADIO IN SRI LANKA Need for legal recognition and community ownership M.C. Rasmin and W.A.D.P. Wanigasundera Introduction Though many scholars have some fascination towards community radio (CR) in Sri Lanka – particularly towards Mahaweli Community Radio (MCR), which includes Kothmale (KCR, established 1989), Girandurukotte (GCR, established 1989), and Mahailuppallama (MICR, established 1989) community radio stations  – in reality, none of the MCR stations are in existence today. Other stations known to be community radio stations, such as UVA, Dambana, and PIRAI, are under the control of the state broadcaster – Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC). Although UVA and Dambana produce community-based programmes, both radio stations are fully run and owned by SLBC. SLBC policy does not differentiate them as community radio stations. The SARU community radio project is known as the first people-driven CR project in Sri Lanka. This was started in 2005 by the Pulathisi Federation through a World Bank–funded livelihood development programme implemented by the Gemidiriya Foundation. SARU trained community broadcasters; mobilised civil society members; developed community radio programme guidelines, programme codes, and working policies; and conducted test transmissions for 10 days. However, both the Ministry of Media and the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) Sri Lanka were unable to process SARU’s application for the licence and radio spectrum. Many scholars discovered that both MCR and SARU could not survive, mainly because of a lack of (i) autonomy, (ii) community ownership, and (iii) policy recognition. These are the concerns for which the community radio movement advocated in Sri Lanka. This chapter focuses on developing a perspective on the need for community ownership and policy recognition for Sri Lankan community radio in relation to the experiences of MCR and SARU. The chapter also makes it clear that CR in the early stages in Sri Lanka was mostly about CR programmes and not CR stations as such. It is argued that even the dedicated MCR stations – KCR, GCR, and MICR  – were not fully autonomous and independent community

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radio stations in the true sense. By contrast, the need for policy is recognised, but the demand has come from experts and not through people’s intervention or movement. The chapter also explains the existing legal grounds in the post-war context, in which a future CR movement may be revitalised.

Community radio in Sri Lanka The Mahaweli development scheme of 1979 was responsible for the resettlement of nearly one million people in different parts of the country on over 126,000 hectares of land. In the same period, during a private visit, the Danish broadcaster Knud Ebbesen (2012) discovered the potential of initiating community-based broadcasting alongside the Mahaweli Development Project (Jayaratne et al., 2005). There is a very clear agreement amongst the experts that Mahaweli Community Radio (MCR) started to use radio as a potential participatory tool to keep the settlers informed as well as share experiences and facilitate the settlers’ socio-economic development (Wijeysinghe, 2012; Aabenhuse, 1985; David, 2008). UNESCO facilitated it as a tool for communication “to villages, from villages, by villagers” (UNESCO, 1983: 7). The MCR concept is a customised version of the Bandvaerkstedet – the Tape Workshop – which was a public access radio programme of Radio Denmark (Jayaratne, 2007; Jayaratne et  al., 2005). This model allowed community members to produce their own programmes. Therefore, in the initial stage, much emphasis was given to developing a people-friendly programme model to cater to development needs, and not much planning to promote CR as a unique sector in Sri Lanka happened beyond that. Since MCR was operating more as a community radio programme, UNESCO and SLBC agreed to set up dedicated community radio stations under the Mahaweli Development Project. Accordingly, SLBC set up Girandurukotte, for this purpose (Hughes and Pringle, 2005), but were more conscious about it being a voice of the people (David, 2008). Later, Mahailuppallama and Kothmale were established to cater to the settlers. Eventually, UVA emerged to further facilitate the development activities of the Sri Lankan government (Jayaratne, 2007). UVA continues to remain a “hybrid” community radio station, with management and ownership still in the hands of state entities. It was set up to build peace in the remote North Central and Eastern regions. And recently, in the post-war context, PIRAI and Dambana were launched by SLBC. Strength of MCR: An important feature of MCR was the ability of the producers to stay closer to the people in the Mahaweli area and encourage them to participate in the programme-making process. Producers dedicated themselves to being in the villages – meeting people, building rapport, identifying issues, and undertaking the recording and editing in front of them – making use of the local knowledge base, inviting people to comment on the production process, and airing through the nearest regional radio station (Valbuena, 1993: 39–41; UNESCO, 1983: 9–14; David, 2008; Jayaratne et al., 2005: 25–28; Wijeysinghe,

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2012: 310). David (2008) noted that sometimes about 120 people would participate in the cultural night organised by MCR producers. Not only did people observe the production process, but they were also motivated and informed and got involved in determining the formats and content (Jayaratne, 2007; Jayaratne et al., 2005; Rasmin, 2015). MCR also offered a space for the contribution of rural communication to social and economic growth, and it was the prototype for the region. MCR did not just focus on the supply side of the media. It also worked efficiently, addressing rights-based concerns, connecting people with state agencies, raising people’s voice against development challenges, helping shape people’s development behaviours, and mobilising people for social change (David, 2008; UNESCO, 1983). MCR provided rural-based information that made changes in the lives of people (UNESCO, 1983). The SLBC research team found that 85 percent of the settlers possessed a radio set. Sixty-six percent had listened to Mahaweli Community Radio (MCR) and 48.87  percent preferred the MCR programmes to any other programmes. Forty-nine percent believed they had gained knowledge from the programmes and 24.9 percent could remember the basic theme of one or more of the previous six weeks’ programmes (UNESCO, 1983: 23). Between 1981 and 1989, MCR producers visited nearly 1,500 villages for production and about 90  percent of Sinhala-speaking people listened to Girandurukotte, which is the largest resource for agricultural and health-based information, notes Wijeysinghe (2012), who also adds that MCR contributed to civilising the lives of the people. In one instance, MCR discovered the illegality in the marriages and encouraged the elders to register their marriages. The marriage ceremony was also facilitated by MCR.

Kothmale Community Radio Kothmale Community Radio (KCR) is one of the most publicised (Jayaratne et al., 2005: 100) stations. It ended its journey in early 2012 after more than two decades in broadcasting (KCR began in 1989). KCR was created in response to a development scheme by the Mahaweli Authority, which had displaced over 2,900 families and some 60,000 people. The development scheme was initiated to build Sri Lanka’s second largest dam project, and KCR’s objective was to improve the education, culture, and economic backgrounds of the people (Pringle, 2001; Venniyoor, 2006; Wijeysinghe, 2012; Jayaratne et  al., 2005, 2007). Wijeysinghe (2012) observed that KCR was playing a pivotal role in creating space for public participation and was inviting people to support them in designing programmes on their behalf. The station’s transmissions targeted a broadcast area with a 20-kilometre radius that included 60 villages and three rural towns with a combined population of approximately 200,000 people (Bhatnagar et  al., 2003). Dagron (2001) notes that KCR provided broadcast services to approximately 350,000 rural inhabitants over a radius of approximately 25 km from its broadcast towns. Anandaraja (2008: 420) indicated the total reach as 200,000 to 350,000 people.

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In terms of notions of CR, there was not much difference between MCR and KCR  – it was mainly about people’s participation in community-based radio programmes and not much about community radio that is owned by people. Sunil Wijeysinghe, who was a producer with SLBC and in charge of KCR  – and with his own courage and passion – went beyond what was expected from him and maintained a close relationship with people. He invited lottery sellers, youth, farmers, women, children, and professionals to the studio. Sometimes he went on to meet them on a personal basis. By recruiting people like Pavithran, he offered programmes in other minority languages. He had his own definition of community radio: “I  don’t know whether the boundaries given for community radio stations are accurate. What I believe is, as long as we serve the community then that is more than enough” (as cited in Seneviratne, 2012: 316). However, that does not reflect the key principle of community radio, i.e. public ownership. Any type of radio can do broadcasting for people and with people, but until such radio is owned by those people, it cannot legitimately be called community radio. Radio web browsing: In 1996, discussions held between UNESCO and community radio broadcasters gave rise to the concept of merging two media, i.e. the radio and the internet (Bhatnagar et al., 2003: 01). The radio programme producer with KCR browsed the internet on behalf of the rural communities and broadcast the information they needed on topics such as health, legal issues, etc. Guest experts in the studio facilitated the radio programme for the rural people so that they could understand the information shared. Pringle and David (2003: 5–6) noted that a huge amount of information became accessible; firstly, because it was explained in simple terms; secondly, because it was contextualised to suit the local environment; and, thirdly, and most importantly, because information was presented in the local language. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the web became the focus of the programme in terms of both content and format, and the shows were essentially live web browsing telecasts. Radio browsing – strengths: The multimedia centre started at KCR became very popular amongst the youth. The majority (90 percent) of the people who accessed the centre were youth from 10 to 25 years old. Teachers and students also used it, mostly for educational purposes (Visser and Visse, 2005: 61–62). The centre helped to develop the capacities of youth and adults (Pringle, 2001). Information shared through radio browsing was used for various purposes, such as education, business, livelihood, and recreation. For instance, a farmer learned new techniques of growing and storing tomatoes. A village baker tried out new recipes that he found on the internet. Teachers downloaded lessons and games for learning English (Bhatnagar et al., 2003). Chris Priestman (2006) notes that radio browsing of the internet had taken into account the desires of rural communities to assimilate knowledge collectively, in contrast to the prevailing mode of individual access to the internet. More importantly, the project enabled the community to access knowledge collectively and disseminate it in an appropriate manner to meet immediate community needs and priorities.

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Pringle and David (2003) noted that the radio browsing programme led a villager to devise a new, more effective mosquito coil based on local inputs. Another case is quoted from Hughes (2003: 11) of new uses for bamboo that were introduced to Kothmale after a radio programme. The Kothmale Community Radio Internet Project used community radio as an interface between the internet and rural communities and became a global yardstick for participatory community broadcasting in the digital age (Pavarala and Malik, 2007: 26). This motivated the community to participate and express themselves freely and receive information without censorship (Seneviratne, 2000). KCR project – a critique: Kothmale is not community radio in the strict sense since it was state-owned by SLBC (Arul Aram, 2008: 71). If it is to be understood in the strict sense that community radio should be owned and run by people, the Kothmale internet project does not meet the definition because it was not owned and operated by its local community. Harvey (2009: 1) expresses that despite the success of the KCR radio project amongst young listeners, most young people he talked with seemed to listen to radio but did not seem to listen to Kothmale Community Radio. They did not say it directly. When asked about the kind of programmes they listen to on Kothmale Community Radio, they did not seem to remember any. Most interestingly, out of four older persons, three of them listened to Kothmale radio and had favourite programmes too. Harvey further noted that there hasn’t been an effective policy implemented to transform the project into a self-sustaining, community-run station. KCR was listened to mostly by a hard-core audience of approximately 50 senior citizens, most of whom were teachers, monks, or priests. KCR, far from being a community radio station, was still owned and operated by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation. Also, UNESCO has trusted government entities, including SLBC, in supporting the internet project, in the same manner as MCR. Gunawardene (2007) noted that UNESCO peddled the Kothmale project as a feel-good story. While this project was described as a success, ostensibly enabling the limited community it served to participate in ICTs and to decide which aspects of their culture(s) would be broadcast or featured on air or online, it can be argued that it has failed to realise its promise as an engine for change and freedom of expression. What is rarely noted is that no permanent mechanism existed for community members to publish their information on the internet in English so that it could reach a wider audience (Pringle, 2001). In its latter days, KCR had to act as an internet browsing centre to secure income, which turned out not to be possible, as people found it hard to pay fees. Due to bad internet connectivity, poor maintenance, and lack of funding support, KCR finally collapsed.

CR in Sri Lanka: a question of ownership? Linda (2005) observed that Kothmale was not a radio station owned and run by the community. The community radio station was managed under the stateowned public service broadcasting service. In the politically charged media environment of the Sri Lankan government, the degree of independence that

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may be granted to “community radio” was therefore somewhat questionable. In the case of MCR, also, as Jayaratne et  al. (2005) firmly establish, it can only be defined as a radio station that had a special purpose to support the government’s agenda of development. There was no discussion of establishing genuine CR stations and developing them as a vibrant sector. It should be noted that in Sri Lanka, CR has been broadcasting programmes through state patronage (Jayaratne, 2007), and no local funding mechanism has been established. CR had to deal with political interference. Knud Ebbesen (2012) noted, “I also noticed the high frequency of phone calls from the Ministry to the Director General asking for radio coverage of political events.” Sometimes people at the head office were transferred to MCR as punishment. According to Wijesinghe (2012: 22), “It was very difficult to make them [SLBC] understand that we were service providers. SLBC didn’t have a proper mandate to facilitate CR ensuring the ownership of the people.” After two decades, Jayaratne et  al. (2005) noted that Girandurukotte, the first local community radio station to be established in Sri Lanka, could not be accessed even by those on the periphery of its premises. The transmitter that was used to broadcast its programmes had been removed by SLBC. Mahailuppallama Community Radio can be described as a radio station without any broadcasts. The transmitter of this community radio station, along with vital equipment, was removed by SLBC, which owned this station. Kothmale, the much publicised showcase community radio station, has not lost its glamour, but it is facing enormous problems, with financial and staff (volunteer) sustainability being major constraints (Jayaratne, 2012: 43). One thing is quite clear  – community radio in Sri Lanka has never been owned by the people. This is one of the reasons why people in Sri Lanka did not raise their voices, demanding policy recognition to secure community radio. During the closure of the MCR stations – GCR, MICR, and KCR – people in their respective regions comfortably kept silent. No organisation or movement existed to urge the government to sustain the radio stations. As explained by Jayaratne (2012), there was no “felt need” for CR amongst the people in Sri Lanka. Community radio in Sri Lanka was in fact not truly community radio because the stations were administered and run by the government and not the community. The government also exerted control over content – no criticism of the government was allowed, keeping community radio artificially non-political (Linda, 2005). The sole administrator of Sri Lankan CR was SLBC. MCR closed down after funding from DANIDA/UNESCO came to an end (Jayaratne, 2007): “A  globally persistent myth holds that community radio has been thriving in Sri Lanka for two decades. In reality, these broadcasters [sic] are nothing more than rural transmissions of the fully state-owned and state-controlled Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC). Yes, these stations are located in remote areas, involve local people in programme production and broadcast to a predominantly rural audience. But the bureaucracy in Colombo tightly controls content: nothing remotely critical of the government in office is permitted. The rest of the world does not recognise this as community radio.” (Nalaka Gunawardene as cited in Harvey, 2009).

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The Centre for Policy Alternatives, or CPA (2008: 35–36), noted that community radio was never owned by the communities in Sri Lanka: “The hype aside, Sri Lanka unfortunately has no real CR. All community radio/regional services are accountable to the Head of Regional and Community Services at SLBC and have no financial, administrative and managerial autonomy.  .  .  . Community radio is not a reality but only an aspiration in Sri Lanka. True, independent community radio has never been allowed in Sri Lanka by successive governments of different political persuasion.”

SARU community radio SARU was an independent community radio project started in 2005 in Sri Lanka by a civil society organisation called the Pulathisi Federation and funded through the Gemidiriya Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project by the World Bank. The Gemidiriya Community Development and Livelihood Improvement Project was built on the principles of community-driven development (CDD) funded by the World Bank and implemented by the Gemidiriya Foundation and Ministry of Economic Development. SARU was initiated as a community programme of the Gemidiriya Foundation. Swarnalatha and Batuvitage (2012) describe that the project considered knowledge, attitudinal change, skills, and practice vital factors for empowerment of poor communities, especially women and youth, and community-owned community radio as an effective channel to support people in their self-development. Community ownership is one of the central values of SARU, as it aims to facilitate socio-economic change, provide education and learning opportunities, address issues affecting people in selected geographical settings, and solve community issues with participation of the people (Jayaratne, 2007). SARU is known as the first civil society–led community radio initiative in Sri Lanka. The civil society members, predominantly farmers from 27 villages, worked for nearly 10  years in preparation for this project. During this period, the community was mobilised; a team of 32 youngsters was trained; community media programme guidelines were developed; sustainability plans were established; and test transmission was completed, and all this was carried out with the full participation of community members. People participated in designing objectives, programme codes, formats, and a time schedule for SARU. Providing an independent space devoid of oppressive controls (editorial independence) and a voice for the voiceless and diverse communities was the mission of SARU (Jayaratne, 2012: 118). Different types of community groups, such as village Maha Sabas (1), the general counsel of communication committees (153 members), village-level management councils (27 councils for each villages), and boards of directors, were consulted to ensure people had ownership and a management role. Thinking the radio station was theirs, people agreed to support SARU. Each member decided to pay Rs.10 per month. Donations from donors, NGOs, businessmen, lotteries, films, and dramas were other sources of funding, as were

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fee-levying on video, photography, and advertisements. Responsibilities were also defined in consultation with community members. Nurturing human development, addressing issues affecting people, promoting local identity/community rights, staying open for community, encouraging youth as well as women to participate in community radio programmes are some of the defined responsibilities of SARU (Samanmalee and Batuvitage, 2012). Test transmission: After two years of ground-level preparations, the test transmission was started using a temporary licence and transmitter given by SLBC. This licence was valid for only 10 days. However, this was an unbelievable reality for the villages and youth. Harshini (2012) observes that people were highly enthusiastic about listening and contributing to the test broadcasting. Samanmalee and Batuvitage (2012) also recorded that not only were people excited about the test transmission, but they were also willing to volunteer to support it throughout the period. People demonstrated their great desire, expectation, interest, and enthusiasm for the initiative. However, government was not willing to provide an extended permanent licence for SARU. Policy struggle of SARU: After several years of groundwork, the Federation applied for a radio frequency and for the CR licence. After a lengthy struggle, the SARU team realised that there was no legal mechanism in Sri Lanka for community groups to own a radio licence and frequency. Both the Ministry of Media and TRC Sri Lanka did not respond to the efforts and explained that there was no legal provision for entertaining the application from the Federation. The Federation then made an agreement with the state broadcaster  – Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) – on September 9, 2010, to use one of its spare frequencies (FM 100.7). According to the agreement, the Federation paid SLBC to buy a transmitter for SARU. SLBC also agreed to provide technical support. The Federation had to pay a monthly fee for the use of the SLBC frequency. While the agreement allowed SLBC to monitor content, some provisions were established to maintain editorial independence by SARU. Unfortunately, SLBC did not act upon the agreement. The transmitter was not given to SARU, and the money was not returned, and it took a long struggle for the Federation to recover the money given to SLBC. The experience of SARU demonstrates that autonomous CR is not yet an option in Sri Lanka, primarily because of the absence of a legal framework. Jayaratne et  al. (2005), Jayaratne (2007), and Harshini (2012) conclude that lack of lawful recognition due to an absence of legal provisions was the factor that adversely affected not only MCR but also SARU.

Positioning a CR policy need in Sri Lanka Policy is not just licencing alone. It is accepting community radio as a fundamental necessity and alternative democratic means to address voice concerns, demonstrating the legal commitment of the nation to foster the “medium,” ensuring the survival of the community radio sector as well as its autonomy and independence, and enabling a convenient licencing process.

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Having a policy framework for the recognition of community media in providing access to communication for isolated and marginalised groups is a global commitment by governments (UNESCO, 2011). Many assume having such a policy is a threat to the government and that it may lead to anti-governmental activities and misperception. Tacchi observed, “It allows for ordinary issues from ordinary people to be voiced in ways that are extraordinary in the opportunity it provides. Having a voice, and being recognized, can be a powerful and transformational thing” (as cited in UNESCO, 2011: 12). Some believe having a private broadcasting system is good enough to cater to the civil needs; therefore, CR as an alternative is not needed. However, Steve Buckley notes that private media, which is mostly mandated for commercial benefits, poorly serves or does not serve the ordinary people. Community broadcasting provides an alternative social and economic model for media development that can broaden access to information, voice, and opinion (Buckley, 2008). Buckley (2008) notes that policy should ensure that community media remains independent from government and commercial organisations, with community ownership in management, and it should enable participation for social benefit. Community broadcasting should be recognised in policy and law as having distinct characteristics and be guaranteed fair and equitable access to the radio frequency spectrum and other broadcast distribution platforms, including digital platforms. There must be procedures for the award and regulation of broadcast licencing and frequencies for community broadcasting that are fair, open, and transparent and under the administrative responsibility of an independent regulatory body. It is helpful for many countries to have a CR policy to ensure media autonomy and its use for community development. India has a community radio policy (Policy Guidelines for setting up Community Radio Stations in India 5; VI) that recognises CR as an alternative democratic means with public ownership. By having a CR policy, Indian activists are now able to think about better allocation of spectrum amongst geographical communities and about increasing licences for community-based organisations (UNESCO, 2011). When it comes to Canadian policy, it acknowledges ownership by the community (Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2010–499, section  13). In Ireland, a community radio station is characterised by its ownership and programming and the community it is licenced to serve (Broadcasting Commission of Ireland, 2001). In Bangladesh, the Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy, introduced in 2008, enables the establishment and operation of CR stations and defines CR as a medium that serves as a mouthpiece of the marginalised. South Africa is one of the countries that has adopted a comprehensive legal and regulatory framework for community broadcasting. The South African Broadcasting Act of 1999 clearly defines provisions for the licencing of community broadcasting to “geographical communities” and to “communities of interest” (Dagron, 2001: 173). Under this policy, the programming provided by a community broadcasting service must reflect the needs of the people in the community and must include, amongst others, cultural, religious, language, and demographic needs and must provide a distinct broadcasting service

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dealing specifically with community issues that are not normally dealt with by the broadcasting service covering the same area (Broadcasting Act number 4 of 1999, Section 32). Legal context in Sri Lanka: There is no direct law or policy available in Sri Lanka in relation to community radio, not even a reference made on any decentralised, community-based broadcasting in SLBC Act No. 37 of 1966, as amended by Act No. 48 of 1988. TRC Act No 25 of 1991, as amended in 1996, does not have any single provision to allocate spectrums for community radio or for community groups. The Ministry of Media does not have any criteria developed to accommodate the applications from community groups requesting a radio licence. Weerasinghe (2018), NSMR (2016), and IREX (2016) observed that broadcast media regulations in Sri Lanka do not function as per international standards. According to NSMR (2016), both licencing and allocation of frequency are handled by the Ministry of Media and TRC, but the process is not transparent and accountable because of excessive influence from ministers and politicians. NSMR states that radio broadcasting regulations in Sri Lanka do not function independently. IREX (2016) notes that plurality of ownership is compromised due to political influence. According to Gunawardene (2007), community groups are not being issued broadcast licences. Senior officials have privately explained that they fear airwaves will be misused for antisocial or political purposes. They have not, strangely enough, voiced such concerns about profit-making companies, some of whose channels are openly aligned with political parties. Grunnet et  al. (2005) state that the discretionary broadcast licencing system lacks transparency, accountability, and consistency. According to David (2008: 36), “As community radio broadcasters, we have not done enough to emphasize that airwaves are not the property of the prince (the state) or the merchants (private sector) or activists (NGO sector), but the sacred property of men, women and children whom we meet in our day to day work. The future of community radio will largely depend on how the wider community perceives radio as an instrument that facilitates the right to communicate.” This realization was not translated into action by people, and currently, there is “no legal framework in Sri Lanka to establish a community radio station that is owned and managed by the community” (CPA, 2008: 36) The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation Act, No. 37 of 1966 (as amended) – the SLBC Act – is the only legal instrument available to facilitate radio broadcasting in Sri Lanka. The provisions of the SLBC Act are challenging the independence of the broadcasting sector in Sri Lanka. Section 44 of the SLBC Act empowers the Minister to issue licences for the establishment and maintenance of private broadcasting stations. Section 44(4) provides for regulations to be made by the Minister regarding the control and supervision by SLBC over these private stations. There has been lobbying by media activists calling for the repeal of Section 44 of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation Act, which empowers the Minister to issue licences for the establishment and maintenance of private broadcasting stations. Moreover, Section 44(4), which gives extensive

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powers to the Minister in charge of media to make regulations governing the functioning of such stations, both in terms of their composition and the nature of programmes, has also been severely criticised as facilitating excessive state control over the media.

Freedom of expression as basis However, there are laws with a different focus that can still be used as a ground for advocating community radio – for example Article 14(1) (a) of the Sri Lankan Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression. Though there are several other laws and a procedure that have undone 14(1) (a) on several occasions, the Sri Lankan Supreme Court has interpreted it in a manner that strongly acknowledges free speech and expression. Not only does it include every form of expression, but its protection may also be invoked in combination with other express guarantees (such as the right to equality), including the right to obtain and record information by means of oral interviews, publications, tape recordings, photographs, and the like, and, arguably, it may even extend to a privilege not to be compelled to disclose sources of information, if that privilege is necessary to make the right to information meaningful. Likewise, other rights may be needed to make the actual exercise of the freedom of speech effective, i.e. rights in respect of venues, amplifying devices, etc. (as per MDH Fernando J in Wimal Fernando v. SLBC, [1996] (1) Sri LR, 157). In the case of Visuvalingam v. Liyanage (1984), the Supreme Court noted the right to receive information was part of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression. Justice Mark Fernando held in the case of Amaratunge v. Sirimal (Jana Ghosha Case) (1993) that “[t]he right to support or to criticise governments and political parties, policies and programmes is fundamental to the democratic way of life, and the freedom of speech and expression is one which cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all civil and political institutions.” Again, in the case of Victor Ivan v. Sarath N. Silva (1998), Justice Mark Fernando stated, “The freedom of the press is not a distinct fundamental right, but it is a part of the freedom of speech and expression including publication, which Article 14 (1) (a) has entrenched for everyone alike. It surely does allow the pen of the journalist to be used as mighty sword to rip open facades which hide misconduct and corruption, but it is a two-edged weapon that must be exercised with care not to wound the innocent while exposing the guilty.” Thus, two matters of fundamental importance arise from the pronouncements of the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka. Firstly, the freedom of broadcasting is not a distinct fundamental right but is part of the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression. Secondly, freedom of speech and expression includes the right of the broadcaster to broadcast and telecast and the right of the public to listen and view. While this explanation provides a strong push for the CR advocacy agenda, there are other legal instruments that undermine the provision and the

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explanation by the Supreme Court. IREX (2016) has argued that the constitutional guarantee given in Article 14(1) (a) is compromised by several other legal instruments: National Security Law, Emergency Regulation, Sri Lanka Press Council Law, Official Secret Act, Contempt of Court, and Parliamentary Privileges. A controversial Broadcasting Authority Bill was tabled in April 1997 in parliament during the Chandrika Kumaratunga government. The way the legal and civil community responded to the bill was yet another justification for independent broadcasting in Sri Lanka. As per the proposed bill, a new broadcasting authority was to be established. Jayawardena and Gunatillake (2015:188–198) noted that this bill would compromise the independence of broadcasting in Sri Lanka. The bill stipulated that the proposed Authority be directly appointed by the Ministry for Media and further empowered the Minister to issue guidelines with respect to the operation of stations via state-issued licences. Thus, the proposed Authority would have fallen well short of being “independent” of the government. The bill also contained absolutely no safeguards or procedural mechanisms to ensure that non-partisan and competent people would be appointed to the Authority. Moreover, it afforded the Minister the power to dictate policy and programme content in a manner that would have “rendered the electronic media completely vulnerable to the whims and fancies of politicians and any partisan interests they might represent.” The Free Media Movement (FMM), in their press statement, noted that this was a draconian law (April 14, 1997, Sunday Observer). FMM, along with several other media organisations and private radio and television companies, filed a case in the Supreme Court. The Court held that the bill was unconstitutional, as it violated several fundamental rights, including the freedom of expression and thought and the right to equality. Jayaratne et al. (2005) observe that the Supreme Court’s ruling against the entire bill is a seminal judgement and a reflection of the independence of the judiciary during that period. Emphasising media pluralism, ownership plurality, and openness, the Supreme Court adjudged: Having regard to the limited availability of frequencies, and taking account of the fact that only a limited number of persons can be permitted to use the frequencies, it is essential that there should be a grip on the dynamic aspects of broadcasting to prevent monopolistic domination of the field either by the government or by a few, if the competing interests of the various sections of the public are to be adequately served. If the fundamental rights of freedom of thought and expression are to be fostered, there must be an adequate coverage of public issues and an ample play for the free and fair competition of opposing views. (Athukorale and Others v. The Attorney General (Sri Lanka Broadcasting Authority Case) [1997] 2 BHRC 610) In 1994, a committee was appointed by the Cabinet under the leadership of R.K.W. Goonesekere to make recommendations on media reform in Sri Lanka. The Goonesekere Committee Report made an important assessment of Sri

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Lanka’s broadcasting regime. The Committee Report (1996) noted that it is important that private broadcasting exists but pointed out that merely permitting private stations to proliferate could not satisfy the duty of the state to ensure that the state-funded media enjoys editorial independence. It observed: It is important that private broadcasting exists; this is one way of promoting pluralism in sources of information and preventing media monopolies. It would be a mistake however to think that pluralism can be ensured simply by permitting private broadcasting. Commercial stations are often unwilling to criticise government policy for various reasons; they are influenced by business considerations and the need to earn advertisement revenue. . . . While media diversity is important . . . granting licenses to private broadcasters should not be viewed as a substitute for ensuring the pluralism and independence of public-funded broadcasting. The State will continue to be the main and significant component of broadcasting. Amendments should seek to achieve the public’s right to receive information and opinion on matters of public interest. (The R.K.W. Goonesekere Committee Report, 1996: 39) The committee report emphasised the independence and plurality of the broadcasting sector. The committee also recommended that programmes be inclusive and address the real needs of people and not merely government perspectives. It stated that while community radio should not be precluded from broadcasting news, it should be permitted to broadcast commercials provided that such programming is limited and, in any event, does not exceed 50  percent of the broadcast time.

Conclusion When it comes to legal recognition, autonomy, and true community ownership, MCR cannot be considered true community radio, as it has not ever been owned, managed, or controlled by the people of Sri Lanka. Also, there have been no intentions to promote CR as a vibrant sector in Sri Lanka. It may perhaps be fair to consider MCR state-owned, community-based broadcasting with higher levels of participation and effective radio programmes that are relevant to people. KCR, too, lost its vibrancy and innovative nature in the absence of civil society activism. Broadly, it has become quite apparent that the SLBC Act, as amended by Act No. 48 of 1988, and TRC Act No. 25 of 1991, as amended in 1996, are the statutes in the area of radio broadcasting and broadcasting regulation that have become a major roadblock to independent broadcasting in Sri Lanka. However, the case of both MCR and SARU makes it clear that it is not only the legal provisions but also poor civil activism and ineffective planning that have prevented the setting up of CR stations. There have been no constant efforts made by civil society groups to make use of other legal grounds discussed in the chapter to

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navigate thoughtful CR activism in Sri Lanka. It was historically an error that no civil society movements were, for a long time, mobilised to continue the dialogue with relevant authorities and secure the ownership of those radio stations. This bitter lesson for Sri Lanka is that community radio, in a true sense, cannot be established and maintained under the guidance, influence, and control of state-owned institutions. Jayaratne (2012: 44) writes, “To maintain the community atmosphere, appropriate methods of organising and managing must be devised. Feasibility to run the stations on a corporative basis, under the special broadcasting licence issued by the Ministry of State, could be considered a fruitful way to start. Along with the members of the community, who will form the majority segment of the shareholders, SLBC and Mahaweli Authority of Sri Lanka could become limited shareholders with a seat on the Board of Directors of the corporative society.” He further adds that if anyone is willing to genuinely strengthen community radio, they have a good lesson from the case of SARU Community Radio. Primarily, the widely propagated myth that there was phenomenal community radio in Sri Lanka should be stopped. This is a misinterpretation of the reality, and it also prevents international support and assistance for the establishment of community radio that is of the community, by the community, and for the community. Harshini (2012: 340) rightly observes, “Policymakers should be aware of youth groups who have dedicated time and effort to create a healthy environment to establish community radio in Sri Lanka”. Again, civil society movements, perhaps following the Indian pattern of convincing government should be mobilized to voice for the need of license from the grassroots. It should be also noted that there hasn’t been a collective community effort in a structured manner to start a dialogue with government too (Jayaratne, 2007). As it was recommended by Jayaweera (1986) at the very early stages, a legal framework is needed to ensure the independence to establish CR stations. It could still be a cooperative model and have more representation from the community. As Jayaratne et al. (2005) recommend, the policy formulation should be done by an independent community radio council (CRC), and its members should not be registered members of any political party or otherwise be active in politics and should not interfere in the day-to-day decisions of community radio. However, considerations should be given to adopting a code of conduct for the CRC, the manager, and the broadcasting team, with a view to promoting self-regulation, transparency, editorial independence, and balanced and impartial approaches. Approaches based on constitutional guarantees  – for example article 14(1), despite its challenges – can be adopted in formulating such a policy mechanism.

References Aabenhuse, O. (1985). One-way and Two-way Systems in Broadcasting. Community Radio and Rural Development: Four Essays. Sri Lanka: Mahaweli Community Radio. Anandaraja, N. (2008). Extension of Technologies: From Labs to Farms. New Delhi: New India Publishing Agency.

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Aram, A. (2008). Media Technology and Society ISPCK. Delhi: UELCI. Bhatnagar, S., Dewan, A., Torres, M.M., and Kanungo, P. (2003). Sri Lanka’s Kotmale, Community Internet Radio Project. In Empowerment Case Studies. New York: World Bank. Broadcasting Commission of Ireland. (2001). BCI Policy on Community Radio Broadcasting. Dublin: BCI. Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 2010-499. Ottawa, 22 July  2010, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Buckley (2008). Broadcasting Voice and Accountability. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. CPA – Centre for Policy Alternative (2008). Best Practices and Potential for Improved Information Flows in Media and Civil Society. Colombo: Hivos. Dagron, A.G. (2001). Kotmale Community Radio Interorg Project (KCRIP). In A.G. Dagron (Eds.), Making Waves: Stories of Participatory Communication for Social Change (pp. 127–131). New York: Rockefeller Foundation. David, M.J.R. (2008). ‘Ch. Mahaweli Community Radio’, A Passion for Radio: Radio Waves and Community. Montreal: Black Rose Books. Grunnet, Henrik, Lebbe Yakoob, Umar, and Weiss, LaRs (2005, April). Assessment of the Need for a Radio and TV Journalist Training Unit in Sri Lanka. Colombo: The Sri Lanka Press Institute (SLPI). Gunawardene, N. (2007, June  4). Lions and Community Radio: Part of Sri Lanka’s Mythical Lore.https://nalakagunawardene.com/2007/06/04/lions-and-communityradio-part-of-sri-lankas-mythical-lore/ Accessed on 30–3–19. Harshini, Weerasinghe (2012). ‘Preparing for Community Broadcasting’ People’s Voice. Singapore: People’s Empowerment, AMIC. Harvey-Carter, Liz (2009). Kotmale Community Radio Interorg Project: True Community Radio or Feel-Good Propaganda? The Kotmale Community International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 10(1). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ EJ831709.pdf Accessed on 30–3–19. Hughes, Stella (2003). Community Multimedia Centres: Creating Digital Opportunities for All. In B. Girard (Eds.), The One to Watch – Radio, New ICTs and Interactivity (pp. 76–89). Geneva: FAO. www.fao.org/3/a-y4721e.pdf Accessed on 30–3–19. Hughes, Stella, and Pringle, Ian (Eds.). (2005). UNESCO Community Multimedia Centres Around the World a Global Directory. Paris: UNESCO. IREX (2016). Media Sustainability Index – Sri Lanka. Washington, DC: IREX. Jayaratne, T. (2007). The Struggle for Community Radio in Sri Lanka (Sinhala). Colombo: Pravatha, Society of Social Scientist. Jayaratne, T. (2012). “Sri Lankan’s Struggle to Establish Community Radio” People’s voice. People’s Empowerment. Singapore: AMIC. Jayaratne, T., Pinto-Jayawardena, Kishali, and Gunaratne, Almeida (2005). Community Radio in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Law and Society Trust. Jayawardena, K., and Gunatillake, G. (2015). One Step Forward and Many Steps Back; Media Reform Examined. In W. Crawley, D. Page and K. Jayawardena (Eds.), Embattled Media: Democracy, Governance and Reform in Sri Lanka. New Delhi: SAGE Publication. Jayaweera, W. (1986). Experiences in Two-Way Communication. Colombo: Mahaweli Community Radio. Knud, Ebbesen (2012). ‘Adapting Danish Idea in Sri Lanka’ People’s Voice. People’s Empowerment. Singapore: AMIC.

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Linda, B. (2005). Colonials, Bourgeoisies and Media Dynasties: A Case Study of Sri Lankan Media. Queensland: Central Queensland University. NSMR (2016). Rebuilding Public Trust, National Secretariat for Media Reform. Colombo: National Secretariat for Media Reforms. Pavarala, Vinod, and Malik, Kanchan K. (2007). Other Voice: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. New Delhi: Sage. Priestman, C. (2006). Web Radio, Radio Production for Internet Streaming (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Focal Press. Pringle, I. (2001). Seminar on Integrating new and Traditional Information and Communication Technologies for Community Development: Final Report. Paris: United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Pringle, I., and David, M.J.R. (2003). Rural Community ICT Applications: The Kotmale. Model, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 8(4), 1–14. Rasmin, M.C. (2015). Community Radio  – A  Medium for Human Development. Colombo: Chemamadu Publication. Samanmalee, S., and Batuvitage, G. (2012). ‘Sri Lankan Experiment Community Driven Radio for Livelihood Improvement,’ People’s Voice. Singapore: People’s Empowerment, AMIC. Seneviratne, K. (2000). Media-Sri-Lanka: Rural Folks Log-on via Community Radio. www.ipsnews.net/2000/02/media-sri-lanka-rural-folks-log-on-via-community-radio/ Accessed on 30–3–19. Seneviratne, K. (Ed.). (2012). People’s Voice. People’s Empowerment (pp. 41–47, 115– 117). Singapore: AMIC. Sunil, Wijeysinghe (2012). ‘Building Participatory Communication Strategy’ People’s Voice. Singapore: People’s Empowerment, AMIC. The R.K.W. Goonesekere Committee Report (1996). Report of the Committee to Advise on the Reform of Laws Affecting Media Freedom and Freedom of Expression. UNESCO (1983). Mahaweli Community Radio, Project Findings and Recommendations. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO (2011). A Report on National Consultation on Community Radio Policy. New Delhi: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, IIMC. Valbuena, Victor T. (Ed.). (1993). Mahaveli Community Radio, A Sri Lankan Experiment in Broadcasting and Development. Singapore: Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre (AMIC). Venniyoor, S. (2006). Sri Lanka’s e-tuk-tuks Boldly go where no Others Have Gone Before. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ831709.pdf Accessed on 30–3–19. Visser, Yusra Laila, and Visse, Lya (Eds.). (2005). Trends and Issues in Distance Education: International Perspectives. Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing. Weerasinghe (2018). Media Regulation in Sri Lanka: An Analysis on the Broadcast Media. (Unpublished). National Secretariat for Media Reform, Colombo.

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Box 5  Sri Lanka govt. revives dialogue on community radio A National Consultation on Community Radio in Sri Lanka was organized by the Sri Lanka Development Journalist Forum (SDJF), with the support of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), New Delhi, and in partnership with the Ministry of Media and Information and Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC) on February 7, 2015 at SLBC, Colombo. The purpose of the consultation was to revive the dialogue with key stakeholders on Sri Lanka’s community radio movement. It also strived to enable stakeholders to identify key issues that affect the development of community radio in Sri Lanka and to identify ways and means for future engagements with policy makers. The participants included civil society groups, academics and regional radio stations of the SLBC. The Secretary to the Ministry of Media and Information, Mr Karunaratne Paranavithana; veteran Community Radio expert and the former Director of UNESCO’s International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC), Mr Wijayananda Jayaweera; and Programme Officer at CEMCA, Dr Ankuran Dutta, New Delhi were among the participants. Providing a background to the deliberations, Mr Jayaweera said that the idea of community radio was introduced to Sri Lanka as far back as in 1979 when a community-based participatory radio programming service was established under a UNESCO/DANIDA project to facilitate the communication needs of those who had re-settled under the Mahaweli Development Scheme. Known as Mahaweli Community Radio, this venture was considered to be a unique community radio experience in Asia at the time, as, in almost every country, broadcasting was still a state monopoly. Considerable research has underscored that the Mahaweli Community Radio station made an impact among the settlers by providing them with a platform to voice their concerns and inculcating a culture of responsive administration among the Mahaweli authority. While UNESCO support came to an end in 1986, SLBC was expected to sustain the project through its own resources. UNESCO had made a recommendation that the government develop a policy to enable the establishment of community radio stations that were owned and operated by communities. Unfortunately, it did not become a reality. Addressing the inaugural session of the National Consultation on Community Radio, Mr Karunaratne Paranavithana acknowledged that community radio has an enormous potential within a post-conflict setting to cater to civil society. He further noted, “The government is very keen to explore a model in which a community radio sector, with all the required

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principles, can be innovated within the scope of Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation or the Ministry of Media.” He assured that the existing government would take necessary steps to ensure that a scheme was launched to allocate frequencies for community broadcasting in Sri Lanka. The Ministry is keen to explore a model that can be installed under SLBC but developed for public participation through programmes by and for the people. In answering a question raised by Ms Samanmalee Swarnalatha, coordinator of the SARU community radio project, the Secretary to the Ministry of Media and Information assured that the SARU community radio association would receive a frequency in the near future. Mr Jayaweera noted that one of the reasons why UNESCO’s recommendation to introduce an enabling community radio policy in Sri Lanka did not materialise was the absence of an active civil society movement advocating for a policy to establish independent community radio stations. The attempts to retain full control of the community radio stations within the SLBC administration were stronger, notwithstanding SLBC’s inclination to view community radio merely as a financial burden to its coffers. Even when there was an opportunity to grant independence to the Uva community radio service, established under a UNDP project, SLBC insisted that it be kept within the administrative powers of the State broadcaster, though by this time many other private radio broadcasters were allowed to own and operate radio stations. Mr Jayaweera’s recommendation to the Ministry of Media was to shift its focus. Instead of trying to revive the SLBC operated community radio stations, which are now defunct, SLBC should introduce an enabling community radio policy which would allow community owned and operated independent community radio stations to be set up. He was glad that the Secretary of the Ministry had promised to give a license to run the SARU radio programme service as an independent community radio station. He mentioned that similar pilot stations should be allowed in different parts of the country as an integral part of developing and testing a new community radio policy. Dr  Ankuran Dutta, Programme Officer of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia, New Delhi, delivered the keynote address on “Community Radio across South Asia: Understanding its Potential in Addressing Voice Poverty.” He described the present status of community radio in the countries of the South Asian region and argued that the community radio movement should be revived in Sri Lanka. He also suggested that educational institutions should be included under the purview of community broadcasting. However, he clarified that educational institutions should have accountability not only to the students but also to the community where they were located.

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Mr M. C. Rasmin, Director of SDJF, emphasised that they were able to host several training workshops on community radio. SDJF had also organised three national community radio conferences and an international conference in this regard. Although there were many challenges, SDJF was able to keep the dialogue around community radio alive. The participants strongly noted that SLBC had in the past failed to ensure the independence of community radio and asserted that SLBC had not come up with any effective community radio programming models after the termination of the Mahaweli Community Radio Project. They argued that the best interests of the Sri Lankan people, as well as SLBC, would not be served if community radio operated under the State Broadcasting Corporation. They qualified their view by pointing out that community radio’s key principle was ownership, control and management by the community. They also suggested that the Ministry of Media should hold a stakeholder consultation to develop an enabling community radio policy based on the experiences of the South Asian region. Mr Wijayananda Jayaweera reiterated that community radio could provide an effective platform for participatory democratic discourse devoid of vested interests and partisan influence at the local levels. Therefore, several community radio stations, based on a code of practice, should be allowed as pilots, as a part of the process of policy development. M C Rasmin Sri Lanka Development Journalists Forum Source: CR News Vol. 6, No. 2, Apr-Jun 2015

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6 BEYOND THE DEVELOPMENT TRAP NGOisation of community radio in India Vinod Pavarala Radio broadcasting in India took a giant, democratic leap with the opening of the airwaves to non-state actors in 2003. After years of civil society campaigns, and with much trepidation, the Government of India initially permitted established educational institutions to set up community radio stations. It was only in 2006, a good 10 years after the historic Supreme Court judgement declaring airwaves to be “public property,” that community-based organisations were given the right to apply for a community radio licence. The domain of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in India, which had witnessed steady growth in the two decades preceding this development and gained credibility as a key player in social change, grabbed the opportunity with both hands. Over the last decade, several grassroots organisations working especially in rural areas have come to see in community radio a significant tool to articulate people’s concerns in their own voices about their environments, ecologies, livelihoods, and local cultures as well as, more generally, their hopes and aspirations. Multilateral agencies, donors, and independent facilitators and capacity-builders have emerged on the scene, keen to enable hitherto marginalised sections of Indian society access to audio production technologies and skills. There are today over 240 radio stations licenced under the community radio (CR) policy, with about half of them set up and managed by nongovernmental organisations. While there are several constraints and challenges in running such radio stations, many of the operational ones have been racked by issues of sustainability (both social and financial), people’s participation in programme production, community ownership and management, and building a committed listener base. In this chapter, I critically examine some of the unintended consequences of the growing influence of NGOs and the related institutional actors mentioned earlier in community radio since the first licence was issued in the early 2000s. Mobilizing data from research conducted by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media team at University of Hyderabad, I suggest that certain trends that have emerged recently have raised questions regarding the character of community radio and its non-negotiable principles, such as community participation,

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autonomy from the state and the market, and independent programming that is free from extraneous pressures. The prominent role now being played in community radio by the NGOs has its origins in the evolution of development communication in India, which moved away from its early avatar of state-centred dissemination of development information.

Development communication: the dominant paradigm and beyond The 1970s witnessed widespread unrest in the country, some of it violent, rooted in a loss of faith both in the political system and the vision of economic growth and modernisation that was held out by post-independence governing elites. The projection of the state as the sole or dominant engine of economic development was questioned as much as the trickle-down effect of policies related to agriculture, health, nutrition, and education. The government’s approach to the use of communication and media tools for development was also perceived as a one-way transmission of information from knowledge elites to the marginalised, further alienating the latter. Communication campaigns promoting family planning and green revolution agriculture are now the stuff of legend in India’s development story. One prominent, early example of this approach is the Radio Farm Forums organised in Maharashtra in the mid-1950s. This involved organising rural people into radio listening groups, which were tuned to AIR farm broadcasts in a community setting, with the objective of improving their knowledge of agricultural practices (Neurath, 1962). Another significant effort at using communication technologies for rural development came during the Emergency period in the form of the year-long Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE). It involved direct satellite broadcasting of educational and instructional television to over 2,000 villages in six states to provide informational content on agriculture, health, and family planning as well as address the curricular needs of primary school children and teachers. Both projects involved, mostly, one-way, linear transmission of information from experts to lay people, who were considered ignorant and in need of such knowledge (Agarwal, 2006). Although these initiatives enjoyed modest success, the potential for more thorough-going, community-centric communication was never realised. The disenchantment with the state and the economy mentioned earlier reached its apotheosis with the declaration of the Emergency in 1975. As authoritarian rule ended in 1977, the country witnessed the emergence of new social movements and non-governmental organisations around issues such as ecology, gender equity, rights of indigenous people and peasants, and development parity. These have started articulating an alternative discourse centred on the idea of participatory development (Servaes, 2002). A common thread that ran through these otherwise disparate grassroots emanations was their insistence that the process of social change must be conceived as a bottom-up undertaking directed

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at self-development of local communities. This new discourse was influenced, amongst other things, by Paulo Freire’s (1970) work on the “pedagogy of the oppressed” through conscientisation and Schumacher’s advocacy of appropriate technologies (Schumacher, 1973). This participatory model of development had its counterpart in communication, as the new thinking tended to reject the top-down dissemination perspective and urged, instead, a more democratic and participatory approach to communication and social change. This meant challenging deep-seated knowledge hierarchies and teachings to respect people’s knowledge and their innate capacities for communication. This new approach favoured “multiplicity, smallness of scale, locality, de-institutionalisation, interchange of senderreceiver roles (and) horizontality of communication links at all levels of society” (McQuail, 1983: 97). It emphasised the need to establish decentralised media systems with a more “receiver-centric” rather than “communicator” orientation and accent on exchange of information and “meanings” rather than on persuasion. Community-based independent media, such as community radio, participatory video, and popular theatre, were perceived by media activists and grassroots organisations as a means of enabling rural people to manage their own development and to acquire a sense of control over its course through self-management. These alternatives, it was suggested, would challenge the verticality of communication structures within both state and market contexts (Pavarala and Malik, 2007). By the early 1990s, the challenges to state control of media were beginning to mount considerably, bringing about transformative shifts in the media landscape.

Emergence of community radio in India: a blurred development vision? The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) effectively ended the state’s monopoly over radio broadcasting when it opened the door for commercial players in 1999 by auctioning the airwaves, setting in motion a process that continues unhindered to this day. While it certainly revived radio entertainment, the government initially displayed great reluctance to consider the civil society demand for third-sector broadcasting, independent of the state and market. The government hesitantly eased restrictions to permit only campus-run community radio stations in 2003. Apprehending threats from secessionists and subversive elements, the Government of India took an extremely cautious view of liberalising the broadcasting sector even as activists and civil society groups pressed on for the right of poor, marginalised communities to set up and run radio stations of their own. These intense advocacy efforts and passionate debates about community radio broadcasting for the social sector finally culminated in a more inclusive community radio policy approved by the Union Cabinet in November  2006. The new, expanded policy permitted NGOs and community-based groups with a track record of developmental work to set up community radio stations (see Pavarala and Malik, 2007 for a detailed history of this struggle).

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The hope amongst the activists and advocates of CR in India was that the creation of an autonomous community radio sector would result in a reclaiming of the radio commons for the citizens. The expectation was that community radio would provide a space for the marginalised to carry out democratic deliberations and articulate freely their problems and aspirations. Civil society organisations, media activists, and advocates who ran a campaign for the opening of airwaves from the mid-1990s to early 2000s emphasised the potential for using community radio for development, rather than foregrounding what seemed to be the more radical framework of communication rights. Many of these groups and individuals had themselves emerged in the crucible of the post-Emergency civil society ferment and had a strong belief in the power of non-governmental action in articulating an alternative development vision to that of the state. Further, in sheer strategic terms, pushing for a community radio policy based on a development agenda appeared to be a more prudent lever to use with an overly suspicious government. It is against this context that the government saw some possibilities in community radio and eventually accepted the idea. As it panned out in the last 15 years of the community radio policy in India, the development imperative of CR has become quite deeply ingrained, as many NGOs have begun to initiate community radio in their places of operation to further their own organisational goals. In this section, I present as a case study a landmark developmental intervention in the community radio sphere in India, which brings out some of the pitfalls of NGO-led community radio stations. This is not to deny that NGOs, as organisations representing the development needs of certain communities, have earned the right to run radio stations of their own, and certainly not to take away from the fact that some of the best community radio stations in the country are those set up and managed by NGOs. My purpose here is to underline what comes with the NGO territory and how we may, collectively, think of possible ways of retaining the spirit of progressive politics and community-led social change even as more and more NGOs enter the community radio domain.

Case study In 2008, a major multilateral organisation (to be referred to hereinafter as “MLO”) took a decision to support NGO partners in the setting up of community radio stations in some of the poorest districts in the country. As pointed out by one of its senior functionaries, the organisation was of the view that ground-level project experience could allow it to make more meaningful intervention in the CR policy arena. CR projects were thus initiated in seven districts in the country – namely, Lalitpur (UP), Shivpuri (MP), Koraput (Orissa), Dibrugarh (Assam), East Singhbum (Jharkhand), Purulia (West Bengal), and Vaishali (Bihar). Right from their inception, the MLO asserted, these radio stations were not meant to be the mouthpieces of the organisation. The following insights are drawn from a large-scale evaluation study of the intervention conducted by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media. It

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involved data collection from quantitative listenership surveys, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and participatory evaluation techniques in the Bundelkhand region, especially the parts covered by three CR stations, including the two set up by the MLO. The MLO sought to demonstrate how community radio can be a vehicle for community involvement, education, and empowerment, especially in meeting the information needs of the excluded communities, enabling them to speak out and be heard. The organisation realised that the NGOs seeking to set up and run CR stations needed support in several areas: (i) For establishing the studio, undertaking radio production, and day-to-day operational aspects of running a studio, including routine maintenance functions; (ii) for training and technical skill-building of the community radio staff; (iii) for providing suitable information for development of radio programmes directed at vulnerable sections of society on issues such as maternal health, nutrition, sanitation, and hygiene; and (iv) for creating a CR station that was socially, technically, and financially viable and sustainable over a period of time. The ultimate objective for the MLO was to establish community radio stations as self-sustained and community-owned institutions. Amongst its stated principles were that CR stations must be financially viable and socially sustainable; CR stations needed to link up with business communities and government programmes for sustainability; NGOs and community reporters must learn to do their own marketing for revenue generation, a skill that needs to be imbibed; and sustainability models needed to be location-specific and could not be applied across the board without suitable modifications. During 2011–2012, two of the MLO-supported stations were focused on capacity-building for revenue generation, a firm gesture towards financial sustainability. The MLO judiciously chose to set up two of the community radio stations – Bundel_1 and Bundel_2 – in the economically backward region of Bundelkhand, characterised by some of the lowest levels of per capita income and human development. Bundel_3, which was the third station included in this study and not supported by the MLO, was also located in this deprived region, with about 80 percent of the households classified as living below the poverty line. In addition to lack of adequate basic amenities and physical infrastructure such as electricity, drinking water, public health facilities, and livelihood opportunities, these places are also largely inhabited by marginalised sections of society and several excluded and exploited tribal communities. The districts where these stations are located had been part of the MLO’s broader strategy of promoting community action and delivery of services or the focus of other international development agencies. These locations in the Bundelkhand region were undoubtedly ideal locations for setting up community radio stations in India. The MLO was careful to choose NGOs that had an established community presence and had been working with people at the grassroots level for several years on issues of development and empowerment for setting up the stations. The CR stations could, therefore, draw upon and build on the community mobilisation work already being carried out by the NGOs for establishing a bond with the community and seek their participation. One of the NGOs worked for

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the social empowerment of the poor as well as Dalit and tribal communities, while another was primarily involved in addressing the welfare needs and rights of the Sahariya tribe. In Chanderi, known for its famed silk saris, a capacitybuilding organisation called OWSA worked with the local weavers’ welfare society to facilitate the setting up of Bundel_3. The society, BVS, was established to empower the weavers to offset the exploitation by traditional traders and curtail migration caused by unemployment and a spiral of debt. A close examination of the objectives of the CR stations, as envisioned in their brochures and websites or articulated by the management committee members, revealed that they had either been determined by the NGOs’ own goals or by the requirements of funding agencies. The mandates of the two MLO-funded stations significantly showcased the social and developmental agendas of the funding agency as well as of the NGOs, which is not to say that they were necessarily divorced from the “needs” of the people. The overarching approach was to “cater” to information needs of the community and border on being instructive and prescriptive. In Chanderi, although the larger mandate of BVS is to strengthen the weavers’ community, the objectives seemed to aim at larger development of the community. But, again, the approach was to bring about social change through information dissemination and the creation of awareness. The community participation component was limited to highlighting the local culture and promoting local talent. Community radio was clearly perceived by the NGOs as a medium to enable them to spread information to large numbers of people, make them aware of their rights and entitlements, or mobilise them to participate in community-based interventions. The head of the parent NGO of Bundel_2 admitted that the organisation kept a tight leash on the station and hoped that at a future date the station would attain “the maturity” to be on its own (“and maybe even transfer the ownership to the community”). The role of the capacity-building agencies in all three stations was enabling and played a key role in making the NGOs and station staff conversant with the principles and practices of community radio. The selection of community members for training as well as the inputs during the training of young men and women in radio production followed a participatory and co-learning approach suitable for a community radio station and different, probably, from the purely technical and market-oriented disposition of mainstream radio training. Issues of gender and marginalisation were kept in mind while selecting the radio team, and there were sensitisation sessions on community mobilisation, participatory management, and democratic deliberations. However, in the MLOsupported stations (Bundel_1 and Bundel_2), a heightened emphasis on script writing, increasing broadcast timings, account-keeping, management systems, programme quality, marketing, structural stipulations, streamlining outputs, and linking output to remunerations robbed the stations of the informal, flexible, open-house, learning/volunteer-based character it might have enjoyed during the capacity-building days. Once on air, these stations started making too many professional demands that diminished the scope of innovation and even the ability of visitors/participants to enter without an invitation or permission. For example, the stations were set a target number of hours of programming per

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month with a fixed point chart (FPC), like mainstream radio stations, and an MIS (management information system) handbook was given to them to document various aspects, including programming and financial sustainability. At the time of our fieldwork, Bundel_1 station employed one station manager, one coordinator, and ten community reporters as regular paid staff. All of them were highly motivated and identified well with the working of a CR station. The second line of reporters and a few volunteers also received compensation for the work they put in for the station. Similarly, there were regular paid staff at Bundel_2, though the number there was almost half that of Bundel_1. CR reporters at these stations were not only allocated clear roles and responsibilities but were also assigned the specific themes on which they should make programmes. While Bundel_1 generated employment opportunity for the young men and women from the community, this was clearly not a sustainable model in the long run, as it required a regular flow of funding (about Rs. 13–17 lakhs per year or, at present exchange, about US $25,000 at the higher end). If constant funding from donor agencies or the NGO concerned was assured, then this model could work. One senior member of the MLO admitted to us privately that, in hindsight, the funding and expectations of scale should have been more modest. Acknowledging that the model may not be replicable, this person even suggested that the station must try to widen its volunteer base and reduce its dependence on paid staff. The story of Bundel_3, in the absence of regular, assured funding, was different, and the three female reporters we met had no fixed salaries. Their remuneration depended on available funding and projects. None of the volunteers or trainees were paid. The strength of the station, it seemed, lay in the motivation levels of the staff and, probably, in some non-fiscal, intangible benefits they perceived, making them commit their precious time to work for a cause that had caught their imagination. Their annual budget was a mere Rs. 120,000 (about US $1,700) – certainly not an ideal situation, as our team met staffers who felt that they could do much more if funds were available. Broadcasting for limited hours, the station operated in an environment of some uncertainty. The station manager of Bundel_3, however, offered a sustainability model that could simply be summed up as “operating within one’s means”: “We’ve survived with very less and know how to do that. Other stations may be forced to close if their funders withdraw. If we were to get funding, we’ll know how to use it optimally for our operations and survival.” So, the moot question is, Does excessive dependence on a large number of paid staff, as in the case of Bundel_1, hinder the spirit of volunteerism associated with community radio? On the flip side, one could ask if Bundel_3 would have been in less disarray as a station if they had some optimal funding to, at least, afford a limited number of paid employees to manage the station. Both Bundel_1 and Bundel_2, in keeping with the principles enunciated by the MLO, developed their respective sustainability plans, which included ideas for attracting advertising, which is permitted to a limited extent by the CR policy guidelines of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. In fact, the MLO even brought in a professional marketing company, which tried in

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vain to inculcate marketing principles into the stations that were operating in a relatively deprived region, catering primarily to listeners at the low-end of the economy. However, as these plans failed to bring in the desired revenues, and with the MLO putting in place a plan for its withdrawal from the project in the near future, the biggest challenge the stations faced at the time of our study was that of financial sustainability. Using the funds being channelled to the station, Bundel_1 hired almost a dozen paid community radio reporters and increased its broadcast hours to about 12 hours a day. With no proven avenue for selfsustainability, the station had clearly painted itself into a corner based on a short-lived funding source in the form of the MLO.1 Representatives of all three Bundelkhand stations being discussed here espoused the cause of community participation in community radio. However, the objectives of the parent NGOs and those of donor agencies came in the way of genuine community participation. Their inclination was entirely towards spreading what they considered to be beneficial, locally relevant information (jankari) for development. The tendency amongst many staff members was more to make programmes for the people rather than with the community. The listenership surveys conducted by our research team in each of the three station areas clearly brought out that there was a dedicated listenership. However, even regular listeners were not able to make a clear distinction between the state-run AIR and the CR station, with many identifying the station with the NGO. The CR stations seemed to have had only partial success in cultivating a culture of participation in the community or positioning the radio as a medium of two-way communication where members of the community can also talk. It was obvious that, to some extent, the anxiety over financial sustainability deflected the stations’ attention from the urgent need to enhance community participation in the production and management of the radio stations. The longterm viability of the stations clearly depends on the community’s perception of the indispensability of their respective stations to meet their basic communication needs. This could help increase their stakes in the station and, at least, create a sense of emotional, if not legal, ownership.

Reflections on NGOisation of community radio Writing about the NGOisation of global justice movements, Aziz Choudry (2010: 18) discusses how “professionalization of social change” and “hierarchies of power and knowledge within ‘alternative’ milieus often reproduce rather than challenge dominant practices and power relations, and serve elite economic and political interests instead of constituencies which these organisations claim to represent.” In a scathing critique of NGOs in a neoliberal climate, Choudry argues that these organisations are bound to “an ideology of pragmatism which normalises and reinforces dominant ideologies of liberalism” (18). He suggests that as so-called civil society organisations multiplied rapidly in the neoliberal period of the 1990s, governments and global institutions started “sub-contracting” them to promote “good governance” (18).

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Sangeeta Kamat (2002) uses the term “NGOisation” to refer to the increasing professionalisation and depoliticisation of social movements. As financing by donor agencies and international organisations increased in a spectacular manner in the development sector, NGOs and rights-based organisations are compelled to “demonstrate managerial and technical capabilities to administer, monitor, and account for project funding” (Choudry, 2010: 19). As a result, Kamat (2004: 171) argues, rather than building on the gains made by popular struggles, “NGOs are being re-inscribed in the current policy discourse in ways that strengthen liberalism and undermine democracy.” Certain “buzzwords and fuzzwords,” as Cornwall (2010) put it, must then be problematised in the deconstruction of the contemporary development discourse in which NGOs play a leading role. These include concepts like “empowerment,” which Batliwala (2010) suggests has been depoliticised to reduce it to development’s latest “magic bullet.” Similarly, Scoones (2010) shows how the agonising debates around “sustainability” are mainly a function of a “bureaucratic mode of managerialism,” with its focus on action plans, and indicators, and such. Research conducted by our team at the UNESCO Chair on Community Media over the last ten years or so (Pavarala and Malik, 2007; Pavarala et al., 2010) compels us to reflect critically on the role of civil society organisations in the development of community radio in India. The funding imperative, the policy specifying NGOs as the eligible applicants, and the overall developmental framework led to the growth of community radio in India largely through the efforts of NGOs. While some of the best examples of genuine grassroots community radio in India come from NGO initiatives, some organisations are beginning to enter the arena solely to further the organisational objectives, and they take to less than participatory methods under pressure from donors to “scale up” operations and to demonstrate “impact” on behaviour change. The implications of this incipient NGOisation of community radio in India are beginning to be felt across the sector. A community radio project in eastern India that we were tracking since its narrowcasting days in 2003 decided five years later to shift to what it termed “a rights-based approach.” While the rights discourse offered exciting possibilities, on air this was translated into government officials holding forth on various schemes to which the rural poor are entitled. Without any community voices pointing to loopholes in implementation, and bereft of any lively discussions on the scheme, the expert-driven broadcasts were reduced to mere extensions of state radio (Pavarala and Malik, 2008). Another change initiated by the project was to scale up the total number of villages covered by its community reporters from the earlier 40 to 160. An economy of scale was sought to be achieved, apparently at the behest of certain donors, by reducing at the same time the number of reporters from the earlier 14 to six. As a result, the coverage area of the reporter, who was mostly on foot or used a bicycle, widened beyond manageable limits, with not enough time spared for all the villages. It led not only to a decline in the participation of people in the villages in the selection of issues, planning, production, and post-production activities, but also to the dropping

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out of all female reporters, who found it difficult to negotiate such a large geographical area without adequate security or transport. A senior representative of the NGO told us without any sense of irony that his aim was to reach a million people in Jharkhand through community radio! On the whole, while the Jharkhand programme seemed to be a highly visible effort by an NGO to use radio to further its own stated goals for social change, one would be hard put to say that the programme enabled previously powerless individuals and communities to take control of the means and content of communication to achieve their own social change goals. With the gradual shifting of the programme towards an information dissemination paradigm directed and driven by fewer and fewer people, it did not help strengthen individual and community communication capacities and decision-making abilities. While the way some of the NGOs are deploying radio is unwittingly aligning them with an older state-centred paradigm of broadcasting for development, there have been other interesting developments in the community radio sector that are threatening its autonomy from the state more directly. The MIB, in a well-intentioned move to address problems of financial sustainability of CR stations, started a programme to empanel stations to receive government advertisements publicising state welfare schemes and their achievements. Given the abysmally low rates at which these are being offered, they would hardly make a dent in the sustainability problem and would have the strange effect of leading community radio, the sector that was to contribute to the constitution of an alternative public sphere, to line up to receive government largesse. This is reminiscent of the use of government advertising as a tool to rein in small-town newspapers that were meant to serve a greater community purpose. More recently, the Ministry also launched a Community Radio Support Scheme mainly to subsidise the acquisition of technology by stations. While public funding of community radio is welcome, it should have been set up as an autonomous fund, as is done in many other countries, instead of a government ministry tightly controlling the pursestrings. It seems that community radio is being seen by some as an extension of the government. During the years when activists and advocates argued for a third sector of broadcasting in India, it was very clear that it was to be independent of the government and the market and be an autonomous voice for local communities as an expression of their issues, problems, languages, cultures, and identities. If community radio were to function merely as All India Radio, doling out information that would rally people around “national” development goals and mould them into “good” citizens through top-down, expert-driven communication, the years of struggle for an independent space would have been in vain. The troubling aspect of state funding is that whether it is through preferential advertising or funding for content production by interested ministries, it has the effect of reducing community radio to a supplicant in a complex patron-client relationship. Combined with the increasing NGOisation of community radio in India, negotiating an acceptable relationship with the state is a key challenge for the sector.

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A decade after the community radio policy was announced, many aberrations have raised  their ugly heads in the Indian community radio landscape. These include excessive focus on financial sustainability (through advertising, ostensibly) without a deeper socialisation into the philosophy of community radio, state attempts to appropriate and co-opt CR spaces through the backdoor, NGOisation of CR, reproduction of the same top-down pedagogical approaches to development, and a stultifying imposition of standardised formats and genres in the name of training. The hope was that this re-imagining of ordinary people as active producers of information, not merely as passive receivers, would invert the hierarchies inherent in the hegemonic development discourse and help bring about a more democratic, participatory, bottom-up model of communication for social change. However, on current evidence of the state of community radio in India, we can only say that the entire sector, marked by a complex play of collaborations between the state, the NGOs, multilateral agencies, and other related stakeholders, is caught in a blurred vision that seems only to reproduce older paradigms of development communication. It is only through a rigorous process of recovering and validating the knowledge and experiences of grassroots community broadcasters, by prioritising what Choudry (2010) refers to as the “voices from the floor,” that we may yet be able to rescue community radio in India from a downward spiral of NGOisation.

Note 1 The Community Radio Forum and civil society activists advocated for an autonomously run Community Radio Support Fund that the Government of India could set up to enable CR stations to source public funds for a range of needs, from upgradation of equipment to salaries of minimal station personnel. While this proposal never got the needed traction at MIB, they put in place a support scheme for CR stations, which, even with its erratic and uneven functioning, is primarily funding technology acquisition.

References Agarwal, Binod C. (2006). “Communication Technology and Rural Development in India: Promises and Performances,” Indian Media Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, July-December 1–9. Batliwala, Srilatha (2010). “Taking the Power out of Empowerment: An Experiential Account,” Development in Practice, Vol. 17, No. 4–5, 557–565. Choudry, Aziz (2010). “Global Justice? Contesting NGOization: Knowledge Politics and Containment in Antilocalization Networks,” in Aziz Choudry and Dip Kapoor (eds.), Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 17–34. Cornwall, Andrea (2010). “Buzzwords and Fuzz Words: Deconstructing Development Discourse,” Development in Practice, Vol. 17, No. 4–5, 471–484. Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum. Kamat, Sangeeta (2002). Development Hegemony: NGOs and the State in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Kamat, Sangeeta (2004). “The Privatization of Public Interest: Theorizing NGO Discourse in a Neoliberal Era,” Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 1, 155–176. McQuail, Denis (1983). Mass Communication Theory: An Introduction. London: Sage. Neurath, Paul (1962). “Radio Farm Forum as a Tool of Change in Indian Villages,” Economic Development & Cultural Change, Vol. 10, No. 3, 275–283. Pavarala, Vinod and Kanchan K. Malik (2007). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. Delhi: Sage. Pavarala, Vinod and Kanchan K. Malik (2008). Communication for Social Change: Evaluating Chala Ho Gaon Mein in Jharkhand. Research Monograph. UNESCO Chair on Community Media, University of Hyderabad. Pavarala, Vinod, Kanchan K. Malik and Vasuki Belavadi. (2010). On Air: A Comparative Study of Four Community Radio Stations in India. Research Monograph, UNESCO Chair on Community Media, University of Hyderabad. Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small is Beautiful. New York: Harper & Row. Scoones, Ian (2010). “Sustainability,” Development in Practice, Vol. 17, No. 4–5, 589–596. Servaes, Jan (2002). Approaches to Development Communication. Paris: UNESCO.

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Box 6  Time to redefine and refine CR policies In 1995 the Supreme Court declared the airwaves to be public property and since then activists have been advocating for opening up of airwaves to communities. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) had mentioned setting up of 4000 CRs, but the sector has grown only from 20 to 202 CRS since 2006 when the airwaves were made available for broadcasting by community-based organisations. The last National Consultation was held in 2010, wherein strong policy advocacy for the sector was at centre stage. This year’s National Consultation (2017) on ‘Strengthening Community Radio in India’ was held from April 11 to 12 and the issue of CR policies was assessed in the working paper presentation titled “Revisiting CR Policy” by Ms Archana Kapoor, Station Director of Radio Mewat. This paper is a collective effort of Ms Kapoor, Prof. Vinod Pavarala, Mr  Sajan Venniyoor, Ms  Preeti Raghunath and Prof. Ashok Singh Sunhal at reviewing the current CR policies in India and also providing analysis on the challenges faced by the sector. The growth of CR in India has been slow-moving, and civil society organisations attribute this limited number of CRS growth to complex bureaucratic procedures. Instead of finding a solution to this problem, some government officials advocate for issuance of licenses to government departments to display a hike in the number of CR licenses issued. Some officials believe that affluent entities like government owned NGO can sustain due to their prosperous backing, but this will overturn the participation of communities based organisations which is the spirit of the sector. The paper introduced at National Consultation recommended not granting permission to any government agency other than educational institutions, keeping in with the spirit of community ownership practised within the CR sector. Corporate proxies, religious organisations and political entities have been granted CR licenses due to inconsistency in the functioning of the government body monitoring the license applications called Screening Committee. The amendment allowing a CR transmitter to be relocated within a district by taking district magistrate’s permission during a natural disaster is still under way despite the positive work done by CRS at times of natural calamity in the past. The paper reiterated the need for having a single window clearance of CR license applications by involving the concerned ministries in the process. The original CR guidelines of 2006 proscribed news broadcast and content of ‘political nature.’ However, recently the government has offered CRSs to re-broadcast news from All India Radio. Since the CR sector as it sees itself to be the alternative space to the hegemonic state and commercial broadcasting, the offer received a lukewarm response. The paper

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suggests broadcasting the independently produced content on news and current affairs on CR, which is in practice with international CR community. Over a decade, CRSs have been producing content by following the Programming Code of All India Radio stated in the Policy Guidelines of 2006. Lately, the government has been issuing ‘advisories’ to CRS on content broadcasting and the recalcitrant stations being reprimanded by the authorities. The CR members need to come up with a regulatory framework they wish to follow by negotiating with the government and advocate for more transparency between their communication. UNESCO Chair team Source: CR News Vol. 8, No. 1, Oct-Dec 2017

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7 RADIO SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT Implications for community radio in South Asia Ram Bhat Introduction The twentieth century marks a shift from the industrial economy (itself a shift from the agricultural economy) to the information economy. This transformation “is exhibited not only by the rapid growth and development of ICTs, but more importantly by their pervasive application throughout virtually all sectors of the economy” (Castells, 1996; Freeman and Louçã, 2001; Melody, 2007: 56). The way ICTs are deployed within the economy is also significant, especially in remote and rural areas. As economies of scale make wire line deployment unaffordable, wireless technologies – whether radio, television, telecom, or internet broadband  – are becoming the de facto standard through which the information economy reaches the hinterlands. Today community radio in South Asia is largely distributed via the FM spectrum. However, in the next two decades many key regions, especially densely populated urban areas, will face spectrum saturation, and this saturation will become the driver for digitalisation even though there may be no saturation in other areas (rural, semi-urban, etc.). In the future, community radio stations may need to seek space on other bands via digital radio (DRM, DRM+, DAB, internet streaming). At the heart of this inevitable transformation there is an urgent need to locate and engage with the politics of spectrum management. It may be said that spectrum is perhaps the most valuable natural resource in the information economy, and it is absolutely crucial that community broadcasters have their say in how this valuable resource is managed and used to further public interest. New models have the potential to fundamentally change what community radio as a concept has come to mean. There are four broad models identified for the framing of community media: Serving the community, providing an alternative to mainstream media, acting as part of civil society, and offering a rhizomatic approach, the latter denoting a flexible, non-linear, fluid, and slightly anarchic approach to community media (Carpentier et  al., 2003). In the context of South Asia, a particularly large, culturally diverse, and complex

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region, it would be counter-productive to work with a reductionist perspective of community media. My comments on spectrum management are thus framed deliberately in a broad manner so as to be adaptable for various interpretations of community media. I have also tried to show how the practice of spectrum management has very real implications and consequences for the model of community radio that is being promoted, both at the macro levels (policy and regulation) and the micro levels (community and radio station).

What is spectrum for community radio? In South Asia, community radio is for the most part limited to FM broadcasting. FM frequencies are located between 88 MHz and 108 MHz as per internationally agreed standards set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Further, all countries in South Asia, at the time of writing, operate FM as a terrestrial analogue technology. In other words, the airwaves travel over the ground (as opposed to satellite or cable) and listeners are able to receive the signal free to air (in a digital system, the listener would require a special digital radio receiver to decrypt the signal). Further, it is important to realise that the FM “band” (i.e. 88 to 108 MHz) is not exclusive to community radio alone. Instead, the same band is also shared with other broadcasters, including public service broadcasters, commercial broadcasters, and, sometimes, police, emergency health services, and so on. Spectrum is often seen as an extremely valuable yet scarce commodity. This might seem counterintuitive since airwaves cannot be exhausted. Spectrum per se is not exhaustible, but it becomes scarce due to the design by which spectrum is allocated to various broadcasters. Imagine a frequency; let’s say 90.4 MHz has been licenced to community radio A for a period of five years in the city of Delhi. In terms of spectrum allocation, what this really means is that the radio station is authorised to use that frequency for five years, and the government’s licence is an assurance that no other broadcaster will encroach upon your frequency or cause interference. The word “encroach” is suggestive since the allocation of spectrum is not unlike how land rights are allocated (Benkler, 1997). Thus, in effect, chunks of spectrum are licenced off to various broadcasters for fixed periods of time. Spectrum is scarce in a particular location (Delhi, in our example). If we take Kathmandu, or Bangalore, as another example, the same 90.4 MHz frequency becomes available again. This is because a community radio station (or a commercial or public service broadcaster) will use a given frequency to broadcast at a given transmission strength with limited broadcast range. Outside that range, the same frequency becomes available for reuse. This is why, in India, it becomes possible for the Reliance Group (BIG FM) to buy the same frequency – 93.4 MHz – across more than 20 cities across India, playing different content at each of their stations, yet retaining the same frequency and thus the same brand identity. So, on paper, spectrum is an endlessly renewable source, but it immediately becomes scarce when it has to be allocated for a defined market.

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Allocation design Even though community, commercial, and public service broadcasters all operate on the same FM band, the design of allocation for each of these sectors is quite different – and for valid reasons. Spectrum is auctioned for commercial radio since the objective in this case is for the radio to earn profit; the government can thus justify earning revenue from spectrum allocation. On the commercial radio side, the stations are expected to recover these costs (including spectrum cost) through advertisements. In the case of community radio, however, the objective is not to earn profit but to instead be geared towards social good. Further, the licencee institutions are not big corporations but educational institutions, community groups, NGOs, etc., so they cannot be asked to pay huge costs for spectrum, which, of course, the licencees simply cannot afford. It is clear that spectrum for community radio will have to be licenced for little or no cost. However, it is worth remembering that this spectrum, allocated at virtually no cost to the licencee, is the same spectrum (in quality and quantity) as that allocated to the commercial sector, which, of course, has paid a much higher cost for it. Thus, the onus is on the government and the community radio licencee to ensure that the spectrum awarded for community radio is used for the furthering of social good. For example, if a community radio station gets spectrum at a low cost and then broadcasts only entertainment content and makes profit off advertising, then surely it can be considered a case of either corruption or of creating an uneven playing field, discouraging competition and so on. By contrast, non-auction modes of allocation, i.e. discretionary and first come, first served, are risky models of allocation since these tend to place a lot of power in the hands of the government agencies, thereby making these models vulnerable to nepotism and corruption. This is why the Supreme Court of India gave a judgement in favour of auctions as the favourable model of allocation for spectrum. The first challenge for community radio activists is to work with the government to ensure that, on the one hand, government retains discretionary models of allocation (as opposed to auction) and, on the other, that discretionary allocations are made in a consultative and transparent manner to benefit those who need spectrum the most.

Case study from India The community radio policy in India was released in 2006 and uses a mix of discretionary and first come, first served allocation for community radio spectrum. Once the government (I&B Ministry) receives a community radio application, it is asked to defend eligibility status. In the first stage, the application copies are sent to various other ministries for background check, availability of spectrum in proposed location, legal status, and so on. The next phase is a screening process wherein the applicant is asked to defend their proposal for setting up a community radio station as well as their eligibility status. For the latter, the Ministry of I&B has constituted a screening committee. On paper, this screening committee

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consists of stakeholders from UN organisations, representative organisations like Community Radio Forum and Community Radio Association of India, etc., and is chaired by the Joint Secretary of the I&B Ministry. In case an organisation successfully defends its case, then the file is passed on to the Wireless Planning and Coordination (WPC) wing of the C&IT Ministry. This wing does not do any further checks and simply allocates a frequency to said applicant. In reality, the screening committee finds no mention in the community radio policy and has no procedures laid out in writing. Further, there is no procedure for selection of members for the screening committee. The minutes of the screening committee meetings are not documented, or if they are, they are not published. There are instances where members of the screening committee have rejected an applicant but the I&B Ministry has nevertheless gone ahead and approved the application. In other instances, the members of the screening committee have approved the application, but the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has nevertheless gone ahead and rejected the application. The danger of opaque discretionary allocation is not hard to see. In 2008, exactly the same allocation design led to a massive scam in the telecom sector in India that was believed to be to the tune of 1,76,000 crore rupees (Firstpost, 2011). The then telecom minister in the UPA government, Mr A. Raja, handed out licences in a discretionary fashion and at sub-par market rates. These recipients then effectively resold the licences to other bidders at much higher prices. It is precisely these kinds of abuses that lead activists to resort to litigation, and the end result may very well be that courts will rule that all spectrum, including community radio spectrum, be awarded only through the transparent mode of auction. Thus, for a socially oriented sector like community radio, the lowcost but discretionary mode is in danger of being sacrificed for a high-cost but transparent mode of allocation. In fact, several community radio stations have already received a wireless operating licence with future auction of spectrum mentioned as a possibility. This came about in the immediate aftermath of the 2G Supreme Court judgement in favour of auctions. What is needed is not a rejection of the discretionary mode of allocation. Rather, we need to put in place a discretionary mode of allocation with complete transparency and the right objectives set in place. Without these in place, discretionary allocation can only lead to abuse and corruption, not to mention a colossal waste of public money and public spectrum resources. Some remedial measures that can be considered are a clear preference for community-based organisations as applicants, frequencies that are disbursed in media dark areas before everywhere else, and communities marked by conflict, poverty, disease, etc. In addition, once the applicant enters the application process, government needs to maintain total transparency as a justification for discretionary allocation of spectrum. Thus, if there is to be a screening committee, then it should find mention in policy documents. The criteria for membership of that committee should be made public. All discussions and decisions undertaken by that committee should be made public. Dissenting notes by members should also be made public. In case the committee cannot come to a decision, then the matter usually goes to the relevant ministry – Ministry of Home Affairs; Law,

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Information and Broadcasting; etc. In such cases, the final decision is usually taken by a senior civil servant, usually the Joint Secretary or the Secretary to the Ministry. Transparency is to be maintained in such instances as well.

Community radio footprint Each community radio station has a definite area that is covered by its transmission. The most powerful factors affecting size of coverage are strength of transmitter power and height of antenna (along with antenna gain). Of course, there are other factors, such as terrain, but these are not and cannot usually be covered by policy. Why is size of coverage area important for frequency management? Airwaves are in principle a renewable valuable natural resource, but in practice they can be limited by the extent of the coverage area. The larger the footprint of a given community radio station, the less that frequency is available for reuse by others. By contrast, the smaller the footprint of a community radio station, the greater the opportunity for reuse. Thus, from a frequency management perspective, it would seem to make sense to allow only the smallest coverage possible so that others can reuse frequencies. Apart from technical challenges like interference, there are many complexities to be considered. From an economic sustainability perspective, community radio stations cannot be thought of based on their footprint alone. One would also need to consider the fact that a community radio station exists in a market, where presumably other community radio stations, commercial stations, and public service broadcasters operate (if not at present, then there is at the very least a possibility that these other types of broadcasters might operate in that market in the future). Thus, from such a perspective, the more players in the market, the more fragmented the market becomes. Competition for the same advertisers will increase; thus, pricing will be reduced and ultimately the weakest players in the market (i.e. the community radio station, economically speaking) will be priced out of the market. Commercial broadcasters will be adversely impacted too. Only public service broadcasters will remain unaffected. Thus, it is the job of policy to ensure that every market, whether it is urban, rural, or semi-urban, retains a fine balance so that every type of broadcaster remains financially viable. There is of course no magic number or formula since every market will present a unique set of conditions. This is another reason why frequency allocation needs to be done in a planned and phased manner that allows regulators or policymakers to observe crucial markets at close quarters and make amends if needed. Economic perspectives aside, there are other implications at an overall market ecology level. Broadcasters do not exist in a vacuum. They operate alongside other kinds of media operations  – television, radio, newspapers, internet services, and so on. This is important because every society is shaped by how its people and issues are represented in its media. Further, media plays an important role in encouraging the free flow of information, diversity of opinions, and ideas in the so-called public sphere. Any reduction or increase in the number of players or meddling with the types of players in the market inevitably influences freedom of speech

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and the free flow of ideas, information, and opinions in society. Thus, the size of each broadcaster’s coverage, type of broadcaster, and number of overall broadcasters/media providers have tremendous implications. Thus, seen from a political and cultural perspective, frequency management also becomes very important in terms of retaining a healthy balance (true diversity of opinions and healthy economy versus cacophony and market collapse). In India, for example, the transmission power of community radio is fixed at 100 watts effective radiated power (ERP), whereas commercial radio is allowed to operate anywhere between 3,000 and 20,000 watts, depending on market. It is clear that the cap on transmission power for community radio is intended to limit its commercialisation whereas commercial radio is given flexibility and increased transmission strength to enable it to recover investments and reap profits (of which a share is paid to government). While this may seem like sound policy, on closer inspection it reveals itself to be a one-size-fits-all approach; see the community radio (Government of India, 2006) policy for more details. The fact of the matter is that community radio, too, could be located in very diverse markets – densely populated urban areas where 100 watts is sufficient but also sparsely populated rural areas where 100 watts is entirely insufficient. By contrast, in extremely rural areas, where a single-language community may be spread out over large geographical areas, the market may be too poor to support multiple broadcasters. In such a situation it is advisable to grant that single community radio station increased transmission power or, alternatively, allow that community radio station (if it so requests) to operate on AM frequencies that can travel much longer distances than FM per watt of transmission power. The opposite policy impetus is needed when markets are saturated in terms of spectrum allocation – for example Kathmandu and Delhi. There are four or five community radio stations, about nine or ten commercial stations, and a couple of public service broadcasters, and soon there will be no space for more radio stations. In South Asian cities that are densely populated, 15–20 radio stations are simply not enough to service such a large population. Delhi, for example, has a population of around 16  million people, as per the 2011 census, and assuming 16 stations, that means that each radio station caters to an average of a million people! Whereas that audience size might be a good thing for a powerful commercial radio station (both economically and with regard to transmitter strength), it is an impossible task for a community radio station operating at 100 watts. In such a scenario, it might be advisable for encourage even lower power community broadcasting – say 20 watts – which reduces audience size, thereby making community participation a real possibility. At the same time, an added plus would be the freeing up of those frequencies, possibly for reuse by other prospective applicants.

Channel spacing Given that the FM band runs from just 88 to 108 MHz, it naturally follows that only a fixed number of frequencies are available for radio broadcasting. A further complication arises when frequencies are allocated too close to each

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other – for example 90.4 MHz and 90.5 MHz allocated to radio stations that operate in close proximity to each other. Since FM in South Asia operates on a terrestrial analogue basis, the radio receiver sets are also analogue (whether it’s a stand-alone radio set or a mobile phone). The consequence of this would be interference at the receiver’s end. Thus, any frequency management would require some amount of spacing between adjacent channels. In India, FM channels are spaced at an interval of 800 KHz. For example, if radio station A is allocated 90.4 MHz, then the next available frequency for radio station B is 91.2 MHz, followed by 92.0 MHz for station C and so on. Logically speaking, the greater the channel spacing, the lesser the number of frequencies available for allocation. Why is this important for frequency management? Increasing the channel spacing would reduce the number of frequencies available in a given market, whereas reducing channel spacing would increase the number of frequencies. A fine balance needs to be created, keeping in mind the quality of listeners’ devices. Older radio sets have trouble separating frequencies and are thus prone to interference. This is why India has a channel spacing of 800 KHz. However, with the advent of mobile phones, especially in cities, the channel spacing can be easily reduced without any adverse impact on interference. This is the reason why the Indian regulator TRAI released a report that recommends reducing the channel spacing in A+ markets from 800 KHz to 400 KHz (Sarma, 2012). Such a move, if adopted as policy, would immediately result in making more frequencies available. New entrants can now enter hitherto saturated markets. However, for obvious reasons, incumbents would resist this, as it would adversely impact their advertising base and ultimately their business model. As far as community radio is concerned, there is very little competition amongst community radio stations on economic terms. Most community radio stations in South Asia are dependent on government grants and sponsored programmes. Thus, it would make sense for community radio advocates supporting reduction of channel spacing in principle.

Saturation of spectrum More often than not, community radio spectrum in South Asia is allocated through a mixture of discretionary and first come, first served allocation. In other words, if an applicant meets all the eligibility criteria and is the first to apply in a given location, then that applicant will get priority over other (even if more deserving) applicants. Seen from this perspective, the allocation design raises questions of who deserves access and how to ensure that frequencies are available to them. However, from another perspective, namely saturation, this allocation design raises an entirely different set of problems. Government agencies are not particularly keen on paying attention to spectrum saturation. Their entire focus, as far as spectrum (and licence) allocation is concerned, rests with eligibility criteria. Due to this, the spectrum saturation depends on how many applicants approach the government from a given area. Applicant interest depends on a whole range of factors – availability of information, ability to raise capital expenditure to set up a community radio station, funds and human

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resources to meet the application requirements, travel budgets to go and meet government officials, etc. Needless to say, there is no guarantee that applications will be evenly distributed across any country, much less that priority will be given to media dark regions or oppressed communities. The city of Delhi, or National Capital Region (NCR), in India is a prime example. Due to a large number of educational institutions and NGOs getting to know about the community radio scheme, Delhi has received the highest number of applications for a single city. There are already more than six community radio stations in the NCR region, most of them concentrated in the South Delhi region. As a result of not paying attention to the particularities of place, South Delhi has many community radio stations (and no scope for other applicants from that region), whereas large parts of NCR (economically disadvantaged areas) are without a single community radio station. In such a scenario, the overall deployment of community radio in a given country becomes uneven, lopsided, and not particularly oriented to serving the oppressed. The onus of deployment falls on interest from the applicant, which in turn is vulnerable to a whole range of factors and in the end quite an arbitrary factor. Similarly, across countries like India and Nepal, it is not uncommon to see community radio stations flourishing in big cities or other urban centres while a few community radio stations are scattered in rural landscapes. Perhaps the government agencies in South Asia can take a proactive step in recognising that community radio has a positive role to play in providing information for media dark regions, promoting peace and reconciliation in areas marked by conflict, and so on. Such recognition in policy will enable community radio stations to be explicitly encouraged in areas that need it the most, rather than just depending on the initiative of applicants. Further, most government agencies in South Asia deal with community radio applications through the year, at great administrative and financial cost to the government. An alternative way for allocation design is to have timebound licencing “rounds” at specific times of the year. The government could announce  – say once every three or four months  – the availability of a fixed number of frequencies in a given area (where the choice of area is justified in the announcement). Then applications need be invited only from those areas. If demand exceeds supply, then a committee can be formed and worthy applicants can be selected in a transparent manner through application of justified criteria for selection. Such policies are in place for allocation of frequencies for community radio in the US and Bangladesh for example. Such an ordered and systematic allocation of frequencies reduces the administrative burden on the state and also allows for even and planned expansion of community radio across the country and in favour of the oppressed communities. Nepal has been a stellar example of community radio in South Asia, most notably through radio stations like Radio Sagarmatha and Radio Lumbini. Even though Nepal has had community broadcasting since the early ’90s, it is remarkable that Nepal does not have an explicit community radio policy. In essence, community radio is on par with commercial radio, and the only difference between them is the fees they pay in terms of royalty, depending on

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transmitter strength. As a result, a city like Kathmandu has about 40 FM channels, with four or five community radio stations. There is saturation and thus no more frequencies available for community radio in Kathmandu. An explicit community radio policy with well-defined objectives and design for spectrum management would ensure that Kathmandu’s radio distribution is better balanced, with equitable opportunities for all tiers of radio (Chautari, 2012).

Overall frequency management As was mentioned earlier, commercial, community, and public service broadcasters all share spectrum on the same FM band, 88–108 MHz. Each of these sectors has different compulsions, operates for different objectives, and yields very different kinds of returns to their audiences. Thus, it is natural that these three types of broadcasters share an uneasy co-existence on the FM band. Sometimes commercial broadcasters may feel aggrieved that community broadcasters get frequencies for little or no cost, while community broadcasters may feel that it is unfair to have low transmission strength compared with commercial or public service broadcasting. Public service broadcasters, by contrast, may feel peeved at both commercial and community broadcasters in terms of having to now deal with all the competition! The inevitable question for any regulator or government agency, then, is how to balance these diverse interests? Financial revenues from commercial stations compete with development objectives, and both of these compete with public service objectives. By any stretch of the imagination, this is a complex task for those who need to design spectrum allocation to the satisfaction of all three sectors, not to mention the listening public. As with any other policy, it becomes crucial to first outline the policy objectives. All too often governments fall prey to creating specific policies for each sector. However, they forget that these sectors share the same FM band and common markets to some extent. Thus, there is no doubt that there is an urgent need for an integrated policy that addresses common concerns, in addition to sector-specific policies. The integrated policy needs to spell out, for example, how much spectrum can be allocated to commercial, community, and public service radio on the FM band. While governments may not always have the same division of spectrum for every market, it is still worthwhile to have some rough measure or division for urban, rural, and semi-urban markets. Governments do this in practice, but so far South Asia has yet to see explicit reservation of spectrum for community radio in any policy. Argentina, for example, has passed a law that reserves 33 percent of spectrum for community media in an effort to promote and protect the interests of alternative and community media. In India, three frequencies are reserved for community radio, although it is not mentioned as part of any community radio policy. Clearly, commercial radio occupies pride of place, while community and public service broadcasting has two to three frequencies reserved for a given location. While this informal division of resources may serve the radio sector just fine for the moment, it will be difficult when the community radio sector expands in the future. At present India has about 240 community radio stations. By the government’s own

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estimates, there is potential for more than 4,000 community radio stations. If this is to become a reality, frequency management would need to be addressed even before other issues, such as streamlining the application process, determining availability of public funding, and so on.

Digitalisation There has been a lot of confusion about what is actually meant by digitalisation of radio. The confusion has been further compounded by the ongoing digitalisation of the television spectrum, leading to fear and speculation about the future of radio. As previously mentioned, radio broadcasting in South Asia is predominantly through analogue terrestrial technology. Even a mobile phone will have an analogue FM receiver chip installed inside it. However, due to spectrum saturation, policymakers are already beginning to think about digitalising the radio broadcast system as a whole. This would mean changing the standards of broadcasting – moving from FM and medium wave (MW) to standards like DAB or DRM. Of course there are benefits to digitalisation of radio: better sound quality, savings in spectrum, and non-linear engagement with programming. By contrast, digitalisation will incur heavy costs on the transmission and reception side. This means that listeners will need to buy a special digital radio receiver and broadcasters will need to buy new transmitters that broadcast using digital radio standards. There is no clarity from governments regarding who will bear the cost of the digital switchover, and in the worst case scenario, the extra cost will be passed on to the consumer. Further, with the advent of digitalisation, the free-to-air listening culture of radio will come to an end and digital radio broadcasters will be able to charge listeners for the act of listening to radio. While this may be good news for commercial radio broadcasters, who see a new source of revenue in subscription fees, it is bad news for community radio broadcasters, who often cater to the poorest communities in a given society, unable to afford media content on any medium. In India, for example, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting commissioned an expert committee led by Sam Pitroda to make recommendations on television and radio public service broadcasting managed by Prasar Bharati. The recommendations included a shift to DRM-MW (digital) instead of AM-MW (analogue) for the public service broadcaster All India Radio. It gave a deadline of 2016–2017 as to when public service broadcasters on AM would have to start simulcasting (broadcasting on analogue and digital standards simultaneously) and eventually shift to DRM-MW fully after the listening and transmission side was “stabilised.” It also recommended that, for now, the FM sector should expand and could consider switching over when receiver costs came down (Pitroda, 2014: 21). Community radio broadcasters may tend to neglect such developments because the report only talks about public service broadcasting. However, there is a need to be alert to such developments precisely because listeners will not have different devices for public service, commercial, and community. If the other two tiers decide, or plan to decide, to shift to another standard of broadcasting, it will have implications for the remaining tier as well.

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In almost all cases, it is community broadcasting that gets to know about this unpleasant surprise last and thus is caught off balance, reduced to protest and post-event damage control. It is vital that community broadcasters engage with policymakers, commercial radio representative associations, and public service broadcasters to discuss potential changes in broadcasting standards. There will be opportunities to ensure that the voices of the communities and their concerns are heard and incorporated while making important policy decisions. Another trend in digitalisation is to avoid “broadcasting” altogether and instead move to the internet. There is a clear pattern emerging in new models of smartphones  – they don’t come with an FM radio feature anymore. It is assumed that smartphone users will listen to music stored on their memory cards via apps like iTunes, Spotify, Google Music Store, etc., or stream music through other websites. In fact, there is no basis for such an assumption. Forcing smartphone users to switch to listening to music on the internet only benefits mobile phone companies like Apple and Google, who also have interests in distributing music online. Community broadcasters will need to engage with government and policymaking agencies as well as mobile phone manufacturers to advocate for continuance of the FM radio feature in mobile phones. This is crucial since most of the younger generation listen to FM radio on their mobile phones, and community radio stations will lose large audiences if mobile phones reject FM radio on their hardware.

Conclusion Spectrum management should be an integral part of media policy, by government or civil society. Discourse around “spectrum” is usually appropriated as a technical topic and then shifted to regulators and experts, who more often than not lobby for commercial or private interests, all in the name of economic growth. In such a scenario, community interests are left out of the debate because the sector is too small or because community media advocates fail to register their presence. What is needed is not just awareness of spectrum management, but rather a cross-sectoral alliance between academics, researchers, media activists, broadcasters, concerned members of the public, etc., working together to reclaim the discourse in favour of the public interest. Such a move has historical precedent in the US, as broad alliances were made with regulators to push for media pluralism and regulation in favour of the public interest (Pickard, 2010). Spectrum is not merely a question of technicalities left to technical experts or engineers. It has very real implications for the equitable growth of the community radio sector in any country. These implications cut across the size of the footprint of a given community radio station, thereby influencing the extent of community participation. Spectrum management is also important for deciding the size of the FM radio market in a given area, thereby indirectly influencing the level of competition amongst FM broadcasters in a given market. This competition (or lack of it) has consequences for the financial sustainability of both the market and individual broadcasters operating in that market. Further, explicit well-designed spectrum management policies can ensure that in a crowded FM

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ecology, community broadcasting not only survives but also thrives and flourishes. Finally, spectrum management involves looking at future trends with respect to digitalisation and how these trends may impact community broadcasting as we know it. All of these issues require constant engagement with technical developments in radio broadcasting, policy advocacy, and platformbuilding for dialogue with public service and commercial radio – especially for issues that are common to all three tiers of radio.

References Benkler, Y. (1997). Overcoming agoraphobia: Building the commons of the digitally networked environment. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, 11, 287. Carpentier, N., Lie, R., and Servaes, J. (2003). Community media: Muting the democratic media discourse? Journal of Media  & Cultural Studies, 17(1), 51–68. doi:10.1080/1030431022000049010 Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Chautari, M. (2012). The need for a citizen-oriented radio policy. Kathmandu, Nepal. Retrieved from http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/mcpb/pdf/MC_ PolicyBrief_07_E.NG.pdf (accessed on March 25, 2019) Firstpost. (2011). 2G Spectrum: What, where and who of a scandal. Retrieved from www.firstpost.com/politics/2g-spectrum-scam-what-where-and-who-were-the-initialplayers-94657.html (accessed on March 25, 2019). Freeman, C., and Louçã, F. (2001). As time goes by: From the industrial revolution to the information revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Government of India (GoI) (2006). Policy Guidelines for Setting up Community Radio in India. New Delhi. Retrieved from https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/c1_0.pdf. Melody, W. (2007). Markets and policies in new knowledge economies (R. Mansell, Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pickard, V. (2010). Reopening the postwar settlement for U.S. Media: The origins and implications of the social contract between media, the state, and the polity. Communication, Culture & Critique, 3(2), 170–189. doi:10.1111/j.1753-9137.2010.01065.x Pitroda, S. (2014). Expert committee report on Prasar Bharati. New Delhi. Retrieved from http://mib.nic.in/WriteReadData/documents/Sam_Pitroda_Expert_Committee_ on_Prasar_Bharati_January_2014_-Vol_1.pdf (accessed on March 25, 2019). Sarma, J.S. (2012). Prescribing minimum channel spacing, within a license service area, for FM radio sector in India. New Delhi. Retrieved from https://main.trai.gov.in/sites/ default/files/Reco-on-FM-19042012_0.pdf (accessed on March 25, 2019).

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Box 7  Spectrum: its price, value & meaning What we call the ‘spectrum’ is actually a whole range of frequencies, from high-frequency gamma and x-rays at one end, all the way to low frequency waves used for TV, mobile phones and radio at the other. It also includes the visible frequencies that we see as light. Some two hundred years ago, countries like England, France and Spain got the clever idea of taxing windows (and doors) “for raising the Public Credit” (which, in those days, was sorely needed for waging pointless wars, just as it is in our age). The Window Tax was hugely unpopular, and many saw it – rightly – as a tax on light and air. For centuries, the visible frequencies were the only ‘useful’ part of the spectrum, but shortly after the Window Tax was repealed in the 1850s, another part of the spectrum came into scientific and, later, practical use. These were the ‘radio waves’ used for wireless telegraphy and later, radio broadcasting. Sure enough, it wasn’t long before governments realised they were sitting on a virtual gold-mine, without any of the headaches associated with gold-mines. Unlike mines, the spectrum does not lie under layers of earth, forests, wildlife and tribal settlements. The spectrum is there for the taking and selling. In India, in the 1990s around the time the government realised that everything useful to its citizens could be commoditised and priced, the Supreme Court decided – counter-intuitively – that the airwaves are public property and should be used for the public good. The idea of communication as a social good, while astonishing in this age of market triumphalism, somehow caught the imagination of a few activists, community groups and even old-school bureaucrats.” They hesitantly suggested that poor, rural and marginalised communities should be allowed to set up very low power radio stations, at no cost to the state, for community broadcasting, especially in rural and remote areas where there is no demand for radio spectrum. It took the government nearly ten years to decide that this was a Very Good Idea, and its exceptional virtue is evident in the fact that it took the government another ten years to debase it. Genuine community-based radio stations were licensed in 2007, and no licence fee was levied on CR stations. There was, however, a Spectrum Usage Fee of Rs. 19,700 per year, which caused a certain amount of niggling disquiet among CR groups. But since very few CR licences were given to civil society organisations, and rich universities and private colleges cornered most of the licences, the Spectrum Fee wasn’t considered a terrible burden on CR. Then along came the 2G telecom scam. An unexpected and completely unintended fall-out of the 2G scam, one that hit CR right where it hurt,

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was the judgment by the Supreme Court that the best way to distribute natural resources – including the spectrum – was to sell it to the highest bidder. There were probably very good intentions behind this judgment. As their Honours pointed out, “it is the burden of the State to ensure that a non-discriminatory method is adopted for distribution and alienation [of natural resources], which would necessarily result in protection of national/public interest.” The next thing we knew, the Department of Telecommunications had quintupled the Spectrum Usage Fee for community Radio to Rs.91, 000 a year. Now, I am not suggesting that the Supreme Court judgment in the 2G case is directly responsible for the rise in Spectrum Fee, but the time-lines are significant. The SC judgment was delivered in February this year, and the spectrum fee hike was announced a month later. While one may disagree with the apex court’s view that “a duly publicised auction [. . .] is perhaps the best method” for the distribution of scarce natural resources, their intent seems to have been to ensure a fair and transparent method for ‘disposal of public property’ to profit-making companies. I don’t think their Lordships had community radio in mind. Ironically, community radio licensing follows exactly the same egregious first-comefirst-served (FCFS) policy that roused the Supreme Court’s ire in the first place. As their Lordships pointed out, there is a fundamental flaw in firstcome-first-served “inasmuch as it involves an element of pure chance or accident”. Methods like FCFS are “likely to be misused by unscrupulous people who are only interested in garnering maximum financial benefit and have no respect for the constitutional ethos and values.” Thanks to the Ministry of Information  & Broadcasting’s own firstcome-first-served CR licensing policy, Delhi NCR (which has more CR stations than J&K, the North East, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chattisgarh put together) has just one civil society led CR station. Not one of the six CR stations in New Delhi is a community-based station – all the available frequencies were snapped up by educational institutions on Day One. This is true of other cities like Chennai and Bangalore as well, where applications from community-based organisations are routinely turned down due to ‘non-availability of spectrum’, while educational institutions have been squatting on their assigned frequencies for years without even bothering to set up CR stations. But to come back to the hike in Spectrum Fee, it is unfair at many levels. The Telecom Ministry is terribly proud that it is ‘technology agnostic’ when pricing the spectrum. That is to say; it prices the spectrum in the way toothpaste and moisturising lotions are priced – one price across India, regardless of whether the consumer is rich or poor, urban or rural, profit making or not-for-profit. The fact that the DoT does not actually manufacture the spectrum, that spectrum usage differs widely in urban

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and rural areas and that social goods like community broadcasting may have a slightly different and higher purpose than cold cream seems to be lost on the mandarins of Sanchar Bhavan. As a consequence of this appalling increase in spectrum fee, even fewer rural and community-based groups will apply for a CR licence, skewing further an already skewed ratio. As things stand, over 80 of the 130 operational community radio stations in India are licensed to universities, colleges and schools, mostly in cities. Another ten licences have gone to government-run agricultural institutions. Of the remaining 40 CR stations, which are licensed to NGOs, probably no more than ten are in rural India. For these genuinely community-based radio stations which serve the interests of rural, remote and historically disadvantaged communities, the hike in spectrum fee is the last straw, virtually a death knell. It is believed that the phrase ‘daylight robbery’ is a reference to the Window Tax of a past and infamous age. Today, governments would not presume to tax air and light, but they evidently have no qualms about robbing the poor of their voice. Sajan Venniyoor Writer and broadcaster based in New Delhi Source: CR News Vol. 3, No. 1, Jun-Sept 2012

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8 THE PARADOXES OF TECHNOLOGY Reflections on community radio in South Asia Hemant Babu Introduction Dark clouds had already gathered over the Eastern horizon when Ayesha stepped out of the community radio station. Walking on the moist sand along the beach, she recalled all the voices on the phone that she put on air during her hour-long live radio show on women and health. She smiled thinking about some funny moments and awkward questions that she handled skilfully. By the time she entered her home, it was drizzling, with distant thunder that continued to get louder as she prepared to go to bed. She slept through the night, which witnessed cyclonic wind blowing hard on her glass window. The state-owned radio station was airing a vaguely worded warning about a storm. The night of the storm had left its mark across the town, Ayesha noticed, while briskly walking towards the radio station the next morning with anxiety, which was uncommon to her personality. From a distance she realised the disaster had already struck. She could see the antenna mast, which stood high as the pride of her community, bent over backward. As she increased her pace, she continued to register uprooted trees and broken lamp posts along her path. Just one look at the radio station and she knew there was no chance of hosting her show for days, if not weeks. Technical expertise to restore the station was far away in the big city and the cost probably unimaginable. In the interest of privacy, names and places have been fictionalised in this account, but many community radio stations across the continent had to face the situation Ayesha found herself in. A technical collapse of a community radio station due to natural calamities or frequent power surges, or simply wear and tear in the hinterlands, has been the worst nightmare of community radio operators across South Asia. Even for a resource-rich station, getting timely technical help has been hard to come by, as radio technology continues to be as mysterious as ever and an exclusive subject of “experts.” From choosing the type of equipment to mastering and maintaining it, technology has been an Achilles’ heel for the South Asian community radio sector.

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This often-repeated situation speaks volumes about the relationship that has been forged between technology and society in general and the community radio sector in particular. This chapter will examine the paradoxical emergence of democratic and inclusive media in a monopolistic and exclusive technology environment in the context of community radio in South Asia. In its philosophy and practice, community radio promises to give equal access and control to communities. However, the medium is heavily dependent on technology, which is historically known for creating a hegemonic relationship between practitioners and technology providers. This phenomenon has been evident in the growth – or lack of it – in the community radio sector in South Asia. A closer look at the South Asia community radio movement reveals one very striking phenomenon: The proponents and practitioners of community radio have always treated technology as an external factor in the entire political process of its conception and implementation. Technology has been treated as a necessary evil. There has been a complete disconnect between the messenger and the medium. If the message is the essence of the experiences and political wisdom of the community, the technology is only the manifestation of the money spent. Judging by the attitude and approach towards technology, one gets a feeling that the proponents of community radio would have preferred to run the station without a transmitter or sound equipment if it was possible. Numerous white papers, position papers, seminar reports, and other literature underscore the externalities of the technology in the discourse around community radio in South Asia. For example, a seminar organised by Media South Asia Project and Panos South Asia in collaboration with other organisations in 2002 at Kathmandu, Nepal, had no specific recommendation regarding the technological aspect. The Recommendations and Report of the conference (Unknown Author (2002) does not say anything specific about the community’s access to and control over radio technology even though there were reports of Nepal’s government leaving no stone unturned in blocking the growth of the community radio sector, while India and Bangladesh had outright rejected the people’s claim over the airwaves. Similarly, the Pastapur Declaration (2000), a document that is seen as an act of seeding the community radio movement in India, dealt with the question of ownership of the radio station at large but failed to visualise the ownership and control over technology. It may be noted that ownership of a radio station does not translate into ownership and control over its technology. A vibrant community radio sector warrants a dynamic and open technology environment that enables it to be independent, accessible, and affordable. The chapter argues that, for independent media, open and independent technology is as absolute a precondition as unhindered freedom of speech. An analysis of deployment and usage of technology in the community radio sector will reveal a very sophisticated design at work to re-enforce a system that traditionally denies equal access to radio technology, which is supposed to give voice to the voiceless and empower communities to be an equal stakeholder

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in the democratic processes. The design draws its strength from the historical relations between society and technology and continues to thrive on apathy amongst the practitioners.

Society and technology A society’s relation to its tools and technology is a cultural attribute. While culture defines the relationship, at the same time, the relationship shapes the culture. Analysing the present situation vis-à-vis society, culture, and technology, Neil Postman (1992: 22), in his cardinal work, Technology: Surrender of culture to technology, says, “Cultures may be classified into three types: toolusing cultures, technocracy and technopolies. At present times, each type may be found somewhere on the planet, although the first is rapidly disappearing: we must travel to exotic places to find a tool-using culture.” I am not sure if Postman studied South Asia, but his comment adequately describes the ground reality of the community radio sector. The South Asia community radio sector is a classic case of how tool-using cultures unceremoniously surrendered to technocracy, which had mastered the art of appropriating power over communities and processes through technological hegemony. One of the main characteristics of a tool-using culture, Postman argues, is that their tools are largely deployed, in a very localised context, to address the immediate problem at hand. Take the example of the tools and technology used in different climatic zones across India to make a roof over a house. In the Himalayan region, roofs were generally made of thin slices cut from slate stone. In the deserted parts of Rajasthan, slices of sandstone replaced the slate. In Central and Eastern forested regions, the art of bamboo roofing flourished, while South India mastered thatch roof technology. The contextualisation and need-specific innovation are the key points here. Paradoxically, in the South Asia community radio sector, the very concept of contextual technology was alien. In Nepal and Bangladesh, almost every piece of equipment – from studio to transmission – used in community radio stations was imported from the West. There were no noticeable efforts by the government, external donor agency, or even community groups to promote indigenous manufacturing as per the contextual requirements. The government sector in India, fortunately, had in-house capacity to build transmission equipment, and hence the community did not have to look beyond the country for access. However, all the transmission equipment manufactured by the state-run corporations was designed to suit the requirements and operating conditions of the largest – and for many years only – user, which was the national broadcasting corporation called Prasar Bharti. That equipment could only be deployed by trained engineers and had to be operated under controlled ambient temperature conditions that community groups could seldom fulfil. The second most important characteristic of a tool-using culture is that the tools and technology, barring a few exceptions, are never intended to challenge the societal order or belief structure – be it religion, tradition, or

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even repressive class and caste dogma – even though these tools and technology end up altering the world view of the society. The tools are not created to question the legitimacy of the social organisation, practices, or education. Tools do not intrude on their society; they merely get integrated as a way of life. However, in South Asia, the very concept of community radio as a tool was brought in to question the social order, developmental practices, and deprivation and marginalisation of communities. The need for the tool was conceived by the communication theorists, who believed that democratic processes could be strengthened only if a voice was given to the voiceless. They believed that community ownership and control over radio would uproot the very cause of “voicelessness” in a society riddled with unjust and unscientific hierarchies. In their opinion, development, which community radio was expected to bring to communities, was the medicine for many social diseases. This vision of the communication theorists was perhaps similar to the state response to ultra-left-wing violence prevailing in the central tribal belt and many other parts of India. The gun-wielding state continues to believe that development will wean the people over from a culture of guns. In any case, the project of giving voice to the voiceless through radio waves could not have taken off without the benevolence of the state. To invoke the benevolence of the state, a “paradigm of development” was used. In every concept paper, evaluation, and ideation, the notion of development dominated the thought process. In India, community radio was more an instrument of development than an exercise in freedom of speech and expression. Every success story of the community radio sector has been in the form of celebration of a milestone in the “developmental” journey of the community. The community radio sector in Nepal, which had a head start over all the countries in South Asia, was one of the most favoured sectors amongst the international philanthropists, who brought in a chunk of money to work for development of the society (as per their imagination of the concept) through the radio waves. In fact, the role of “external donors” has always been a bone of contention in Nepal. An evaluation report prepared by UNESCO after ten years of community radio in Nepal pointed out that “[e]xternal donor agencies were criticised during interviews with stakeholders for having reinforced traditional patterns of social dominance – for example by caste and ethnic elites – through their support for so-called community radios that are, in fact, not representative of local caste and ethnic groups; it was furthermore suggested that the availability of funds has meant that some stations have by-passed local financial and moral support” (Pringle and Bikram, 2007). A state that is conveniently confused with both a laissez-faire state and a welfare state has a natural tendency to take credit for all narratives of development, as its intervention and directive power thus acquires legitimacy. And this legitimacy gave rise to what Postman would have described as the “technocracy” of the community radio sector. From the very inception of the community radio sector in South Asia, the cult of experts dominated the scene. They swooped down on communities with

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prescriptions for how to do community radio. They had a technology primer in one hand and funds in the other. Though they ensured that the edifice of democratic decision-making appeared intact, their influence on the process was larger than life. These experts could be divided in two groups. The most vocal group comprised the sociologists, political scientists, rights activists, and those who had mastered the authority to speak on behalf of the marginalised. The second group of experts comprised the technocrats, those who believed that the ultimate goal, if not the only one, of any civilisation is to achieve efficiency in society through the deployment of technology. They firmly believed that most societal affairs were best left to the experts. The second group did not waste time in expressing their views in seminars and workshops. They went around executing their tasks in the corridors of power, influencing the very core of community radio policy – access and control over the technology. A cursory look at community radio policy in India (MIB, 2006) will make it abundantly clear that the policy writers took a minimalistic approach in laying down the technological norms for the community radio sector. Apart from determining permissible power of 100-watt ERP and a 30-metre height of the antenna mast, the policy left a large arena of technological aspects  – such as possible density of the community radio station, frequency reservation and allocation, and other spectrum-related issues – untouched, providing an enormous playing field for the technocrats to interpret, reinterpret, modify, and even distort people’s access to technology options. For example, policy never mentioned that a studio transmitter link – a wireless link between a studio and the transmitter in case the two are placed at different locations – is not allowed, but it was always assumed for community radio that it was not even though it is a norm for commercial FM. The policy was silent on the usage of repeaters in difficult terrain, but it was safely assumed that repeaters were not allowed for CR. In regard to low-power FM, the policy framework was woefully inadequate at best and completely absurd at worst. India’s licencing regime is based on frequency and not power. This means that, depending on the frequency, a radiating entity would require a licence notwithstanding the amount of power radiated. Examine the case of Raghav Mahato, (Tewary, 2006) a self-taught electronic repair shop owner who started a radio station with an oscillator taken from a cheap cordless microphone operating on the FM band. His station was shut down by the government even though cordless microphones operating on the FM band continue to be sold freely in the market. There are many low-powered devices running on the FM band that one can buy off the shelf in India. However, that is not the point: Raghav challenged the technocracy, and he was punished. The technocracy in the community radio sector was led by a cult of zealous technologists who saw every solution in the deployment of technology even if it meant compromising the participatory principles of community radio. On the other end of the spectrum were the technophobes, who had their vision fixed on the destructive nature of technology and the social hegemony it tends to create. They were comfortable walking backward in time to adopt

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and use tools that were antiquated. The practice of narrowcasting in India was one such example. Led by non-governmental organisations, a small team of community members would create an audio programme, store it on a movable medium, take it to the surrounding villages, and play it back with community groups. An appropriate option then was to use citizens band (CB) radio, which was de-licenced by the government.1 The CB radio, which could easily be called a cheap piece of equipment compared with a 50-watt FM transmitter, could have transmitted voice in any direction. The voice signal thus received could have been amplified in a central location of a village.

Thamusian skepticism Socrates’s narration of the Egyptian King Thamus to his friend Phaedrus is useful to understand the contrary visions of the technocrats and technophobes of the community radio sector. As the story is told, King Thamus once entertained the god Theuth, who had many inventions to his credit, including numbers, geometry, and astronomy. The most important, however, was the skill of writing, which he described as a potion of memory and wisdom. He requested the king spread and popularise his inventions throughout the kingdom of Egypt, describing how they would help humanity in its quest for well-being. To this, Thamus replied, Theuth, my paragon of inventors, the discoverer of an art is not the best judge of the good or harm which will accrue to those who practice it. So, it is in this; you who are the father of writing have out of fondness for your off-spring attributed to it quite the opposite of its real function. Those who acquire it will cease to exercise their memory and become forgetful; they will rely on writing to bring things to their remembrance by external signs instead of by their own internal resources. What you have discovered is a receipt for recollection, not for memory. And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation for it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequences be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom, they will be a burden to society. (Postman, 1992: 4) In the modern day and age there is not much need to emphasise the error in Thamus’s judgement. It may also be true that writing did weaken human memory. But from an historic perspective it would be difficult to say that people with the skill of writing have become a “burden” to society, as Thamus had imagined. However, there are many, including Postman himself, who would say that if one has to err, it’s better to err on the side of Thamusian skepticism. The technophobes in the South Asian community radio sector would readily agree. A balanced view would be to acknowledge that technological intervention in society

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will have both positive and negative impacts. A judgement is better left to the collective conscience of the community, or even an individual. Though Thamus was an individual, the problem of Thamus’s Egypt was the fact that he was the king – an unquestioned authority who decided what was good for the people. The same can be said for today’s technocracy, which, with some negligible differences, blindly pushes its technocratic agenda.

Access and control Those who are reluctant to grant due importance to technology in essentially social communication processes would justify their hesitation using the argument of historical denial to access and control over technology that marginalised communities have faced. They would further argue that having traditional tools and technology in the possession of communities is more powerful than these modern means, which are external to culture and tradition. Even if there is merit in this argument, there is another side to it. The access to and control over technology, in almost all systems of governance historically, were never given away to communities on a platter; they could only be taken over or appropriated. Therefore, a very critical question is, Does this warrant an aggressive pursuit of technologies by those who are fighting marginalisation, especially in the information age? As James Ralph Beniger (1986: 8) put it, “Because both [sic] the activities of information processing and communication are inseparable components of the control function, a society’s ability to maintain control – at all levels from interpersonal to international relations  – will be directly proportional to the development of its information technologies.” Ralph’s observation is evident in the manner in which the state apparatus has been deploying communication technology in the society while keeping a firm grip over access and control. From the early days of radio communication to the modern-day explosion of information through the internet and telephony, communication technologies have always been used as an instrument of control for hegemonic divisions of society. After the 1980s, when the neoliberal economy began in India with the wind of so-called liberalisation sweeping through the economic landscape, information technology continued to be held in the vice-like grip of the state. The state knew only the hegemonic potential of the technology. That technology could also be a liberating force was a fact that was pushed under the carpet. The wave of private televisions in India was spearheaded by commercial considerations. Corporate India felt the need to push the boundary of consumerism to a level almost unimaginable then. The paradigm of growth warranted an unbridled consumer culture, and the television was seen as the apt medium to fuel it. However, radio was not seen in this light for a long time, as there was a presumption that television would subsume the need for radio. That was not to be. The whole design was presented to the country as a wave of liberation; from independent entertainment to independent news, democratic values seemed

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triumphant. The illusion lasted for a few decades till the time the medium matured. In recent times two major forces – corporate India and political elites – consolidated their grip over media in such a manner that free-spirited citizens had to start reinventing what they knew as “independent media.” To understand the instruments of control over communities’ access to technologies, especially communication technologies, we need to look at the “License Raj,” which was conveniently sustained even during the era of economic and regulatory liberalisation. All the licencing that restricted communities from laying their hands on radio technology was enshrined in an archaic law called Indian Telegraph Act, 1885. Numerous amendments that were incorporated to modernise the Act failed to free it from the spirit of colonialism. As mentioned earlier, contextual innovation is the key to development for a tool-using culture. It is imperative that the community has an environment that enables it to challenge its own boundaries of knowledge. The community must have unquestioned liberty to experiment and create. However, community radio enthusiasts in India were actively discouraged from experimenting and innovating with an instrument called “experimental licence,” without which any experiment with radio technology would amount to illegal activity. Technically, experimental licence could be obtained from the Wireless Planning and Coordination Wing (WPC) under the Department of Telecommunications of the Ministry of Communications. However, the red tape is probably longer than the productive life of an individual. Assuming that a spirited technology enthusiast managed to experiment and create a tool for radio communication, it could not be put to use unless yet another licence was obtained  – the dealership possession licence. It is one of the most critical pieces of paper for those who want to provide transmission equipment to the duly licenced broadcaster. Consider this scenario: With access to the internet, if a high school student makes a small transmitter for a nearby community radio station, there is no way to put it to use without being liable for a criminal offence. Forget putting it to use – the person would not even be able to show off the creation without yet another licence called a “demo licence.” The labyrinth of the Licence Raj was so treacherous that civil society groups in India repeatedly failed in obtaining the licences necessary to operate community radio during times of natural calamities. Efforts to bring community radio within the ambit of disaster preparedness and mitigation started around the time of the devastating Koshi River floods and continued during a coastal cyclone and Himalayan earthquake. Many natural disasters have come and gone since then, but the power of radio communication could not be used to provide relief.

Gender and technology It could be myopic to look at the question of technological access and control from the perspective of the state and communities alone. Essentially, it is a conflict of power equations – a tug of war between the powerful and powerless. This friction encompasses class, caste, and gender discrimination. Who gets access to and control over technology, as well as how and when, is determined

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by the dynamics of social relationships within the communities. While a considerable amount of work has been done on the class and caste contradiction in the community radio sector, here we will look at the question of gender and technology. No serious sociological enquiry is required to know the kinds of roles women are required to play  – and sometimes even choose to play  – in the community radio sector in South Asia. With the rampant stereotyping, the technology aspect of community radio continues to be a male domain even at stations that, for all practical purposes, are run by women. It should be pointed out here that most community radio stations in India and Nepal have acquired basic gender sensitivity, and they cannot be accused of outright gender discrimination, at least in their stated policies and guiding principles. Many stations, in fact, celebrate the women in their communities by placing them at the forefront of programming, and a few also have women at the top of the decision-making process. But that is where the gender sensitivity ends. When it comes to the smallest matter related to technology, masculine culture takes over. To understand this phenomenon  – which could have relevance, to various degrees, the world over – one needs to look at the trends in feminist theories of gender and technology. According to Judy Wajcman (2007:287), “While much early second-wave feminism generated a fatalism that emphasised the role of technology in reproducing patriarchy, during the 1990s cyber-feminist writers celebrated digital technologies as inherently liberatory for women.” In the context of a highly industrialised world where economic disparity and gender inequality do not necessarily cross each other’s path, the ICT was seen as opening a new door for the feminist movement. Wajcman (2007:291) writes, “Indeed, early concerns about women being left out of the communications revolution, victims of the digital divide, now seem exaggerated. A proliferation of mobile phones, the internet and cyber-cafés are providing new opportunities and outlets for women, particularly those in highly industrialised countries who are better placed to take advantage of these technologies.” However, like any other liberation movement, the growing prominence of ICT in feminist thinking and practices has not translated into general comfort with technology amongst women in the community radio sector. In the context of the South Asian community radio movement, male domination of radio technology is rooted in two factors. The first and foremost is the inherited notion of ineptness as regards technology, as is frequently seen in various capacity-building workshops. It is certainly a manifestation of cultural conditioning and not the reality. Most women one meets at the community radio stations have an unquestioned belief that their hands and minds are unable to handle screwdrivers and soldering irons. Those hard skills are better left to the men. The second, but equally important, factor is the question of access. Access to technology necessarily means access to financial resources, which are invariably controlled by the patriarchal system. The fear of using tools that one does not

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own is very real in the minds of women, notwithstanding the spirit of collectivism that is supposed to be the central theme of the community radio station. The current scenario calls for a need to explore ways of reshaping the identities, needs, and priorities of women in community media along with re-configuring the technology to facilitate the process. This is at least as important as facilitating women-centric programming on community radio.

Open source in CR One of the significant ways in which an attempt may be made to reconfigure technology to be more responsive to women and the needs of communities involves looking into the pattern of ownership. Most proprietary technologies are bundled and have a limited scope of customisation or reconfiguration and may not be very useful for the transformation the CR sector needs. This leads us to the wonderful world of open source technologies. The need for open source technologies for vibrant, democratic, open, and accessible community media cannot be overemphasised. Realising the need for promotion of free and open source technology in education and media, UNESCO launched an international portal2 in 2001 “as an alternative way for participating to information and knowledge societies, where knowledge is not confined to content but seamlessly include the media which becomes itself a ground for expression of creativity and innovation.” However, almost 20 years later, the portal remains thinly populated. Ironically, the community radio stations, which were financed and promoted by UNESCO in India, have also not given a serious look at open source broadcast technology. It may be prudent to re-examine the meaning and context of FOSS for the community radio sector. The free and open source software movement heralded a new era of knowledge-building that was non-hierarchical, adhering to the principles of equal access, freedom of use, adaptation, modification, and redistribution. While both “free” and “open source” are quite often used interchangeably, they are not really synonyms. Both terms have similar value structures even though they are different in philosophical approach. If we talk about the organisations behind the two terms, we can say that the Free Software Foundation has been promoting the term “free software,” while the Open Source Initiative has been using the term “open source software.” It has been observed the world over that a community radio station requires more openness and flexibility, as well as higher levels of customisation, in its operations. It needs to have room to expand organically or shrink with the situation and time. Moreover, open source and free software is philosophically closer to community radio stations, which are meant to provide equal access, transparency, openness, and scalability. So what is preventing the community radio sector from going places in the spirit of open source? The question does not have an easy answer. The players in the community radio sector have verbally supported the idea of open source

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but are reluctant to put it into practice. When asked why, one or a combination of the following answers is forthcoming: • • • • •

Why does it matter? Community is producing good programming anyway. Community is not ready for open source. There is no support for open source in the local area, It is difficult to find professionals trained in open source, We have funds for top-of-the-line software.

Let us examine all these propositions in reference to control over and access to technology. It is true that community radio can run efficiently on propitiatory software. However, efficiency cannot be the sole objective of running a community radio station. Open access, control, and ownership are the pillars of community radio. To assign an overarching value to efficiency is a trait of technocracy. Open source technology fits the bill in all respects, as it is proven to be more efficient, while community radio can have unrestricted access, control, and ownership. “Community is not ready for open source” is one of the most cited arguments for succumbing to the lure of proprietary technology. This argument assumes, for some reason, that community radio is ready for proprietary technology. In the past few years, almost all facilitating agencies, including government and donor agencies, have allocated sizable financial resources to technology training and capacity-building of community radio practitioners. Many trainers who have participated in such training programmes would confirm that most participants have none or very little previous experience working with any digital technology. It is logical to conclude that a fresh and blank mind will absorb proprietary and open source technology with the same ease. A primary school in a tribal district of Maharashtra introduced computers to first-generation learners at an early age, with a firm commitment to open source technology.3 The experiment has achieved a considerable level of success, with active help from the global community of open source enthusiasts. In the final analysis it boils down to the decision-maker’s commitment to open source technology and the principles of open access and ownership. The statement that there is no support for open source in the neighbourhood cannot be validated in the wired world. When it comes to knowledge of a subject that has a universal application, the word “neighbourhood” has been completely redefined. In this context the word does not indicate geographical proximity, which has been rendered irrelevant by ICT. The global community support of and camaraderie with open source is a far superior support system compared with a half-baked neighbourhood technician of proprietary technologies. The problem of finding open source professionals could be a valid argument, but it suffers from the chicken-and-egg syndrome. There has been no effort at creating an open source ecology, and hence there is no demand for a professional

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to survive on. The pursuit of political correctness is, no doubt, a difficult one, but it may lead to a world that is just and equal.

Conclusion So far, the journey for the community radio sector in South Asia has been that of a prodigal child pampered for its political correctness, excused for its follies, and not considered mature enough for a realistic assessment. In the rapidly changing media landscape, the global perception of community radio is unlikely to remain unchanged. Sooner, rather than later, community radio will be evaluated on the basis of content relevance rather than political relevance. It will no longer remain a “fill-in-the-gap” mechanism for media dark regions but will be expected to prove its worth in the cacophony of a new media landscape. For the past decade, community radio in South Asia has not considered itself in competition with corporate or mainstream media, which suffered from its size and lack of region- or culture-specific focus. The new age of corporate media is going a step beyond, focusing on the localised community, and it will be targeting individuals with the optimised use of technology. This is the real challenge for community radio. If “local content” is the buzzword of community radio, corporate media is redefining the word “local,” taking it right up to the listener’s nose. In Nepal, the difference between commercial and community radio has always been blurred in policy, and even in practice. The only major difference between the two forms of radio is the pattern of ownership. As a result, the community radio sector in Nepal is better prepared, at least mentally (not so much technologically), to deal with competition from the new age of corporate media. As a result, we can see much higher-level content syndication and other such mechanisms thriving in Nepal. However, this is not the case with India and Bangladesh. Here the sector has yet to come out of its experimental mode and face the challenges of the real world of media. From a media technology perspective, the not-so-distant future has radical potential. It could be useful to take a glance at some of the most talked about changes in the creation, distribution, and consumption of media the next decade is expected to see: •

Personalised content delivery will be the norm and not a value-added service. Does this mean that analogue signalling will make way for digital? The general verdict is no; they will co-exist for a considerable amount of time. Personalisation of the analogue transmission will be achieved by reducing transmission power to a level that is feasible and by using smart convergence media. • Most media content will be delivered by an algorithm  – not by human curator – that will design the package as per the personal profile of the listener. • The cost of consumer-level media devices is going to plummet further to settle at around 5 percent of current costs.

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• With 3D printing entering the consumer domain, products like radio, mobile phones, etc., will be sold in CAD/CAM files, which can be customised and printed. This will be true for larger radio networks as well. • Most radio will be capable of communicating across multiple waveforms simultaneously. • Software-defined radio technology will emerge into a viable ecosystem and may even be an alternative platform of global communication. For the relevant content delivery mechanism, the community radio sector will be expected to change its attitude towards technology and upscale its aptitude. It is most unlikely that the state or technocracy will provide technology options to communities. Instead, communities will have to create them or appropriate them. If the community media sector doesn’t grab the opportunity, it will be lost to corporate media.

Notes 1 The National Frequency Allocation Plan-2018 of India. https://dot.gov.in/sites/default/ files/NFAP%202018.pdf?download=1. 2 Available at https://en.unesco.org/foss. 3 The school in question is Tamarind Tree School, located at Sogve village of Palghar district in Maharahstra. Their experiment with open source is described at http://tama rindtree.org, http://mybigcampus.in.

References Beniger, J. R. (1986). The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. MIB (2006). Policy Guidelines for setting up Community Radio Stations in India. New Delhi. https://mib.gov.in/sites/default/files/c1_0.pdf, accessed on 1–1–19. Pastapur Declaration (2000). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. New Delhi: Sage, pp. 280–283. Postman, Neil (1992). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Vintage Books. Pringle, Ian and Bikram, Subba (2007). Ten Years on: The State of Community Radio in Nepal. UNESCO, p. 17. www.scribd.com/document/47806078/State-of-CommunityRadio-in-Nepal-abridged, accessed on 25–3–19. Tewary, Amarnath (2006). The Amazing DIY Village FM Radio Station. http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4735642.stm, accessed on 25–3–2019. Unknown Author (2002). Community Radio in South Asia: Exploring the Way Forward. Kathmandu, Recommendations and Report, pp. 21–23. Wajcman, Judy (2007). From Women and Technology to Gendered Technoscience. Information, Communication & Society, 10(3), pp. 287–298.

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Box 8  The technological passage of CR The idea of Social and technology are entwined and have the capacity to influence each other. Technology emerged from social, economic and cultural practices. It is imperative to study the current level of technological access within the sector as CR prescribes diversity and participation. The 2017 National Consultation’s session dated April  12 on ‘Strengthening Community Radio in India’ witnessed the paper presentation by Mr  Hemant Babu, Managing Director of Nomad Communication who explored the issues impacting technology and community broadcasting. Mr Ram Bhat, Mr Vasuki Belavadi, and Mr N. Ramakrishnan also contributed to the working paper. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) presently regards Frequency Modulation (FM) technology for community broadcasting due to its better sound quality despite having lower geographic outreach. However, some linguistic communities are spread over different regions. The paper proposes to bring in the MW (Medium Wave) technology which has the capacity of over 100 watts to overcome the geographical separation of communities. The shortage of frequency in urban areas has kept the poor urban masses away from CR. The rural sector has an uneven spread of CR in different states due to low level indicators of education, development and some villages having an atmosphere of conflict. Thus the principles of equity and social justice should be followed when allocating spectrum to CRS in rural and urban areas along with systematic and dynamic mapping of the spectrum. Awareness workshops and publicity for Community Radio Support Scheme can help in strengthening the under-served communities by putting out the information necessary for accessing CR. The MIB technology committee needs to invest in producing a blueprint of such CRS which are locally built with available local resources. These blueprints can encourage community members to make use of the available resources within their community to build a CRS rather than depending on external resources. Additionally, the import duties on CR equipment need to be eliminated which will facilitate in easy setting up of CRS. A list on the same has been put together by the technology committee of MIB. The paper presented at the National Consultation recommends MIB and MoCIT (Ministry of Communication and Information Technology) to work with relevant ministries so that costs of transmitters and imported CR components can be made affordable to communities intending to set up CRS. The working paper also recommended extending subsidies to CRS willing to embrace the convergence of internet and telephony. Since telephony incurs calling cost, CRS should broker an arrangement with telecoms

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and or Internet Service providers for toll free calls and reduced call rates. Combining CR with telephony will increase the listener’s participation, but CRSs should strike a balance between community member’s participation and commodification of their participation. The digitisation of CRS is said to be imminent. 200 CRS will be affected if the impending digitalisation is implemented haphazardly and without involving CR members through the consultation process. The paper recommends subsidizing the digital equipment through Community Radio Support Scheme unless the price is at par with analogue FM transmitters UNESCO Chair team Source: CR News Vol. 8, No. 1, Oct-Dec 2017

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9 WOMEN AND COMMUNITY RADIO IN SOUTH ASIA The participation and empowerment conundrum Kanchan K. Malik Introduction: sustainable development, community radio, and women The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 reads, “Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls,” and one of its targets is to “enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women.”1 Recognising the influential role media can play in driving women’s empowerment and gender equality, in March 2016, more than 35 leading media outlets committed to the Step it Up for Gender Equality Media Compact facilitated by UN Women during the 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, with an undertaking to increase women’s representation in the newsroom and in news content. Grassroots to national and international media players from Africa, the Arab states, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Latin America signed up as founding members of the Media Compact. The outlets will implement the compact to change the media landscape and make media work for gender equality by scaling up the focus on women’s rights and gender equality issues through high-quality coverage, complemented by gender-sensitive corporate practices (UN Women Press Release, 2016). The Step it Up for Gender Equality Media Compact’s founding members include, amongst others, AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters), which has also promulgated the Gender Policy for Community Radio (GP4CR), which was adopted by the World General Assembly of AMARC in 2010 in La Plata, Argentina. The preamble of GP4CR states, “Community radio has an obligation to redress the imbalance; facilitate women’s involvement at all levels of decision-making and programming; ensure that women’s voices and concerns are part of the daily news agenda; ensure that women are portrayed positively as active members of society; and support women acquire [sic] the technical skills and confidence to control their communications” (AMARCWIN, 2008: 2).

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This chapter, as a first step, delves into the conceptual insights that assess critically the dynamics of gender and participatory development, as well as the complex process of women’s empowerment in the context of the situation of women in South Asia. It then analyses how CR can contribute to women gaining a voice that matters in the public sphere. This section will also consider the techno-social potential of CR to empower women to assert their right to communication and to participate actively in the development and decision-making processes. Community radio (CR) is a participatory tool for communication that is operated in and by the community. CR produces context-specific content in the local language to address communication needs that otherwise remain unaddressed by mainstream media. Community radio, both worldwide and in South Asia, is regarded as a third tier of broadcasting complementary to the state-owned and market-run sectors. CR is considered a tool for social change and a platform where ordinary citizens and disempowered people, through engagement in daily media activity, assert their right to communication and active citizenship (Bailey et al., 2008; Atton, 2002; Downing, 2008; Rennie, 2006; Fuchs, 2010; Rodríguez, 2001; Bosch, 2010; Lewis, 1993; Coyer et al., 2007; Pavarala and Malik, 2007). CR is a relatively young sector in the South Asian region. In India, the CR policy that permits not-for-profit organisations to apply for a licence was enacted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) in 2006. The Ministry of Information of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh announced the Community Radio Installation, Broadcast and Operation Policy in 2008. Although there is no separate policy for CR in Nepal, it adopted community radio in 1997, when  Radio Sagarmatha  became the first independent public-interest broadcaster in South Asia, followed by a remarkable growth of the sector in Nepal. Other countries, like Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, have initiated steps towards recognising this sector – some enthusiastically, others reluctantly. Gender is a significant dimension in the community radio initiatives that are usually launched in South Asian countries by development organisations seeking to deploy communication technologies for social change in general and empowerment of women in particular. Several CR stations in Nepal, India, and Bangladesh are tapping the potential of women for their programming and also involving them in managerial and decision-making roles (Malik and Bandelli, 2012; Pavarala and Malik, 2007, 2010; Kadel, 2010; Anwar, 2015; Nirmala, 2015; Dahal, 2013; Rahman, 2017). Many NGOs have set up CR stations that are run exclusively by women, while others are making special provisions for including women in all functions and operations within the CR stations. The second section of the chapter presents an overview of the engagement of women with the community radio sector in South Asia by analysing how CR stations have been facilitating the participation of women in different capacities, doing gender-based programming, and working for women’s empowerment. These stations are all based in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal, where community radio has a presence in South Asia. The section looks at the capacity-building

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efforts being carried out to mentor women to participate in programme production and management of community radio stations. It also deals with the challenges posed by the social structures and realities within the communities that hinder construction of democratic “we” spaces by women to develop their own narrative and to struggle against social inequalities. There is a growing unanimity amongst C4D (communication for development) practitioners, media scholars, and feminist advocates that innovative methods must be evolved to redirect the use of media and new technologies of communication towards advancement and empowerment of women. Informed by a gender perspective, such technologies can facilitate the reversal of women’s marginalisation by generating arenas for articulating women’s issues, augmenting women’s legitimate participation in civic and public life, diffusing and sharing accurate information and images about women, stimulating women’s engagement in development, simplifying women’s choices for forging solidarity crusades, and equipping them with the tools and autonomy to have a say in the decision-making over their circumstances (Malik and Bandelli, 2012; Pavarala and Malik, 2010). Therefore, finally, the chapter concludes by arguing that community radio stations within South Asia – as well as globally – must endeavour to become instruments to augment the complex process of women’s empowerment through strengthening what the author calls the “voice-capability” amongst women. This could be done by adopting progressive practices that not only enhance women’s comprehensive participation in radio production and management at the level of individual stations but also build gender consciousness and a climate of understanding gender and addressing gender inequalities within the community radio sector as a whole.

Community radio and women’s empowerment – potential and possibilities Across the world, a sustained effort by feminist groups, women’s organisations, and poor women’s grassroots movements to question patriarchal ideology and foreground gender in development deliberations has contributed significantly to introducing alternative norms and revisiting the foci of social change efforts. However, socio-cultural barriers still persist and obstruct women’s participation in development initiatives, their access to and control over productive assets, and opportunities to exercise decision-making agency (Bhasin, 2000; Blumberg, 1989; Connelly et al., 2000; Humble, 1998; Kabeer, 1994; Pavarala and Malik, 2007). This is also true for the South Asian region. Issues related to empowerment of women represent a complex challenge in South Asia. There are, no doubt, numerous commonalities in the conditions faced by women in South Asian countries. These arise out of the fact that South Asia is, by and large, a densely populated region that is agriculture-dependent, income-poor, and identified as one of the most deprived regions in the world (Rustagi, 2004). The region has also been labelled by the demographer Caldwell as constituting a part of the “patriarchal belt” (Caldwell, 1982), where women

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are subordinated to men and their presence in the public realm, as well as their representation in the public sphere, is low. However, within the region, the diversity in ethnicities, religious faiths, legal frames, economic environs, political forces, and locality are abundant, too, and lead to marked variation in gender and human development outcomes within South Asian countries (Rustagi, 2004). The South Asia Regional Gender Action Plan FY13-FY15 (World Bank, 2013), which outlined strategies to apply a gender lens to the World Bank’s developmental work in South Asia, states that the social makeup and economic geographies of South Asia are diverse, and it was challenging to achieve key gender goals at the country level owing to social norms being interlocked with religion, ethnicity, caste, language, and geography. Nevertheless, in spite of national-level variations in vulnerabilities amongst women, in terms of gender-based development indicators, the status of women in the South Asia region as a whole remains problematic. Although countries in South Asia have managed to fill certain gender gaps, notably in education, significant challenges remain in women’s restricted socio-economic participation, low social inclusion, limited mobility, and restricted rights (Rustagi, 2004). According to the Human Development in South Asia 2015 report, in the last few decades, women in South Asia “have come a long way.” They are no longer silently bearing atrocities and abuse, and the region is gradually becoming prominent for its robust civil society. More girls are going to schools, maternal mortality is gradually on the decline, representation of women in politics and administration is mounting, prejudiced laws are on their way out, and “ women entrepreneurs continue to surprise a patriarchal South Asia in particular, and the world in general” (MHHDC, 2015: 169). But the contrasting realities cannot be ignored. Gang rapes, human trafficking, sexual harassment, and dowry deaths are still prevalent, making South Asia both “the most promising region, and the least gender sensitised” (MHHDC, 2015: 169). Therefore, even though some progress has been observed in the status of women in the last decade, clear-cut gender inequities persist, and this prevents women from enhancing their capabilities and limits their ability to gain from development in South Asian countries. Participatory development practices informed by the gender and development (GAD) philosophy2 emphasise that reversing these inequities necessitates an intellectual shift in how development is understood. GAD scholars stress that “greater involvement of women and attention to gender-differentiated needs holds the promise of much more effective and equitable processes of participatory development” (Guijt and Kaul Shah, 1998: 2). For accomplishing the transformatory goals of participatory development, the emphasis must be on addressing challenges of equity and inclusion and creating opportunities that enable women, even the more inhibited ones, to express their concerns and feel comfortable engaging in public discussions and social analysis. (Cornwall, 2003; Guijt and Kaul Shah, 1998; Parpart, 1999; Pilar Riano, 1994; Kabeer, 1997; Pavarala and Malik, 2010). Access to media, communication, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) is indispensable for cultivating participatory democracy, reducing exclusion, and aiding gender equality and the empowerment of women

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(Gurumurthy, 2008; Unwin, 2009). The role of media in the promotion of gender equality and equity has been reinforced in the Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women, para. 237, which asserts, Women should be empowered by enhancing their skills, knowledge and access to information technology. Most women, especially in developing countries, are not able to access effectively the expanding electronic information highways and therefore cannot establish networks that will provide them with alternative sources of information. Women, therefore, need to be involved in decision-making regarding the development of the new technologies in order to participate fully in their growth and impact. (United Nations, 1996: 99) Alternative media, such as community radio, guided by a gender standpoint can play a central role in advancement and empowerment of women by making deliberate efforts not simply to ‘‘include women’’ but also to institutionalise measures to address gender equity (Malik, and Bandelli, 2012; Cornwall, 2003: 1333). Howley (2002:13) locates community media as those that “quite unlike commercial and public service media, encourage various groups within the community to produce material that is at once relevant to their interests and reflective of their experience. Community media, therefore, enable disparate social groups to speak for themselves, in their distinctive idiom, and as an expression of their particular point of view.” According to Rodriguez (2001), community radio plays the role of citizen media – and citizenship has to do with empowerment. She writes, “As defined by the theory of radical democracy, the concept of citizenship implies that social subjects claim a space for their public voices; that these social subjects tenaciously intervene and shape their identities, altering circulating social discourses and cultural codes, and that . . . these negotiations and renegotiations empower the communities involved” (Rodriguez, 2001: 158). “Women’s empowerment” may have become a mantra in development jargon, but it has a multi-dimensional connotation and is a complex and contested concept with different meanings, purposes, and ideals ascribed to it (Beteille, 1999; Batliwala, 2007; Kabeer, 1994). According to Chopra and Müller (2016: 2), women’s empowerment has been theorised “primarily along two lines: (1) as a goal, with aims and targets – mostly by the development industry; or (2) as a continuous process of change in which women empower themselves and challenge patriarchal structures and institutions – mostly by social movements and scholars.”3 Another significant debate that centres on the purpose of women’s empowerment differentiates between individualised and instrumental empowerment  – i.e. “liberal” empowerment, which focuses on the individual, and “liberating” empowerment, which involves collective self-organisation and is an instrument for challenging patriarchal norms and structures (Sardenberg, 2008: 19–20). Whether conceived as an individual journey or as a collective struggle, both perspectives on empowerment put the accent on women discovering and using

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their voice. Women who are marginalised from the conservative spaces of politics and the economy are attempting to organise themselves outside these domains and are focusing on other means of being heard – through movementbuilding, networking, and engaging with the media. The necessity is to look for arenas in which women’s voices are elicited and listened to and to ensure that opportunities to participate translate into a broader willingness on the part of powerful institutions to listen to women (Cornwall and Edwards, 2010; Guijt and Kaul Shah, 1998). Nancy Fraser designates these “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses, which in turn permit them to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs” (1992: 123) “subaltern counterpublics,” while Gitlin (1998: 173) conceives these segmented deliberative assemblies as public “sphericules” and argues that “[t]he diffusion of interactive technology surely enriches the possibilities for a plurality of publics – for the development of distinct groups organized around affinity and interest.” As the next section of this chapter will make more expressly clear, community radio initiatives in South Asia are endeavouring to provide women with avantgarde and independent avenues to reflect on their situation and status, their rights and opportunities, and their day-today issues and to plan for collective campaigns.

Breaking the silence – Building capacities of women to run community radio Community radio stations in India, Bangladesh, and Nepal are taking on the mandate to work with and involve women as well as to build women’s media production competencies. Community radio stations are not only opening up democratic spaces for women’s participation in communication, but several organisations are also undertaking path-breaking capacity-building efforts to train women in the traditionally male domains of technically handling the running of community radio stations. Women are creating gender-sensitive programming, reviving oral forms, and mobilising members from the community through their networking and confidence-building efforts to deliberate on issues concerning women and girls. It all started in October  2008 with the launch of India and Asia’s first allwomen community radio station – Sangham Radio – owned, managed, and run by the poor, rural Dalit women belonging to the Deccan Development Society (DDS) in the Medak district of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh (now Telangana), one of the least developed and arid regions in India. Till this time, these women belonging to the lowest caste in India had already been working on and making programmes about native crops, community festivals, land regeneration, ecological agriculture, etc., and distributing them in their collectives through audio tapes. For the women of DDS, who belong to the marginalised sections of society, community radio is a means for augmenting their ongoing struggle for identity and for gaining autonomy over productive resources and their own lives. Sangham Radio broadcasts programmes that put gender issues at the forefront

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and those that express the perspectives of vulnerable communities (Pavarala and Malik, 2007; DDS, 2005; Malik and Bandelli, 2012) As mentioned in the earlier chapters, India now has about 240 CR stations, of which around half are run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the rest by educational and extension-work institutions. It is not wrong to say that, in one way or another, all CR stations do some type of programming for and by women. However, the approach, issues tackled, participation levels, and connection with grassroots realities may be enormously different. Also, not all community radio stations can boast of recruiting women for decision-making roles. However, there are many female reporters and station managers of CR stations in different parts of India who “rule the airwaves in rural India and have a finger on the pulse of their local community” (Vyas, 2015). Some of these women who, with their passion and commitment, have led by example and struggled to shatter stereotypes include Shanta Koshti of Rudi No Radio and Preeti Soni of Saiya Re Jo Radio (both from Gujarat), Radha Shukla of Waqt Ki Awaaz and Seema Bharti Srivastava of Voice of Azamgarh (both from Uttar Pradesh), G. Gandhimathi of Periyar Community Radio (Tamil Nadu), Vandana B. Thapliyal of Gurgaon Ki Awaaz (Haryana), and Aarti Bisht of Henvalvani (Uttarakhand). Their efforts have produced results, and small steps have been initiated through radio programmes on subjects such as female sarpanch, menstrual health, child marriage, drug addition, caste, women’s education, female farmers, and more (Malik and Bandelli, 2012; Vyas, 2015). According to Radha Shukla, “The true potential of community radio will be realised when rural women gain the confidence to ask questions – to themselves, to their community, and their government. When that happens, we can proudly say our work here is done” (as quoted in Vyas, 2015). Many CR stations, such as Radio Active in Karnataka, all four CR stations in the Bundelkhand region, Radio Mewat in Haryana, Tilonia Radio in Rajasthan, Mann Deshi Tarang in Maharashtra, and Radio Namaskar in Odisha, amongst several others, have also been creating quintessential programmes addressing several day-to-day and contentious women’s issues. Another important initiative in the direction of enhancing women’s participation in CR stations in India is the capacity-building effort undertaken by Maraa, a Bangalore-based media and arts collective, in partnership with Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), which adopts the community learning programme (CLP) model developed by the Commonwealth of Learning (COL). The workshops focus on mutual capacity-sharing between female broadcasters from different CR stations to adopt programming approaches that emphasise the needs of the community, local language, indigenous culture and talent, and appealing content. These women then train women in their own communities to make participatory programmes. With the partnership of COL, Maraa, and Ideosync Media Combine, Gurgaon Ki Awaaz (GKA) was the first CR station to pilot the CLP model. GKA produced a radio series called Chahat Chowk, aimed at breaking the silence amongst community women in Mullaheda village in Haryana around issues of reproductive and sexual health (RSH). The key characteristics of this approach, including stakeholder engagement in programme

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content decision-making as well as production, and a storytelling approach facilitate open conversations that lead to appropriate follow-up action. Now, more CR stations  – Waqt ki Awaaz (UP), Apna Radio (Delhi), and Alfaz-eMewat (Haryana) – are producing learning programmes using the CLP method (Jaiman, 2014; Dutta, 2015; Bose, 2014; Khatri and Arora, 2014; Murada and Grover, 2014). A study to explore women’s involvement in community radio in Bangladesh from a feminist perspective, which covered five CR stations – Krishi Radio, Radio Lokobetar, Radio Pollikontho, Radio Bikrampur, and Radio Mahananda  – substantiated that women joined the stations primarily as volunteers or trainees and were typically young students, unmarried, literate, and living near the stations (Anwar, 2015). In a blog post by AHM Bazlur Rahman, Chief Executive Officer, Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC), mentioned that representations of women are ensured when community radio management committees are formed, and special focus is now being given to recruiting women staff too (Rahman, 2010, 2017). According to Anwar (2015), female volunteers felt confident about being involved with CR stations and expressed that interaction with organisations and community members got them recognition within the community. They felt proud about contributing to the community. Some programmes have even been able to create awareness to stop marriages of girls who were under the legal age of 18. They chose topics for women-centred programming by consulting amongst themselves and other radio staff and then talked with the women in the community. Two CR stations supported by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), Radio Padma and Radio Nalta, received the Girl Power Award for 2014, presented by BNNRC, for their creative features on women’s education and against child marriage respectively (WACC, 2014). In Bangladesh, there are 17 community radio stations on air “aiming to ensure empowerment and right to information for the rural community” (Rahman, 2017). BNNRC has been at the forefront of breaking the traditional biases towards urban areas and also creating a platform for female journalists from the grassroots to raise their voices and be heard in the community. Several capacitybuilding programmes introduced by BNNRC have resulted in women occupying the positions of producers, anchors, newscasters, reporters, and station managers at CR stations (Rahman, 2017). In August 2014, Rupantar (Khulna, Bangladesh) organised a workshop on CLP with support from the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), It invited two female broadcasters from each CR station in Bangladesh to train them in designing and developing learning and women-focused radio programmes (CEMCA, 2014). BNNRC received the UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) award 2016 as part of the WSIS Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, in recognition for the “successful implementation of the project on ‘Youth Women in Community Media and Journalism – the beginning of a new era in rural broadcasting journalism of Bangladesh’ supported by the Free Press Unlimited” (SIGNIS, 2016). After completing this programme, launched in 2013, 60 young female community radio journalists began working with the 16 community radio stations in

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Bangladesh to address “poverty of voice.” During the 3­to 6-month fellowship period, young women aged 18–30 received media training to strengthen their understanding of reporting as well as news and script writing. The majority (40) of these women belong to Dalit (the lowest caste in the society) families and are now producing radio programmes focused on freeing society from the traditional caste system, stopping early marriages, removing social discrimination, ending violence against women, discussing good health practices for women and children, promoting education, establishing human rights, and giving more voice to marginalised people, especially women (SIGNIS, 2016; BNNRC, 2016). Of the 200-plus CR stations in Nepal, only five are owned and run by women. Nepal’s first all-women community radio station – Radio Mukti – was set up in December  2008 in Butwal, the central region of Nepal, followed by Radio Purbanchal in Biratnagar. The three other women-run CR stations in Nepal are Radio Udaypur in Udaypur district, Radio Didi Bahini in Parbat, and Radio Nari Aawaj Jumla. While Radio Purwanchal allows men to be a part of its management committee, Radio Mukti, including its technicians, is run solely by women (Sharma, 2010; O’Kain, 2013; Yen Lin, 2009; Rokaya, 2013). Radio Mukti, with a mission to empower women, conducts dual training for its staff on women’s empowerment issues and radio production. Since it is an all-women radio station with a mission to empower and give equal status to women, it is sensitive to practical problems women are subject to in work places – e.g. the late-shift female workers at the radio are provided facilities to stay at the radio station itself so they can avoid the vulnerabilities of going home during odd hours after work. Mukti is entirely headed by women (Sharma, 2010; Dahal, 2013). The journey towards setting up all-women stations has not been smooth, and there have been many challenges and difficulties. Even the Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, Nepal, or ACORAB, which is an umbrella organisation of CR stations, recognises that given the unequal status of women in Nepal, fulfilling their mission of raising women’s voice for equality has not been simple for these stations and has met with much criticism and scepticism. Radio Mukti, which tackles topics such as violence against women, has received threat calls from families of women who come for interviews on dowry-related violence, and even from Maoist leaders. The station was also vandalised by a group of students in 2009 over a news broadcast, but even in an atmosphere of fear, the station has not stopped broadcasting. AMARC Asia-Pacific had strongly condemned the attack on Radio Mukti. Kabita Sharma, Chairperson of Radio Mukti, was felicitated with the Courageous Media Worker Award–2009 (Sharma, 2010; Dahal, 2013). In Biratnagar, Radio Purbanchal works closely with Tarai women groups to draw attention to cases of sex trafficking. It has close to 40 organisations working with it on issues related to the physical violence of leering stares and sexual assault and the structural violence of poverty and lack of education. The staff of the station say they understand violence and discrimination first-hand, and the station gives them both a place to be heard and an opportunity for employment (Kadel, 2010). To strengthen the network of female community radio broadcasters in Nepal, ACORAB, in collaboration with AMARC-WIN (Women’s International

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Network of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters), undertook “Empowering Women Through Community Radio,” a 2011 initiative to train and mentor 51 female broadcasters, representing 50 community radio stations from all over Nepal, in producing radio programmes using gender-sensitive language as well as script writing, interview techniques, and digital editing. The workshop, which was conducted in two places  – Kathmandu and Chitwan  – that year, also sought to develop a network of community female broadcasters across Nepal and link with the women’s wing of ACORAB through virtual sharing, mailing list, and face-to-face interactions (Miglioretto, 2014). Kalpana Chapagain of Radio Didi Bahini and Khem Kumari Pokhrel of Radio Mukti won the National Media Award 2013 for their contribution to broadcasting. “It is remarkable to find women-run radio stations in parts of Nepal where females are still treated as second class citizens,” says Raghu Mainali, former station manager of Radio Sagarmatha, the first community-run radio station in South Asia, “and it is equally impressive to find that women have won the trust of their audience despite the ridicule they faced in the early days” (as cited in Rokaya, 2013). As women endeavour to break down barriers to communication using the alternative spaces created by community radio, the diversity of their participatory experiences, as well as their role in furthering social change focused on gender, can be analysed using the typology of women’s participation in communication initiatives developed by Pilar Riano (1994). Riano categorises women’s participation in communication activities and their grassroots efforts into four frameworks: Development, participatory, alternative, and feminist communication. While the development and participatory communication frameworks refer to the more institutionalised forms backed by the efforts of the state and NGOs, alternative and feminist communication is in the realm of social movements. Development communication conceives the participation of women as cooperation to change critical practices and risk behaviours by creating awareness and consensus around development campaigns and interventions. The participatory communication framework encourages participation as a tool to make development more people-centric by facilitating transactional communication between experts and women in the communities. Alternative framework, which is horizontal and democratic, refers to the forms of communication adopted in women’s movements that support their collective struggles. In the feminist framework, participation is linked to the goals of identity formation and speaking up against gender discrimination and oppression (Riano, 1994). Within the South Asian region, as NGOs run community radio stations, the involvement of women in community radio follows the communication for development and participatory communication frameworks and is linked to development and social change efforts. For community radio to be a tool of empowerment, women and marginalised groups must appropriate the ownership of communication resources and employ them to generate discourses that defend their rights. This may be interpreted as working towards creating what I call “voice-capability” amongst the women involved in community radio in South Asia.

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Creating voice capability – The right to be heard In the words of Jo Tacchi (2008: 1), “Voice can be defined as inclusion and participation in social, political and economic processes, meaning making, autonomy and expression. We can think of ‘voice poverty’ as the denial of the right of people to influence the decisions that affect their lives, and the right to participate in that decision making.” Couldry (2010: 1) associates “voice” with the verbalising of an opinion or articulation of a “distinctive perspective on the world.” He maintains that “voice” essentially refers to “the process of giving an account of one’s life and its conditions,” which is inherently connected with a person’s lived experience and identity. Further, by “voice,” Couldry (2010) means the chance for populations to have a say in decision-making that affects their lives. He adds that large media institutions and their media processes ought to respect and reflect multiple ideas, expressions, and cultures. However, in contemporary market-driven societies, political, economic, and cultural institutions have unavoidably become implicated in the “crisis of voice” and are increasingly unable to embody this “voice” in any meaningful form. This crisis deepens when those affected by decisions are vulnerable groups such as women, children, indigenous people, minorities, migrants, and refugees (Couldry, 2010: 13). There is a need for correcting such injustices and for recognising the voices of those excluded. This, as asserted in the earlier sections of the chapter, is possible through a dedicated process of democratisation of media by means of mediamaking outside mainstream media institutions. The agenda must be to create spaces for self-expression, especially for those communities, peoples, or groups (such as women) that have insignificant access to any media. The normative foundations of community radio  – anywhere in the world  – identify them as tools to enable media democracy and promote a multiplicity of formats, genres, talents, perspectives, and languages. CR stations lend their support to establishing a vibrant third sector within media, both globally and in South Asia, that works on the principles of media plurality; diversity of language, cultures, and gender; and empowerment of historically disadvantaged populations. This right of fair access to and equal participation in communication is fundamental for strengthening the “voices” of the marginalised. The chapter highlights that the gender mainstreaming efforts by community radio in South Asia are a part of this larger struggle to counter commercial homogeneity and market-oriented gatekeeping observed in media by evolving mechanisms for social groups to articulate their politico-economic imperatives, reproduce their cultural identity, and create new social relations. To venture beyond the “crisis of voice,” the two questions that must be asked are, Can women speak, and who will listen? According to the French philosopher Paul Ricouer, “What a culture would be where no one any longer knew what it meant to narrate things,” and he warns that treating people as if they lack that capacity is to treat them as if they are not human (as cited in Couldry, 2010: 1). Couldry (2010) emphasises the “politics of voice” – who speaks, in which capacity, and what context? The capacity to speak in environments that

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support the significance of one’s storytelling is what he calls “voice as value.” Thus, a mere claim by particular individuals or groups to have a “voice,” without any practice of listening, is not adequate. It is important to make clear that “voice” means not the simple claim to speak, for it is through the process of listening that the value of voice is mutually registered. I want to go a step further and use the term “voice capability” – which includes the concept of a voice that has value  – with Amartya Sen’s (1999) concept of “capability,” i.e. a person’s freedom to accomplish that function or exercise that is of value to a person’s life. Hence, for women to realise the capability of having a voice that is heard and has implications for their well-being and social arrangements will depend on the creation of certain conditions. These conditions will have underlying requirements that vary strongly with social circumstances. Voice capability essentially enables women to overcome the deprivation of the functionality to speak up and express themselves. For women to effectively be able to exercise their voice capability, it is necessary to remove obstacles so that they have more freedom to narrate what they find valuable. Community radio stations, as resources, must provide effective conditions and policies that enable voice capability amongst women so that they may convert it into valuable functioning of media access and community engagement that will aid them in coping with struggles in daily life. Thus, CR stations in South Asia, to become a public platform to enhance “voice capability” amongst women, must strengthen opportunities and freedom for gender-balanced participation in community radio programming and production. Proactive initiatives to build the capacities of CR stations for engaging with gender-sensitive issues and following gender-conscious practices in programming and content development must become a national priority for all countries in South Asia. The CR sector must grow as a space that promotes not only gender-sensitive policies in their own operations but also supports good gender equality practices in everyday life within the community. Knowledgesharing amongst and by women must be enhanced regardless of age, literacy, indigenous origin, or language, and there must be increased focus and dialogue on local problems affecting women.

Notes 1 See for details – www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/gender-equality/ Accessed on March 31, 2019. 2 For details on GAD, see Cornwall and Andrea (2000). 3 See also Cornwall and Edwards (2014) for debates on the nature and purpose of women’s empowerment.

References AMARC-WIN (2008). Gender Policy for Community Radio. Adopted by World General Assembly, AMARC 2010. Argentina: La Plata. www.amarc.org/documents/Gender_ Policy/GP4CR_English.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19.

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Anwar, Mahmuda (2015). Women’s Participation in Community Radio in Bangladesh A  Thesis Presented to The University of Guelph. Ontario, Canada, March. https://atrium.lib.uoguelph.ca/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10214/8733/Anwar_Mahmuda_201503_Msc.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y. Accessed on 2–4–19. Arti, Jaiman (2014). Chahat Chowk: Breaking the Silence on Sexual Health. CR News, 4(3), December  13–February  14. http://uccommedia.in/news/wp-content/ uploads/2015/10/vol-4-iss-3-Dec-2013-Feb-2014-low-res.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19. Atton, C. (2002). Alternative Media. London: Sage. Bailey, Olga, Cammearts, Bart, and Carpentier, Nico (2008). Chapter 1: Four Approaches to Alternative Media. In Understanding Alternative Media (pp.  3–34). New York: Open University Press. Batliwala, Srilatha (2007). Putting Power Back into Empowerment: July 30. www.open democracy.net/en/putting_power_back_into_empowerment_0/. Accessed on 2–4–19. Beteille, Andre (1999). Empowerment. Economic and Political Weekly, 34(10 &11), 589–597. Bhasin, K. (2000). Understanding Gender. New Delhi: Kali for Women. Blumberg, R.L. (1989). Toward a Feminist Theory of Development. In Ruth A Wallace (ed.), Feminism and Sociological Theory. Newbury Park/London: Sage Publications. BNNRC (2016). Our Voice Our Power: Empowering Women through Community Media in Bangladesh Published by BNNRC Supported by Free Press Unlimited. Bosch, T. (2010). Theorizing Citizens’ Media: A  Rhizomatic Approach. In C. Rodríguez, D. Kidd, and L. Stein. (Eds.), Making our Media: Global Initiatives Toward a Democratic Public Sphere. Vol. 1: Creating New Communication Spaces (pp. 71–89). Cresskill: Hampton Press Inc. Bose, Devi Leena (2014). Workshop Builds Women’s Capacities to run CR. CR News, 4(3), December  13–February  14. http://uccommedia.in/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ vol-4-iss-3-Dec-2013-Feb-2014-low-res.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19. Caldwell, John C. (1982). Theory of Fertility Decline. London, UK: Academic Press. CEMCA (2014). Workshop on Community Learning Programme  – CLP for Women Broadcasters of Community Radio Station in Bangladesh. https://cemca.org.in/. Accessed on 2–4–19. Chopra, Deepta, and Müller, Catherine (2016). Connecting Perspectives on Women’s Empowerment. IDS Bulletin, 47(1A), March 14. Connelly, M.P., Murray-Li, T., MacDonald, M., and Parpart, J.L. (2000). Feminisms and Development: Theoretical Perspectives. In J. Parpart, P. Connelly, and V.U. Barritreau (Eds.), Theoretical Perspectives on Gender and Development (pp. 51–160). Canada: International Development Research Centre (IDRC). Cornwall, Andrea (2000). Making a Difference? Gender and Participatory Development. Discussion Paper 378. University of Sussex: Institute of Development Studies. www. participatorymethods.org/sites/participatorymethods.org/files/Dp378.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19. Cornwall, Andrea (2003). Whose Voices? Whose Choices? Reflections on Gender and Participatory Development. World Development, 31(8), 1325–1342, doi:10.1016/ S0305-750X(03)00086-X Cornwall, Andrea, and Edwards, Jenny (2010). Negotiating Empowerment. IDS Bulletin, 41(2). Cornwall, Andrea, and Edwards, Jenny (Eds.). (2014). Feminisms, Empowerment and Development: Changing Women’s Lives. London: Zed Books. Couldry, Nick (2010). Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics after Neoliberalism. London: Sage.

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Coyer, Kate, Dowmunt, Tony, and Fountain, Alan (2007). The Alternative Media Handbook. London, New York: Routledge. Dahal, Sudhamshu (2013). Power, Empowerment and Community Radio: Media by and for Women in Nepal. Women s Studies International Forum, 40, 44–55. DDS  – Deccan Development Society (2005). (n.d.). About Us. http://ddsindia.com/. Accessed on 2–4–19. Downing, John (2008). Social Movement Theories and Alternative Media: An Evaluation and Critique. Communication, Culture & Critique, 1(1), 40–50. Dutta, Ankuran (2015). Community Radio for Community Learning. www.comcomm. org/2015/03/community-radio-for-community-learning.html. Accessed on 2–4–19. Fraser, Nancy (1992). Rethinking the Public Sphere: A  Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy. In Craig Calhoun (Ed.), Habermas and the Public Sphere (pp. 109–142). Cambridge: MIT Press. Fuchs, C. (2010). Alternative Media as Critical Media. European Journal of Social Theory, 13(2), 173–192. Gitlin, T. (1998). Public Sphere or Public Sphericules? In T. Liebes and J. Curran (Eds.), Media, Ritual, Identity (pp. 168–175). London: Routledge. Guijt, Irene, and Meera Kaul Shah (1998). Waking up to Power, Conflict and Process. In Guijt, Irene and Meera Kaul Shah (Eds.), The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Gurumurthy, Anita (2008). Gender Equality through ICT Access and Appropriation: Taking a Rights-Based Approach Bangalore: IT for Change. www.researchgate.net/ publication/242233922_Gender_Equality_through_ICT_Access_and_Appropriation_ Taking_a_Rights-Based_Approach. Accessed 2–4–19. Howley, K. (2002). Communication, Culture and Community: Towards A Cultural Analysis of Community Media. The Qualitative Report, 7(3), 1–24. https://nsuworks.nova. edu/tqr/vol7/iss3/6. Accessed on 12-4-2020. Humble, M. (1998). Assessing PRA for Implementing Gender and Development. In I. Guijt and M.K. Shah (Eds.), The Myth of Community: Gender Issues in Participatory Development. London: Intermediate Technology Publications. Kabeer, Naila (1994). Reversed Realities: Gender Hierarchies in Development Thought. London: Verso. Kabeer, Naila (1997). Tactics and Trade-Offs: Revisiting the Links between Gender and Poverty. IDS Bulletin, 28, 1–13. Kamala, Kadel (2010). A  Radio by Women for Community: Radio Purbanchal in Nepal. www.isiswomen.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1483. Accessed on 2–4–19. Lewis, Peter (1993). Alternative Media: Linking Global and Local (pp.  15–25). Paris: UNESCO. Malik, Kanchan K. and Bandelli, Daniela. (2012). Community Radio and Gender  – Towards an Inclusive Public Sphere. Paper at the India Media Symposium: Public Spheres, the Media  & Social Change, University of Queensland, Brisbane, November  21–23. www.researchgate.net/publication/279202551_Community_Radio_and_ Gender_-_Towards_an_Inclusive_Public_Sphere. Accessed on 2–4–19. MHHDC (Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre). (2015). Human Development in South Asia: The Economy and the People. Pakistan: Cross Media. Miglioretto, Bianca (2014). CR Trainings Foster Peer Learning Among Women Broadcasters. CR News, 4(3), December 13–February 14. http://uccommedia.in/news/wp-content/ uploads/2015/10/vol-4-iss-3-Dec-2013-Feb-2014-low-res.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19.

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Murada, Pooja O. and Grover, Arti (2014). Women’s Voices: Engaging the Excluded. Review of Market Integration, 6(1), 114–130. O’ Kain, Annie (2013). Feminine FM – Women-Run Community Radios Promote Grassroots Democracy. Nepali Times, March 15–21. http://archive.nepalitimes.com/article/ nation/Feminine-FM,244. Accessed on 2–4–19. Parpart, J. (1999). Rethinking Participation, Empowerment and Development from a Gender Perspective. In J. Freedman (Ed.), Transforming Development. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Pavarala, Vinod, and Malik, Kanchan K. (2007). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications. Pavarala, Vinod, and Malik, Kanchan K. (2010). Community Radio and Women: Forging Subaltern Counterpublics. In C. Rodriguez, D. Kidd, and L. Stein (Eds.), Making Our Media, Vol. I. Creating New Communication Spaces (pp. 95–113). New York: Hampton Press. Rahman, A.H.M. Bazlur (2010). Status of Community Radio in Bangladesh. www.apc. org/en/blog/status-community-radio-bangladesh. Accessed on 2–4–19. Rahman, A.H.M. Bazlur (2017). Youth Women in Community Broadcasting of Bangladesh. https://bnnrc.net/youth-women-in-community-broadcasting-of-bangladesh/. Accessed on 2–4–19. Rennie, E. (2006). Community Media: A Global Introduction. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc. Riano, Pilar (Ed.). (1994). Women in Grassroots Communication. USA/UK/India: Sage Publications. Rodriguez, Clemencia (2001). Fissures in the Mediascape: An International Study of Citizens’ Media. Cresskill: Hampton Press. Rokaya, Hari Devi (2013). Women in charge. Nepali Times, June 21–27. http://archive. nepalitimes.com/article/nation/2013-jun-21-nation-women-in-charge,515. Accessed on 2–4–19. Rustagi, Preet (2004). Women and Development in South Asia. South Asian Journal, 4, April–June. Sardenberg, C.M.B. (2008), Liberal vs. Liberating Empowerment: A  Latin American Feminist Perspective on Conceptualising Women’s Empowerment. IDS Bulletin, 39, 18–27. Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sharma, Kabita (2010). Media Campaign for Women’s Equality. http://radiomukti.blog spot.in/p/radio-mukti-profile.html. Accessed on 2–4–19. SIGNIS (2016). Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication’s (BNNRC) wins UN prize. www.signis.net/news/general-2/18-05-2016/bangladesh-ngos-networkfor-radio-and-communications-bnnrc-wins-un-prize. Accessed on 2–4–19. Tacchi, Jo A. (2008). Voice and Poverty. Media Development, 2008/1. World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) Brisbane. United Nations (1996). Report of the Fourth World Conference on Women Beijing, 4–15 September 1995. New York: United Nations. Unwin, Tim (Ed.). (2009). ICT4D: Information and Communication Technology for Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. UN WOMEN Press release (2016). Galvanizing Efforts Towards the 2030 Agenda and Fostering Partnerships, UN Women Unveils new Media Compact. March  22. www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2016/3/press-release-media-compact. Accessed on 2–4–19.

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Vineeta Khatri, and Venu Arora (2014). Assessing Chahat Chowk CR initiative. CR News, 5(2), July-September. http://uccommedia.in/news/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ vol-5-iss-2-Jul-Sept-2014-mid-res.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19. Vyas, Bhanu Priya (2015).4 Women who are Using Community Radio to Bring Change in Rural India. www.thebetterindia.com/22023/women-community-radio-rural-india/. Accessed on 2–4–19. WACC (2014). World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) Bangladesh Community Radio Celebrates Girl Power. http://waccglobal.org/articles/bangladeshcommunity-radio-celebrates-girl-power. Accessed on 2–4–19. World Bank (2013). The South Asia Regional Gender Action Plan FY13-FY15. https:// siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTGENDER/Resources/SAR_RGAP_Revised_report_ April2013.pdf. Accessed on 2–4–19. Yalala, Nirmala. (2015). The Role of Community Radio in Empowering Women in India. Media Asia, 42(1–2), 41–46. Yen Lin, Kong (2009). Women become radioactive. Issue #449 (May 1–7). http://nepali times.com/news.php?id=15913. Accessed on 2–4–19.

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Box 9  Chahat Chowk: breaking the silence on sexual health Sushma is a migrant woman from Bihar living in Mullaheda village in Gurgaon for the past 12 years. Her husband is a security guard. Living in a one room tenement barely a kilometre from the Maruti Suzuki factory, she shares the cramped space with her alcoholic husband and five daughters. When the pressure to bear a boy child grew unbearable, as did the trauma of undergoing three abortions because the unborn foetus was, once again, a girl, she literally ran away to her “maika” (maternal home) to get an “operation” done. The taboo and deafening silence around issues of sexual and reproductive health barred her from discussing her problems with women in her locality – be it her mother-in-law or neighbours living around her, or even her husband. The Community Learning Program (CLP) “Chahat Chowk” was designed at Gurgaon Ki Awaaz Samudayik Radio to break this silence. Multiple focus groups discussions later, it was evident that while issues like ‘white discharge’, problems in conception, unease with contraception, the burden of multiple pregnancies, and the trauma of multiple abortions were rampant among both migrant and local women in Mullaheda, the dominant issue was really the silence around these health problems. The Community Learning Program (CLP) model developed by Commonwealth of Learning (COL) and its partners is an approach that tackles community health/development issues guided by communication for development, and social and behaviour change principles and practices. The key elements of a community learning programme are: a) collaboration among local stakeholder groups, b) participation of target audiences in decision making about programme content, c) a combination of media distributed content with face-to-face networking, d) a storybased approach to learning and behaviour change. Accordingly, the “Chahat Chowk” series was developed in partnership with women staying in Mullaheda, who participated in focus group discussions, generously shared their stories for radio programmes, and opened up their small little one-room homes to listener groups. Integral to the programme design process was the participation and support of the Civil Hospital, Gurgaon (who deputed ASHA workers and ANMs to the programme), the NRHM-supported RCH dispensary in Mullaheda, St. Stephens’ Hospital, Gurgaon (which deputed their ANMs as on-air experts), the Mullaheda Anganwadi which became a meeting space for women, and local shopkeepers who shared their customer base so that the programme could reach out to a wider community in Mullaheda. Launched in July 2013, the first 16 episodes of Chahat Chowk completed their cycle of broadcast by the end of October. The response was

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unlike anything the station has witnessed earlier. Calls would start coming in even before the programme went on air, with listeners calling in to ask if the ANM had reached the studio and if they could talk to her. What was planned initially as a 30-minute telephony segment added to a 30-minute magazine- format program, stretched to 60 minutes? Yet, many callers could not make it to the show! Questions that the ANMs had never been asked in their long careers in the field were suddenly being thrown at them within the anonymity that radio offers its listeners. “My condom keeps tearing; what shall I do?” “My wife has been complaining of white discharge for the past year, how can I help her?” “We’ve just been married, how can I delay having children for another two years?” “If I get a vasectomy done, is it reversible?” “Dealing with these questions hasn’t been easy either.” Training partners Maraa and Ideosync Media Combine put the entire GKA team through training to help them let go of their own inhibitions in discussing sexual issues. Fallouts of the program have been men and women visiting the Mullaheda dispensary to meet the ANM (who also features in the program) after listening to the radio program, posters in the Mullaheda lanes, promotional events, and the use of an IVR-based call-out system that shares the key messages of each episode with a caller base of nearly 1000 people. In its second phase, the Gurgaon Ki Awaaz team is working on developing the next 26 episodes of Chahat Chowk. Besides existing stakeholders, new partners are being identified. Many new issues have also emerged from the phone calls received during the first cycle. These will be addressed in the second cycle. There’s a new excitement definitely in the air! After all, that wall of silence appears to be finally getting breached! Arti Jaiman Gurgaon Ki Awaaz Source: CR News Vol. 4, No. 3, Dec 2013-Feb 2014

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10 COMMUNITY RADIO IN TIMES OF DISASTER Contemplations for South Asia Ashish Sen Introduction Underlying the gap between supply and demand that characterises the community radio (CR) scene in South Asia today are larger issues linked to voice, access, and accountability. This disconnect is perhaps most stark in the context of community radio and disaster preparedness and mitigation. Ironically, it comes at a time when there has been a marked increase in the region’s vulnerability to the ravages of earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and droughts. Across the world, radio has proven credentials as a crucial medium of communication in disaster preparedness and mitigation. Often, it is the only communication technology that functions during such times. While advances in internet and cyber technology hold out the promise of speedier access to information, they still remain unable to substantially resolve issues of inclusive access and cost. These questions continue to pose formidable challenges in the South Asian context, especially in remote and rural areas, many of which are also vulnerable to disaster. The increase in the frequency of natural disasters in South Asia during the recent past may have emphasised the potential significance of community radio. However, it has not, as yet, yielded commensurate dividends in the form of appropriate policy reform, such as facilitating speedy licences for emergency community radio stations or enabling the use of mobile transmitters during times of disaster. The gap between potential and performance becomes even more stark when comparing the South Asian scenario with that of Southeast Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific. Unlike countries such as Japan, where temporary licences for community radio during times of disaster have been provided within 24 hours, the practice of emergency radio remains outside the realm of reality or practice in South Asia. Despite the demonstrable track record of mobile transmitters during times of disaster in various parts of the world, they remain beyond the pale of legitimacy in countries like Bangladesh and India. In sharp contrast, the absence of such

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legislation has enabled countries like Fiji to reach remote and riverine-based islands which would otherwise have little access to information. Nepal and Sri Lanka are significant exceptions in the South Asian context given their experiences of Doko radio1 (radio in a basket) and e-tuk tuk radio2 respectively. Contrasts are also striking in the realm of cross-country research and development. In Southeast Asia, countries like Japan and Indonesia have already embarked on active learning and sharing collaborations at the nongovernmental organisation (NGO) level. The research and training collaboration between FMYY community radio station, Japan, and Combine Media Institution, Indonesia, is a case in point. Amongst other initiatives, AMARC (World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters) Asia-Pacific members are currently involved in developing the backpack radio system. The backpack contains a mini radio station as well as a mini database that makes the data accessible, which is necessary to predict upcoming disasters, such as tsunamis or volcanic eruptions. The backpack radio station has been described “as a life saver for people living in one of the remote communities, who have no access to information and communication through ICT” (from: www.jorisdegroot.com/ work/radio-backpack/).

CR as a catalyst for disaster management At a time when the magnitude and frequency of disasters in the region have sharply increased, the relevance of community radio/media networks using a mixed media model also assumes significance. The South Asian region does not have to look too far for inspiration. The Aceh Radio Reconstruction Network (ARRnet) in Sumatra, Indonesia, serves as an appropriate case in point. ARRnet was started in 2005 in the wake of the tsunami that wreaked havoc across several parts of Indonesia. It used a mix of radio, internet, telephone lines, and fax to reach affected areas, including the last mile. Such a model could be easily adapted and recast in the South Asia landscape. Given that disasters cut across country boundaries, such a network could also provide a vital conduit for timely cross-border information-sharing and exchange. The SAARC Disaster Centre, which was set up as part of the larger SAARC component, could serve as a catalyst to facilitate such a network. The idea was mooted at a recent South Asian community radio consultation organised by the SAARC Information Centre and AMARC. However, in the absence of any groundwork, such concepts have remained mere platitudes. There have been other advocacy efforts from civil society groups and development agencies in South Asia to build an enabling climate for community radio stations in the context of disaster. The need to establish an emergency radio support fund, provide facilities for backup transmitters, and enable emergency radio stations to become a reality illustrates a few of the issues that have been consistently advocated by groups and networks  – both at the regional and country levels  – in South Asia. These include agencies like AMARC and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Chair on Community Media as well as country networks like the Association

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of Community Radio Broadcasters Nepal (ACORAB), Community Radio Association of India (CRAI), and Bangladesh NGO Network of Community Radio Broadcasters (BNNRC). Admittedly, some of these advocacy efforts have merited consideration at governmental levels. However, there has been no advancement in terms of policy reform or implementation. Paradoxically, community radio stations have often been significant catalysts – in countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, and India – through which state advisories related to disaster preparedness have been made accessible to local communities. In fact, the effectiveness of community radio stations in combating disaster would appear to have been appreciated by policymakers as far back as the 2004 tsunami. During a reconnaissance visit to the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which had been hit by the floods, the (then) Information and Broadcasting Secretary, Government of India, Mr. Navin Chawla, confessed that the impact of the disaster would have been much less had there been functional community radio stations in the area. The gap between such pronouncements and the absence of their implementation on the ground is perhaps predictable in a policy environment that is at best reactive. More disquieting are its implications on the sector in general and disaster preparedness in particular. While the potential of community radio in reckoning with disaster may have been acknowledged by the state, the acknowledgement would appear to have been tilted towards the community radio station as a vehicle or carrier of information. However, the role of community radio as a producer of information or community voice per se would not seem to have been given equal cognisance. This, in turn, raises a larger question: Whose information, and for whom?

Criticality of community voice in disaster management The relegation of community voice to the backburner is likely to spawn community radio stations and a sector that perceive community radio to be a medium for rather than of the community. This has significant implications for the sustainability of the sector as a whole. In the context of disaster, the dilution or compromise of community voice would also undermine the importance and centrality of local information in addressing disaster preparedness and mitigation. Irrespective of magnitude or scale, the criticality of community voice is central in this process in terms of both first-hand knowledge and experience. This criticality needs to be duly acknowledged at the policy level. On a parallel plane, there would also appear to be an urgent need to address infrastructure issues. Many community radio stations in the region have stations that are not earthquake-resistant. The recent earthquake that struck Nepal in April 2015, which, according to AMARC’s initial assessment, affected around 108 community radio stations, starkly exposed this vulnerability. However, the writing on the wall had been evident for some time. According to UNDP’s comprehensive disaster risk management team 2012 report, several community radio stations in Nepal were housed in “earthquake-vulnerable buildings.” The country’s key community radio network, ACORAB, had also echoed similar

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warnings. ACORAB had specifically warned that a majority of the 350 community radio stations in the country were not earthquake-resistant. Against this backdrop, an enabling environment for community radio in the context of disaster preparedness in South Asia would involve at least three critical components: • • •

Building a policy framework that is proactive and inclusive Recognising the centrality of community voice – especially that of the marginalised and the survivors – in disaster preparedness and mitigation Establishing an emergency community radio network in the South Asian region

Kalanjiam Vanoli community radio – A case study This chapter strives to validate the relevance of these strands and also explore possible linkages between them through a case study of a core activity of Kalanjiam Vanoli community radio station during its initial years. Kalanjiam Vanoli was set up in the wake of the 2004 tsunami in the disaster-affected district of Tamil Nadu in South India. It draws upon the early years of Kalanjiam Vanoli community radio station and focuses on the anecdotal data of community experiences and responses in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 tsunasmi. At the same time, it has tracked data based on the experiences of the institutional collaboration between the NGOs VOICES and the DHAN Foundation, which jointly worked to set up the station with support from UNDP. UNDP was a key advocate of the community radio movement and supported VOICES in forging a partnership with the DHAN Foundation (an NGO in Tamil Nadu state), with the objective of setting up a community media centre in Nagapattinam district; the specific location of the station Vilunthamavadi village of Keelaiyur block. Nagapattinam was amongst the most severely affected districts in the country. VOICES was the technical and communications partner involved in capacitybuilding and initial programme production support, while community mobilisation and management were the responsibility of the DHAN Foundation. (It needs to be pointed out that there were no grassroots community radio stations operational at that time, as the 2002 government of India guidelines restricted the eligibility criterion for community radio stations to universities alone. The guidelines enabling NGOs and community-based organisations to apply for community radio stations were announced in just November 2006.) Kalanjiam Vanoli also reached out to four hamlets located around the village – P.R. Puram, Kameswaram, Pudupalli, and Vettaikaraniruppu – covering a population of about 1,700 families. Given that community radio broadcasting was beyond the pale of legitimacy, these families were connected to the station through audio- and cable-based narrowcasting. The station started broadcasting in 2009 after it received its wireless operating licence, which enabled it to reach out to around 25 villages. Till then

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the station had functioned through cablecasting and broadcasting communitybased programmes on the local FM All India Radio (AIR) station. The absence of legitimacy notwithstanding, there were a number of NGOs that were intensely engaged in building the community radio movement at the grassroots level during this period. Located in the neighbouring state of Karnataka, the NGO VOICES was an integral part of this effort. VOICES had been associated with the community radio movement since its inception. In 1996, after the Supreme Court judgement that declared that “airwaves were public property to be used for public good,” it organised the first national community radio consultation in the country. The consultation, which included a diverse mix of media practitioners, advocates, activists, and representatives from AIR and NGOs, resulted in the Bangalore Declaration, which argued for a three-tiered radio structure in the country: Public, private, and community. As a part of its advocacy effort, VOICES helped to initiate a community media initiative in the village of Budhikote, in Kolar district Karnataka (100 km from Bangalore). The Namma Dhwani (Our Voices, in the local language, Kannada) community media centre was a partnership between NGOs MYRADA and VOICES and the farmer community at Budhikote. Supported by UNESCO, Namma Dhwani had already demonstrated the power and importance of community voice through audio narrowcasting and cablecasting. Community-based audio programmes produced by the local community were cablecast into people’s homes in Budhikote village. Namma Dhwani had formalised collaboration with the local cable TV operator, through which a local channel functioned as the Namma Dhwani audio channel and reached people’s homes in Budhikote village. The disaster wrought by the tsunami reinforced the importance of community broadcasting amongst the local community in Nagapattinum. As a key advocate of the community radio movement, UNDP supported VOICES in setting up a partnership with the DHAN Foundation to develop a similar community media centre in Nagapattinam. Initial reconnaissance surveys and studies indicated that poor women, children, fishermen, and farmers were the most affected by the tsunami. Many of them came from communities about 1–2 km off the coast. They had to contend with loss of lives and assets as well as damage to their livelihood (agriculture, livestock). While the survivors were familiar with floods, cyclones, and rough seas, they were not aware of any past tsunamis. They were unprepared and could not undertake precautionary measures and safeguard themselves or minimise loss of their assets. Given the absence of community radio legitimacy, Kalanjiam functioned as a community-based media production centre for the first two years. As the radio station was established after the tsunami, it focused initially on recovery and then rehabilitation, livelihood, economic development, and social inclusion. Audio programmes were made and narrowcast initially via loudspeakers and subsequently through a yearlong collaboration between Kalanjiam Vanoli and the local AIR, Karaikal FM, in 2007.

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The objective of producing and broadcasting these audio programmes over AIR Karaikal was to build awareness amongst the community of the disaster and determine coping mechanisms to contend with the havoc wrought by the tsunami. Accordingly, programmes were made by the community on disaster risk reduction, rebuilding livelihoods, overcoming trauma/stress, and rebuilding lives. Programmes also provided information support mechanisms and initiatives of the government and NGOs. These were broadcast once a week on Saturday at 6:40 pm. A  total of 40 episodes were produced and broadcast. A description of the types of programmes is provided here: • Agriculture • Coping with stress, rebuilding lives, and overcoming losses • Innovation and rebuilding tradition • Disaster risk reduction • Livelihood • Conserving the environment • Infrastructure interventions after a tsunami While the absence of listener databases in the community radio stations during that time handicaps any definitive assessment of the extent of their popularity, there was considerable feedback in the form of letters and phone calls. This is not surprising. As the radio station’s manager, Naguveer Prakash, pointed out, for the first time “a new set of community reporters without any previous experience in production had successfully done 40 episodes of weekly programmes totalling 9:55:21 hours of audio on their own.” The following summaries of the programmes3 produced and broadcast compiled and documented by the station will substantiate the station manager’s point.

Brief description of the FM programmes Agriculture The tsunami wreaked considerable havoc on local crops and produce. Community reporters, supported by other members of the community, identified and produced positive stories, such as: Programme No. 1. The story of a farmer whose land was affected by the tsunami and who lost crops like coconut, cashew, and casuarina. The farmer reclaimed his land and trees by using natural organic manures and employing the scientific use of fertilisers like gypsum. Farmer name: Mr. Ramakrishnan, Prathabaramapura. Programme No. 10. A female farmer shared her experience of the damages to her produce caused by the tsunami and her efforts at reclaiming the affected agricultural land by applying a sodium blocker.

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Farmer name: Mrs. Jeya, Vedaranyam. Resource person: Mr. M. Selvakumar, Vedaranyam. Programme No. 38. The narrative of a tsunami-affected farmer who rebuilt his life with support from the local self-help group. Farmer name: Mr. Sokkalingam, West Puduppalli.

Coping with stress, rebuilding lives, and overcoming losses Trauma and coping with the loss of life were key challenges that the station confronted and addressed through programmes like: Programme No. 2. The experience of a fisherwoman who lost two of her grandchildren because of the tsunami. Her narrative explains how she overcame her stress and tragedy by involving herself in work and through supporting fellow fisherwomen in running self-help groups. Participant: Ms. Sunthari, Seruthur. Programme No. 3. Radio drama was used to underline the importance of growing trees, which were described as the “soul of nature.” The programme expressed the need for every individual to grow at least one tree to rebuild the ozone layer. Participants: Five tsunami-affected school children of Vettaikaraniruppu Akalya, Durga, Vaishali, Jayalakshmi, and Jayasundari. Programme No. 11. The experiences of a sixth standard girl who had lost her brother. She was rescued from the tsunami waves and became involved in the Ensuring Education to All Campaign as a child activist in the children’s panchayat. Participant: Ms. Surekha, south fishermen colony, Vizhundhamavadi. Programme No. 34. The life of a person with disability whose shop was washed away. He rebuilt his life by enrolling himself as a member of a self-help group and started his life afresh by starting a cycling company. Participant: Mr. Senthilkumar, Naaluvethapathy. Programme No. 37. The life of a fisherman who lost his livelihood but worked to rebuild his future as a marathon runner and the support he received from the men in his village. Participant: Mr. Thangavelu, Vizhundhamavadi.

Innovation and rebuilding tradition Programme No. 4. The programme narrated an individual’s effort to make use of biofuel as an alternate to diesel and petrol. After utilising

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this alternative source of fuel, which is locally available and emits less smoke, he began advocating for the use of low-cost alternatives to carbon fuels. Participant: Mr. C. Rajasekaran, Vettaikaraniruppu. Programme No. 29. An individual’s effort to popularise the cultivation of traditional seeds through the traditional method of “kottaikatuthal.” Participants: Mr. Rajalingam and Mr. Thandabani, Pusaimadam. Programme No. 31. The programme described the advantage of kattumarams over fibre boats during rough weather. Participants: Mr. T. Prakash and Mr. T. Selvakumar, Seruthoor. Programme No. 36. Changes that are taking place in the fishermen community after the tsunami in terms of living environment and education. Participants: Mrs. Dhiravidaselvi, fishermen colony, Kameswaram; Mr. Murthi, Vizhundhamavadi. Programme Nos. 39 and 40. The story of Kalanjiam Samuga Vanoli, a community radio station initiated to serve the needs of the community. Participants: Script and presentation by community reporters and sharing by various community members.

Disaster risk reduction Programme Nos. 5, 6, and 7. How to reduce loss of life and materials. Why sub-committees are required at the village level to tackle disasters. What precautions are necessary during rescue operations? Resource person: Mr. Arumugarajan, Asst. Divisional Officer, Fire and Rescue Department, Nagapattinam. Programme No. 8. The experience of local members of the community who did not know how to tackle disasters, yet they developed their own mechanisms to overcome the tsunami’s devastation by relying on traditional systems. Participant: Mr. Murthy, village headsman, south fishermen colony, Vizhundhamavadi. Programme No. 15. How to safeguard animals and other assets so as to minimise losses. Resource person: Mr. Lakshmanan, Social Security consultant. Beneficiary: Mr. Annammail, Madappu kuppam. Programme Nos. 20 and 21. The importance of safe drinking water and the relevance of filters and boiled water to prevent diseases. Resource persons: Mr. R. Athinarayanan and Mr. Barathi, trained domestic water trainers. Programme No. 25. The importance of the village knowledge centre in damage assessment and identifying beneficiaries. Resource persons: Mr. Satish and Ms. Priya, ICT coordinators, NCRC, and beneficiaries of Akkaraipeetai and Velankanni.

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Programme No. 33. The efforts of an NGO, Sevalaya, which focused on disaster risk reduction efforts in youth clubs Resource person: Mr. Vinoth, field coordinator, Sevalaya.

Livelihood The radio station attempted to document individual and community-based success stories. Programme No. 9. Ms. Negeswari, a saltpan worker, lost her husband to the tsunami. She also incurred a loss of Rs. one lakh, which was reimbursed by the government, as she had given it to a finance company with the expectation of high returns. Subsequently, she joined a DHAN-promoted self-help group, which helped her regain her confidence. Participant: Ms. Nageswari, community member. Programme No. 12. Ms. Kalarani, a fisherwoman from Palayar, told how a small intervention could make a big impact. She recounted the utility of the ice box provided by the Sirkali Fishermen Federation and its value to her business. Participant: Ms. Kalarani, fisherwoman, Palayar, Sirkali. Programme No. 13. Problems confronted by those who reared livestock and the way to overcome these difficulties. Participants: Ms. Poongodi and T.R. Pattinam, Karaikal. Programme No. 14. An elderly fisherwoman who rebuilt her life after the tsunami through a self-help group, which helped her practice dry fish vending. Participant: Ms. Maniyammai, Palayar, Sirkali. Programme No. 19. The role of fishermen units. Community members of the SIFFS-promoted marketing group shared their success stories. Participant: Mr. Mayailvaganan, member of SIFFS-promoted fishermen group, Arkattuthurai. Programme Nos. 22 and 23. The Primary Agriculture Producing and Marketing Group members of DHAN promoted Thalainayeru Kizhakku Vattara Vayalagam and shared their successful trial in eliminating the middlemen in agricultural commodity marketing. They had done a turnover of Rs. 50 lakhs by marketing groundnut, cashew, dry coconut, and Gloriosa superba (kanvali kilangu, a medicinal plant). Participants: Mr. Veerasamy, Ms. Muthulakshmi, Mr. Pathmanaban, Ms. Thilagam, Mr. Chandrashekaran, Ms. Revathi, Mr. Chelladurai, Koilpatthu. Programme No. 24. The importance of the village information centre for promoting life-oriented education through information and communication technologies.

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Resource person: Ms. Elavarasi, ICT coordinator, Velankanni. Participants: Ms. Nagalakshmi, Puthuppalli, and Mr. Ezhil Kameswaram. Programme No. 28. The initiative of the NGO ISSI, working along the coast of Nagapattinam, in developing small-scale entrepreneurship amongst widowed fisherwomen. Resource person: Mr. Radhakrishnan, project coordinator, ISSI. Participants: Ms. Pushpavalli, Ms. Anjammal, Ms. Valliammai, Ms. Panchavarnam, Kameswaram village. Programme No. 30. Mr. Rajangam, a fisherman, shared his experience. He was trained in crab patterning and now has developed a new livelihood. Participants: Mr. Rajangam, Poosaimadam, and Mr. Thandapani, Akkaraipettai. Programme No. 32. The programme explored how tailoring provided an important source of livelihood for women affected by the tsunami. Resource person: Ms. Vetriselvi, tailoring trainer, DPG. Participant: Ms. Muthulakshmi, Vanavanmahadevi village.

Conserving the environment Programme No. 16. The utility of corals for the fishermen community. Participants: Mr. Gopalsamy and Mr. Murthi, fishermen, Vilunthamavadi village. Script prepared and presented by Ms. Soumya, community reporter. Programme No. 17. Fringe communities involved in hand fishing for their livelihood share their experiences of the tsunami. Participants: Ms. Saroja, Mr. Chidambaram, Mr. Kamalappan, and Mr. Sounder Rajan, inland fishermen, Puthuppalli village. Programme No. 18. The importance of biobarriers along the coast to reduce the impact of tsunamis. Resource person: Mr. Kanakarajan, Community Forest Department, Vedaranyam division. Programme No. 26. The work of NGOs SCOPE and Gramalaya to provide eco-friendly toilets and their relevance, especially in coastal areas. Resource person: Mr. Karthikeyan, Gramalaya. Participants: Ms. Maniammai, Ms. Anjammal, and Ms. Krishnaveni, Kameswaram village.

Infrastructure interventions after a tsunami Programme No. 27. The programme discussed the improvement of infrastructural facilities post tsunami, especially in remote coastal villages. Participants: Mr. Thangasamy and Mr. Vellikanni, south fishermen colony; Mr. Andiappan, north fishermen colony, Vilunthamavadi.

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Programme No. 35. The programme discussed infrastructural and material improvements that have taken place in Anganwadi (child day care) centres. Participants: Ms. Valli, Anganwadi in charge, children; Sneha, Kannan, Brintha, and Arthi, Vasanthan fishermen colony, Vilunthamavadi.

Programmes and community voices Apart from the fact that the programmes evoked considerable community participation in terms of production and listenership, they would also appear to have addressed some of the larger concerns pertinent to community well-being, rehabilitation, and overall socio-economic development. The categorisation of the programmes reflected some of the key challenges and issues that confronted the region at that time. A more recent interview between the station manager and the author reinforces the relevance of community voices, especially those of the survivors and the affected, in addressing not only the concerns of preparedness and relief but also the longer-term challenges of picking up the pieces. Recounting the impact of programme narrowcasts and broadcasts, Naguveer Prakash noted that the process also helped survivors become “active agents in their own recovery and in supporting and facilitating others to get back to normal life. Many were also motivated by the experiences of those survivors who had turned their adversities into opportunities and emerged as leaders. These survivors who transformed into local leaders became the reference persons both within the communities as well as [sic] the administration and for NGOs who were in need of community volunteers to carry out the development work planned or initiated.” One of the main challenges the station manager articulated related to “coping with the loss of their dear ones and relatives. . . . Then there was the agony of overcoming the psychological impacts caused through the disaster.” However, by broadcasting stories of those who had succeeded in “getting back to normalcy and overcoming the scars left by the tsunami,” the station also provided, to some extent, a source for emotional and trauma counselling. Additionally, it would appear to have built the basis for a counselling network of sorts by providing a “reference to the resources through the programmes.” The programmatic and capacity-building efforts of the radio station had a tangible impact in terms of putting in place and strengthening community preparedness mechanisms. First, it brought the community into the day-to-day life of the station. Some of the survivors also found employment. According to Naguveer, “Six reporters had so far been employed who were from the affected communities. Two of them worked for more than three years in the station and had then established their own multimedia shops for doing commercials.” The success of Kalanjiam Vanoli Community Media Centre also inspired the setting up of a community video unit. To reach all sections of the local community and cater to their multiple information and communication needs, a video

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component was added with Kalanjiam Community Radio. A  team of female volunteers from the local community were trained both in audio and video production tools and techniques. They documented socio-economic and development issues concerning the local communities, especially women, in video format. These videos were screened to the villagers. The centre also worked with the local television cable channels to screen the video products made by the community video volunteers at fixed time schedules. The volunteers made videos on issues such as backwater fishing, HIV-AIDS, and conflicts on resources; local best practices, such as harvest festival, local market, and folk arts; and promotional videos, such as community plantation, veterinary care, and paddy cultivation. Parallel to this, the station’s objective of addressing community-based disaster preparedness was also assured. Naguveer clarified that the station conducted programmes with those members who were working on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and distress. “We even organised a disaster risk reduction management (DRRM) mock drill and social mapping processes.” These helped facilitate community understanding on the need for DRRM. Firemen were brought in to train community members on techniques of providing relief and rehabilitation. Mock drills were conducted to put the skills in practice. With support from local NGOs and the local administration, disaster preparedness exercises like resource mapping and vulnerability mapping were carried out and vulnerable sections of the society were identified. Disaster mitigation groups were promoted at the village level. The Kalanjiam media centre facilitated the process and documented these activities through audio and video formats. These were disseminated through radio and the local cable channel. This helped to widen the scope of knowledge attained in the process. These efforts were to reap significant dividends in the future. On September  12, 2007, when a tsunami alert was issued, Kalanjiam narrowcast the information and shared it with the local cable channels so they could run the information as a scrolling message to ensure wider coverage. The advantage of a community FM station was that it could function around the clock to assist mitigation efforts. When a tsunami warning was issued on August  11, 2009, at 3:30 am, the station received the information from a listener who was in turn informed by his relative – a migrant from southeast India. The community reporters at the station started broadcasting early in the morning (4:00 am), issuing tsunami alert messages. On April  11, 2012, community reporters at the radio station could “sense the earth shaking beneath their feet.” They were shortly informed of a severe tsunami warning, which had been issued across 28 nations, including India. The reporters reacted quickly and issued tsunami alerts. Members of the CBO also issued alerts via mobile phones and public address systems along the coastal settlements. Women and children were moved to safer places. Although the alerts were withdrawn subsequently and the message passed on, women and children preferred staying at the cyclone shelters over taking the risk of being at home at night in case disaster recurred.

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Cyclone warnings were issued during the Cyclones – Nisha (in 2008), Thane (in 2011), and Nilam (in 2012). Other than issuing warnings through community radio and AIR broadcasts, information was also shared with cable networks and mobile telephony so that CBOs were able to communicate the last mile to the last post. Community video footage also demonstrated examples of change and transformation in community behaviour and perception. It also included footage of DRR committee members removing stagnant water and helping to clear flooded drains.

Lessons from the case study The lessons from the experiences of Kalanjiam Vanoli and its evolution from narrowcasting to broadcasting underscore the importance of community voice as a critical component of both preparedness and mitigation. Because they are the first in the line of work, the local community and survivors understand the media ecology of the area better than many technology experts. The narrowcasts and AIR broadcasts in the early years of Kalanjiam Vanoli would appear to have substantially demonstrated the point. In fact, the practice of loudspeaker narrowcasts and cablecasts introduced by VOICES in Namma Dhwani was readily accepted by the local community at Kalnjiam because of the cultural affinity with loud speakers. Consequently, even as the community-based radio programme series made by Kalanjiam was being broadcast over AIR Karaikal, it was also narrowcast over the loudspeakers in some of the mosques and temples that dotted the area. The approach also enabled survivor communities to interact and work together. In doing so, it validated Nagveer’s point: The social levelling that came about post tsunami quickly achieved what several years of development work had been striving to accomplish. Even as Kalanjiam Vanoli’s experience underscored the importance of community voice, it also demonstrated the need for continuous capacity-building and strengthening of linkages between government channels and community radio stations. As Naguveer affirmed, “Disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) is a learning and evolving mechanism, and the community regularly requires inputs and training on how to access current and immediate information, as it helps reduce loss of lives. The number of community reporters/ volunteers with more exposure to community radio and the demystification of technology are critical components [in this context].” These experiences of Kalanjiam Vanoli would not appear to be dissimilar to the larger regional environment. Many of them also resonate with the findings of the 2008 AMARC Asia-Pacific survey on disaster. These specified that: • •

Landslides, earthquakes, and floods are the most frequently occurring natural disasters. Death toll is highest amongst the elderly and disabled and children, yet there are negligible programmes for women, children, and the elderly related to natural disaster preparation and management.

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• More than half of CR stations surveyed did not have a manual to deal with natural disasters, though most of them face natural disasters quite frequently. • More than 60 percent of CR stations are housed in buildings that are not specifically designed to withstand natural disasters. • Fifty percent of community radio stations have staff trained in disaster management, which is encouraging. • There are very few programmes on trauma healing. The survey noted the need for the following: •

Timely preparation for disaster; rather than community-based responses to disaster being sudden or impulsive, it is important for communities to be prepared for such a response during normal times. • Importance of community-based disaster response; following an earthquake, many people buried under buildings and debris are rescued by their relatives and neighbours. These lifesaving activities play a very significant role in highlighting the importance of a community-based disaster response. • Training on disaster management for radio staff and community; community members are the first ones to be exposed to the effects of a disaster. They have the most to gain if they can reduce the impact of disasters on their community. • Training community radio stations on coordinating relief activity and providing information updates. • More handbooks/manuals on how collectives can respond, especially regarding complex issues around timing.

Conclusion Many of these challenges continue to exist in South Asia even today, handicapping both the pace and scope of community radio in addressing disaster preparedness. Restrictive legislation: While governments in South Asia have increasingly acknowledged community radio’s potential to reckon with disaster, supply mechanisms have yet to keep pace with demand. It took the Mandakani Ki Awaz community radio station in India four years to get its licence application cleared. Although the station was in a state of readiness when the Mandakini River flooded its banks in June 2013, the clearances were not given until almost a year after the tragedy struck. Efforts from community radio advocates to enable emergency radio licences to be issued during times of disaster (and where there is no local community radio station) continue to be abortive in countries like Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. In the aftermath of the July 2010 floods in Pakistan, which left 1,984 people dead and more than 1.6  million homes destroyed, AMARC Asia-Pacific members undertook a mission to the country in partnership with the Pakistan

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Press Federation. The mission found that while existing local FM radio stations played an important role in flood response, there were gaps in the provision of relevant local information in some of the severely and moderately affected communities, underlining the case of community-based emergency radio stations. The mission recommended that, during the early recovery phase, there was a need to establish at least 30 non-commercial flood relief radio stations on a pilot basis, to be run by and for the communities themselves, at a more local level than the existing local FM radio services. Local NGOs and CBOs would be the local implementing partners and managing agents within a framework to be agreed upon by the National Disaster Management Agency. Priority should be given to severely affected communities outside the core coverage zone of existing local FM radio services. The mission requested the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) and Government of Pakistan allow the rapid establishment of these services, the commencement of which could be enabled under the existing regulatory category of specialised subject licence. However, both emergency radio and community radio remain elusive in the country. Similarly, after the floods in North Bihar in 2008, efforts were made to persuade the government of India to enable emergency radio to become a reality. However, those efforts proved to be abortive. Geographical restrictions also impede the potential of community radio stations involved in disaster management from reaching optimal levels, as the guidelines in countries like India allow only low-power transmitters of 100 watts ERP. There have, however, been recent exceptions, as in the case of Bangladesh. Infrastructure: Country- and sub-regional–based surveys have confirmed that several community radio stations continue to be stationed in earthquakevulnerable buildings. Moreover, there appears to be an absence of any backup plan in the event of a disaster. Community radio stations like Kalanjiam Vanoli have been compelled to suspend broadcasting for brief periods since operations started due to the collapse of a tower (once) and the burning of transmitters (twice). The experience of community radio stations in Bangladesh and Nepal is similar. In this context, the creation of a support fund at the country level to protect community radio stations against disasters merits consideration. Such a fund could be empowered to enable provisions for additional transmitters and sufficient backup systems to overcome any technical barriers. Against this backdrop, an enabling climate for community radio in the context of disaster preparedness in South Asia needs to consider the following areas: •

Expediting the licencing process for the setting up of community radio stations in disaster-prone/affected regions. • Facilitating institutionalised linkages between the community radio stations and mainstream agencies involved in early warning systems at the national, state, and district level to provide legitimate and localised information on disasters; such linkages need to ensure the primacy of community-based/ local information. • Facilitating a learning-sharing network of community radio stations involved in disaster preparedness and mitigation.

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•

Supporting capacity-building of community radio broadcasters in disaster preparedness. • Advocating for an “emergency relief fund” to protect infrastructural breakdowns of community radio stations during times of disaster. • Emphasising the relevance of emergency community radio licences along the lines of temporary radio licences provided by the Japanese government. Finally, community radio stations in South Asia need to learn from the experiences of other regions of the world, especially in the context of the following areas. Information exchange through publications and relevant communication support material: Documentation and training material produced by community radio stations in Southeast and East Asia merits scrutiny and strategic adaptation. For instance, the AMARC Japan Working Group and JICA Hyogo/ DRLC have produced disaster management audio materials (DMAM) for community radio broadcasting, which contain, on a single CD-ROM, 193 audio files and transcripts in nine languages (English, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Tagalog) for broadcasting on community radio stations when four types of disasters (earthquakes, tsunami, landslides, and floods) occur. DMAM can be used to: • •

Map the potential of disaster threats and climate change Map the potential resources of the community – natural resources, infrastructure, information and communication systems, transportation, energy, and human resources

While there remains a dearth of publication materials and manuals on good practices in the context of community radio and disaster preparedness within South Asia, there have been a few publications that merit appropriate adaptation, translation, and dissemination. The Guidelines for the Production of Radio Programmes on Disaster Risk Management brought out by ACORAB Nepal in 2010 is a case in point. Cross-country/cross-regional exchange/exposure visits and collaboration: The collaboration between the DHAN Foundation, India, and the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System for Africa and Asia (RIMES), Thailand, is an appropriate example. The partnership facilitated institutionalising the applications of risk information in decision-making, training, and capacity development on disaster management. During Cyclone Nilam in early November  2012, which hit Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu in South India, the comprehensive weather information from RIMES was critical in disseminating cyclone information, not just via the community radio stations but across DHAN’s other ICT centres in the coastal districts. There also needs to be a greater impetus given to cross-country learning through visits between different community radio stations. Combined media models and networks: Even as initiatives like ARRnet merit consideration in terms of adaptation, community radio stations in South Asia

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need also to explore more linkages with mobile telephony so as to address challenges of scale and reach.

Notes 1 From http://imaginationforpeople.org/en/project/doko-radio/: Doko Radio started off on its first journey on March 16, 2007, in Barpak, a VDC in Gorkha District in Nepal. With the Antenna Foundation Network (AFN), the Doko Radio team (suitcase radio) travels to remote areas of Nepal, carrying simple radio equipment to be used in producing local radio programmes and transmitting them locally. The team is stationed for approximately a week in each location to provide ample time for the technology to be absorbed by the locals. Doko visits enable local community members to talk about their issues. The programmes produced and aired during Doko events focus on pertinent local issues, such as tourism, agriculture, public service delivery, and local democracy. Doko locations are chosen based on their lack of any prominent national (SW) or local (FM) radio waves, touching the lives of more than 50,000 rural community people. 2 From www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un_gXqN-XnY: e-tuk tuk Kothmale Community Radio. 3 This information was provided by Radio Kalanjiam’s Station Manager, Naguveer Prakash, and is available at the radio station.

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Box 10  World Radio Day 2016: CR for emergency and disaster For the radio sector, in particular, strategic partnerships involving the three tiers of broadcasting  – the public service broadcaster, private FM channels, and CR – needed to be built, as each tier ought to leverage the strengths of the others in times of emergency and disaster. The panellists articulated this at UNESCO’s celebration of World Radio Day 2016 in India, which took place in New Delhi on 16 February 2016. The theme of this regional event ‘Radio in Times of Emergency and Disaster’ was particularly relevant for the South Asian context, where radio has played a key role in disaster management (DM) and relief operations during the recent floods in Tamil Nadu, the Nepal earthquake, and droughts and cyclones in Bangladesh. Organized by UNESCO in partnership with the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), AMARC Asia-Pacific and the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, the World Radio Day event in New Delhi brought together around 100 stakeholders, including representatives of the Government of India, regional development organizations, UN agencies, NGOs working on media development and DM, and research and academic institutions. The programme consisted of an inaugural session; experts’ presentations on the use of CR for DM; a high-level panel discussion on the theme ‘Radio in Times of Emergency and Disaster’; and testimonials from community members about the efficacy of CR stations during emergencies. The inaugural session began with opening remarks from representatives of the organizing partners, and was followed by guest addresses by senior Government officials and domain experts: Ms R Jaya, Joint Secretary (Broadcasting), Ministry of Information and Broadcasting; Dr Anil Kumar Gupta, Head (Policy Planning Division) and Head (Training Management Cell), National Institute of Disaster Management, Ministry of Home Affairs; and Mr  Devendra Tak, National Manager (Media and Communication), Save the Children. The panellists agreed on the need to map disaster-prone areas more effectively and build stronger linkages between the media, the local administration and agencies involved with emergency response, aid and relief. While there is a clear need to integrate CR into disaster preparedness and response plans formally, supporting interventions such as the capacitybuilding of CR stations for DM and a review of existing frequency allocation plans to accommodate contingencies such as natural disasters should also be considered. The second part of the programme included experts’ presentations about the actual field experience of using CR for DM. Mr Suman Basnet,

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Regional Coordinator, AMARC Asia-Pacific, described how CR stations in Nepal had responded to the earthquakes and aftershocks of 2015 and had supported post-disaster rehabilitation efforts. Several CR stations had suffered extensive damage but had continued their broadcasts from makeshift shelters and camps. Floods in India were the focus of two subsequent presentations. Mr John Nelson, the Station Manager of India’s first ‘emergency radio’ in the Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu, set up at the height of the catastrophic floods of 2016, shared his experience of mobilising community members and broadcasting from a disaster zone. A different experience of working in flood-prone regions was recounted by Mr N Ramakrishnan, Executive Director of Ideosync Media Combine, who discussed Ideosync’s work on building the capacity of CR stations in Uttarakhand for disaster preparedness. A consortium of stations that sought to promote environmental protection through local interventions and advocacy was formed. A team presentation by Gurgaon Ki Awaaz drew attention to CR stations’ creation of social capital, local solidarity, and offline spaces for engagement as an organic part of their role as broadcasters. The expert presentations were followed by a high-level panel discussion moderated by Mr Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a leading Indian journalist, political commentator, author, and media expert. Panellists included Dr Laxman Singh Rathore, Director General of the Indian Meteorological Department; Mr Rajeev Shukla, Deputy Director General, All India Radio; Dr Mitrasen Bhikajee, Head of the Natural Sciences Sector at UNESCO New Delhi and Member of the UN Disaster Management Team in India; Mr Bijoy Patro, Director, OneWorld Foundation India; and Dr Kanchan K. Malik from the UNESCO Chair on Community Media. The panel focused on the theme of radio broadcasts and information dissemination during emergencies and disasters. Panellists observed that it was important to integrate local capacity development into national disaster preparedness exercises and disaster-related communication methodologies. The event concluded with testimonials from the staff and community members of Radio Mewat, and the CR station of the Institute of Management Studies in Noida about the transformational role CR has played for their local communities, and the initiatives they had undertaken around World Radio Day 2016. UNESCO recognised and felicitated these initiatives as part of the event’s closing ceremony. Anirban Sarma UNESCO Source: CR News Vol. 7, No. 1, Apr-Jun 2016

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11 NOT QUITE THERE YET Sustainability of community radio in South Asia N. Ramakrishnan and Venu Arora Introduction When we began work on participatory communication in the mid-1990s we strongly believed then that community radio (CR) had the potential to be the single biggest game changer in the field of communication for development (C4D). It had all the elements that C4D practice in the 1990s in South Asia lacked: Community radio was supposed to be grounded in principles of participation; it stood for social justice and rights through community ownership of media; it embodied the bottom up approach – finally development would be guided by the voices of the people; and, lastly, CR would be sustainable, as it would be able to raise local resources and not be dependent on project funding or donor-driven agendas. Over 15 years of work in the South Asia region has shown the way for advancing media rights and contributing to the development of community radio. Pioneering work was done in Sri Lanka in the early and mid-90s. The Kothmale FM CR station was set up in February  1989 by the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation with the objective of providing information to more than 60,000 people who had been relocated as a result of Sri Lanka’s second largest dam project – the Mahaweli Irrigation Project. The Kothmale radio and ICT integration model supported by UNESCO,1 along with several other case studies, provided much inspiration. The Kothmale radio station was a regional centre of the national broadcaster but developed locally relevant strategies for community participation, especially in local programme production, editorial design, and broadcasting. Sri Lanka also witnessed technology innovations through the use of e-tuk tuk and radio in a box – mobile transmission and production hubs designed to reach remote and marginalised communities. These were lost to years of war and conflict, and Sri Lanka now has to restart its engagement with the idea of community radio. Nepal provided an open media environment for several years, and even today there is no community radio policy in the country. Yet there are over 250 operational community radio stations2 in this small Himalayan country, many in remote and faraway hills working with tribal and indigenous communities.

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Community radio in Nepal has been a pioneer in generating evidence through their everyday broadcast practice of responding in times of political and natural crisis. At the time of the clamp down on news in Nepal in the early 2000s, it was community radio stations that upheld the principles of free speech and democracy, braving political sanctions and enabling community voices to be heard, as well as keeping alive the flow of information using innovative means like traditional songs and other folk practices to create movements for change. In more recent times, they proved to be a lifeline for communities affected by the earthquake, providing vital lifesaving information as well as emotional and psychological succour to those affected. In India, the community radio policy came into being in 2002, allowing only educational institutions to establish community radio. This was then revised in 2006, broadening eligibility and allowing civil society in the form of registered NGOs to become eligible for CR licences. However, the policy retains elements of draconian laws, like the ban on news. Despite enabling policies, CR has seen fairly slow growth in India, particularly in view of the size and population of the country. After more than a decade there are less than 250 community radio stations across India, with some states, particularly in the northeast, not having even a single operational community radio station. The Bangladesh Community Radio Policy of 2008 took much of its inspiration from the Indian CR policy. Other countries in the region, like Bhutan and Myanmar, are contemplating community radio, albeit slowly and tentatively. Over two decades of work by activists and advocates of media freedom, community media and freedom of expression, with support from organisations like UNESCO, UNICEF, AMARC, CEMCA, Free Press Unlimited, and others, have generated much learning on the core philosophy of community radio as well as practical knowledge on how to engage with communities and enable local participation for local development. There are two sets of critical learning that are emerging from recent studies done, especially on sustainability of CR stations in the region (Arora et al., 2015). The first is regarding the impact of policies on sustainability and the advantages and disadvantages of having a formal policy for community radio. As is seen in the case of India and Bangladesh, in contrast to Nepal, the existence of a policy in many ways prevents diversity in the kinds of CR models that emerge. In Nepal community radio stations are managed by cooperatives, run by formally registered not-for-profit organisations, and, in some cases, managed and run by local self-governance bodies. In the absence of a policy in Nepal, the radio sector has thrived and developed a nuanced approach to community engagement with multiple ownership and management models. The policy-guided approach in India and Bangladesh has restricted the CR stations mostly within the development space, managed largely by NGOs that have a “development” mandate or by educational institutions. In some ways, this management architecture is closed rather than open, crippling the movement towards community decision-making, particularly in the institutional and financial management of the CR station. The second learning is regarding the institutional character of CR stations emerging in the South Asia region. CR stations in both India and Bangladesh,

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in comparison to those in Nepal, are less local media institutions and more an extension of public radio with a “service” or “welfare” oriented, information provision mandate. Their institutional characteristics resemble more a funded development programme rather than a grassroots movement for social change. This creates a fault line that needs to be bridged if the character of community radio is to be built on principles of freedom of expression and a right of the people to have a voice, as opposed to a narrower approach of providing access to development information. It is important to ensure prioritisation of efforts towards creating and supporting an alternate discourse on various development issues that impact the lives of the communities within the broadcast range of the CR station. It is when communities begin to see that their voices matter that they are willing to support the community radio station with their own resources. The sustainability research mentioned earlier, undertaken in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh, showed a number of ways in which community radio stations in Nepal were raising issues of service provision and right to access of basic amenities, requiring local officials to be answerable to complaints from citizens. The reports broadcast on the CR station forced action on the ground, and several examples have emerged from the research that show how roads and electricity poles were repaired, children from poor families entitled to free education got enrolled, and other similar obstacles were overcome by community members through their access to the local community radio station, which had created an environment where these marginalised voices could not be ignored by those in authority. The relevance of community radio is therefore quite clear given the contexts in South Asia discussed earlier. It is also clear that community radio needs to be sustained as a local media resource, amplifying local voices and prioritising marginalised concerns while also imparting information about critical development issues. The following two sections discuss a strategic design for ensuring the sustainability of community radio so that it performs this role over a longer period of time.

Strategic design to address CR sustainability challenges Gumucio Dagron (2001) discusses sustainability of community radio as three distinct but interrelated concepts: •

•

Social sustainability: This refers to community ownership of the station and participation in the production and airing of programmes at both decisionmaking and operational levels. Only communities that have “appropriated” a democratic communication process can make it socially sustainable. There is more to this than simply getting community members to use the equipment and present programmes. Institutional sustainability: This refers to the ways in which broadcasters function – station policies, democratic processes, management styles, internal relationships and practices, and partnerships with external agencies.

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•

The external environment, in particular the presence or absence of enabling laws, policies, and regulations, influences institutional sustainability. Financial sustainability: This is about a broadcaster’s finances, its incomegenerating potential, and how money is used and accounted for. This has a lot to do with the social and institutional environment. Communities that are involved in and identify with a broadcaster are more likely to make sure it has enough money to function. In addition, laws and regulations should facilitate broadcasters’ access to funding from local, national, and international sources.

According to Gumucio, social and institutional sustainability is the foundation on which financial sustainability is built; the three prerequisites are a tripod on which the sustainability of CR rests. Recent research (Arora et al., 2015) has further shown that a critical understanding of the key tenets of community radio needs to be created amongst community radio practitioners and CR management as well as the NGOs who support the CR stations. This requires capacity-building, not just in terms of community radio operations but also in terms of understanding ideas of media diversity and pluralism. The capacity-building canvas needs to be broadened when designing training programmes for community radio to include an understanding of how to deepen the engagement with and understanding of the media environment both nationally and globally and to ensuring that practitioners understand why community radio is at the centre of the discourse on freedom of expression. Research shows that media literacy does not form part of the general palette of trainings received by community radio practitioners in South Asia.

Challenges for CR sustainability We undertook a sustainability workshop in Bangladesh in early 2015 with 14 community radio stations. The workshop was supported by Free Press Unlimited and BNNRC. Conversations and discussions with managers and CR teams during the workshop clearly showed that most CR practitioners and reporters that attended the training equated sustainability with financial sustainability. CR reporters as well as managers were extremely preoccupied with concerns regarding resource mobilisation, especially as it related to paying CR staff and volunteers. A critical challenge to sustainability of CR stations is that of an increasing “NGOisation”3 of the sector. Most of the organisations currently operating community radio stations in South Asia are NGOs. They see the community radio station as a way to either increase the outreach of their development projects or generate resources for the NGO. Both ideologies are flawed when equated with the mandate of community media. Therefore, within a few years of operation, when there is a shortfall of funds to support community radio activities, there is a clamour by the NGOs for a policy revision to allow for sponsorship and advertising. While there is merit to opening up the possibility of revenue

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generation by community radio stations, especially through policy provisions, the context within which these demands are being made is not entirely in line with the core philosophy of community radio. Currently, NGO-run community radio stations are for the people, in that they broadcast information that is useful to the community, especially information on development topics; however, CR stations have yet to become of or by the people. To do this, the CR sector needs to revisit both how it is establishing CR stations and the participatory design and community engagement that are being followed, particularly during the early establishing phase.

Institutional design Community radio stations must be established and must flourish within the contextual realties of the communities they serve. Before the formal establishment of the CR station, there needs to be a process of dialogue and debate within the community regarding the opportunity for setting up a CR station and for defining its mission and vision. If a community radio station emerges from this kind of community engagement where, through discussions, the overall goals and objectives of the CR station are set by the community, which also decides how it will contribute to its establishment and growth – including by providing a community space for the setting up of the studio and equipment and for finding ways to support and sustain it  – there are more chances for the CR station to become sustainable in the long term. Very few NGOs that currently have CR licences in South Asia have followed such a detailed process with their communities before setting up CR stations. NGO management discusses the best possible location for the CR station, often keeping in mind access to NGO supervisory staff and other projects of the organisation as well as proximity to district headquarters. This distances the CR station from the community at its very inception. As part of the multi-country sustainability research we undertook (Arora et al., 2015), we conducted detailed interviews with staff and volunteers of CR stations. It emerged, particularly in the case of India, that histories and memories of where and how the idea of CR began and how it grew to be what it was today varied greatly between people who were part of the movement that fought for a separate policy and those who began working in CR stations that got licences after the policy. The core principles of participatory decision-making and community ownership, and essentially community radio emerging from the needs of community members, who then took on a wide variety of responsibilities at the CR, were more akin to the conceptualisation of community media as it exists in academic literature and theorising about community media fulfilling the mandate as the fourth tier of democracy. This stark difference further strengthens the ideal of creating several hyperlocal people’s movements before licences become available. Redesigning the institutional underpinnings of community radio is essential to its sustainability, especially in Bangladesh and India, where most community radio stations are emerging after a formal policy has been designed.

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Participation and community engagement Most community radio stations in South Asia have done well in terms of reaching out to their communities and producing programmes with local community voices. CR stations use a variety of radio formats and have call-in programmes so that community members are constantly participating in the content CR stations are broadcasting. This participation and engagement can, however, be further deepened at two levels, especially with a view to contributing towards the sustainability of the CR station: 1

By ensuring participation of community members, not just as a voice in the programmes or as talents on the radio shows but through an engagement for setting the agenda to be followed by the CR station in terms of its overall programming and broadcast strategy 2 By ensuring participation of community members at the CR management level to develop and design internal ethical policies and guidelines, including volunteer and staff policies, and also comment on resources and budgets A critical challenge for community radio in South Asia is the way participation is being interpreted. The interpretation of participation must be deeper and broader than just inclusion of the voices/sounds of the most marginalised in radio broadcasts. Participation and engagement in community radio must lead to ownership, with contributions from community members in the day-to-day running of the CR station. This is possible using a multipronged strategy: 1

Encouraging a volunteer-driven process rather than a salaried staff process for operations at the institutional level. This would provide opportunities for many more community members to give their time and resources to the CR station based on their own convenience. The CR station should establish a rolling daily or weekly volunteer roster such that many members of the community come into the station for a few hours to undertake tasks as per their own interests and capacities. This would require the CR station to be conveniently located within the community and to provide regular trainings for community members to engage in CR activities. 2 Undertaking the development of new programmes and ideas in partnership with communities at the programme design level, including developing detailed perspectives the programmes will promote. There are several training manuals available on how such a deepening of community participation and engagement is possible, and these can be referred to by national capacity-building organisations when designing such training programmes for CR.4

Diversifying funding Funding resources is a critical challenge facing community radio stations. There are several bottlenecks. The first challenge is the restriction in the policy,

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which, in the case of Bangladesh, currently does not allow advertising except for development-related sponsorship or advertising. Local advertising can be a good resource for a local community radio station, which can earn small revenues from local commercial or entrepreneurial establishment. However, as is evident in India, even with a provision of five minutes per hour of local advertising, CR stations are unable to generate the revenue required to cover their operational costs. This is especially true in cases where the CR station is in a marginalised or remote area where there are no local advertising prospects. Secondly, there is currently no independently managed national fund available to service the various needs of CR stations. Such a national fund could provide resources for training and help CR stations replace redundant equipment or undertake technical repairs; this would also ensure that CR stations can come back on air in case of a disaster. Community radio must be seen within a rights paradigm, and public monies should be made available to ensure that people have the “right to communicate.” Given the changing global information environment, voice poverty is a critical barrier to development and social change. The third challenge to financial resource development for community radio is more operational. CR stations in South Asia, especially in India and Bangladesh, and especially in the case of CR stations that are licenced to NGOs and educational institutions, are dependent on the parent NGO’s project-related funds. It is important to change this in a manner such that “mother” NGOs provide annual seed grants to CR stations. Large NGOs that are doing credible work in the development sector can generate regular funds to support the local community radio station they are hosting. Finally, there is a challenge for community radio stations to design innovative strategies to attract community contributions both in cash and in kind. CR stations must make it attractive for community members to contribute to community radio. This can be done through creating membership drives, stakeholder or cooperative structures, or in-kind contribution campaigns, which can generate materials that the CR station can put on sale to generate local resources. More operational sustainability guidelines are available later in the chapter.

Some strategic pointers 1

Policy: There is an urgent need to revisit the existing CR policies in India and Bangladesh with a view towards sustainability and informing other new policies that are likely to come up in the South Asia region. Several changes need to be made in how the policies articulate CR in order to place community radio within the freedom of expression paradigm rather than a development paradigm. In this regard, community radio policies must enable some of the following: • •

Allow broadcast of local news. Broaden eligibility criteria to enable other kinds of organisations, like cooperatives, self-help groups, trade unions, and others, to be eligible for CR licences.

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• Reduce licence fees and other documentation-related restrictions for smaller, lower watt CR stations or de-licence those with transmission capability under 10 watts. • Enable CR stations to raise funds from a variety of local resources, including local sponsorship. • Create an independently managed CR fund that would support CR stations with public resources for equipment and capacity-building, establishing self-monitoring and regulation mechanisms as well as specific kinds of social justice and public service content through a transparent mechanism for funding and grants. • Create systems by which, as recipients of public funds, CR stations are accountable to their communities and mandated to make their resource utilisation public. • Remove any technology restrictions and import costs of equipment for CR to make the technology affordable and cost-effective for use by the community radio sector. • Reserve spectrum for community radio stations within the overall spectrum allocation policy such that a minimum amount of spectrum is always available for community media. • Allow mobile transmission to address disaster-related broadcasts and broadcasts in times of natural calamities. 2

Social: It is critical for the sustainability of CR to have social approval and acceptance. There needs to be enough awareness in the social and development space about the potential and purpose of community radio. Through several workshops we have undertaken with operational CR stations in India and Bangladesh, it emerged that the CR stations could be better networked with other social platforms, movements, development agendas, etc. It is critical to have a strong stakeholder base that supports and provides resonance to some of the principles community radio stands for. In terms of a strategic approach to sustainability, therefore, it is recommended that a series of workshops and events be designed to spread awareness about community radio, its potential, and its mandate to a wide variety of strategically identified stakeholders. Stakeholders must come from the government (including different ministries and departments), the development sector (including donor organisations, multilateral and bilateral organisations, and large international and national NGOs), and the media (including public broadcasters, private and commercial channels, television, radio, and print media). Strategic awareness workshops must also be held with social movements and activists, such as women’s self-help groups; women’s rights movements and activists; workers’ unions and movements for workers’ rights; movements upholding the rights of alternate sexualities, including the LGBTQ; tribal and indigenous people’s rights movements; the right to information movement; and movements for the preservation of cultures and languages, etc. These workshops must be held at the national level as well as the local/regional level so that individual CR stations can forge links and partnerships with these stakeholders.

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Sustainability of the CR movement and the principles community radio stations stand for can be ensured only if strong partnerships emerge between the community radio sector and other strong players in the rights movement. Partnerships will also contribute to the quality of content and the perspectives that local community radio stations will be able to bring to the airwaves. These strategic partnerships with critical social movements engaging with social justice issues and raising a voice for the marginalised will enable community radio to gain credibility as the alternative third tier of broadcasting. This will also help community radio come up with a sound and style that is distinctive from the sound and style of public or commercial broadcasters. In one of the sustainability workshops we undertook with CR stations in Bangladesh, we randomly recorded one minute of off-air content from several commercial and CR stations. We were careful to leave out announcements and names of the CR station. When we played back these recordings, the CR stations were unable to identify which sounds belonged to commercial FM and which to CR. This is in part due to the absence of the strategic partnerships noted earlier and partly due to the absence of a sound and style that CR stations can aspire to evolve; this does not necessarily include popular film songs and music or traditional presentation styles as have been established by national broadcasters. 3

Institutional: As stated earlier, the establishment of community radio in Bangladesh is in many ways like an NGO/development project. CR stations have yet to develop as independent media institutions. While much of this is because of the kind of CR policy that is guiding the CR sector, CR stations have yet to evolve internal ethical or editorial guidelines. Development themes, rather than local reporting or journalistic values, guide most community radio programming. As institutions, CR stations are reporting to the “mother” NGOs, and there is a lack of transparency within the institutions. Institutional structures are hierarchical in most CR stations, with roles and responsibilities of various people not openly articulated, including roles and responsibilities of members of the management committee. Accountability processes also need to be strengthened. CR management seems to be accountable mostly to the “mother” NGO. Systems need to be evolved for the community radio station to be accountable to the community it serves.

This further reflects how the ownership of the CR station is perceived. While community members are on the management committee, they do not play a strong advisory role. Women and members of marginalised communities do not have space to articulate concerns or guide key decisions taken by the management committee. In fact, at the CR sustainability workshop, it seemed that management committee members could be more active and play a constructive or guiding role in the everyday practices of the CR station. Processes of maintaining minutes of management committee meetings and sharing these with staff and volunteers can also be evolved. Not all CR stations have their own

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independent bank accounts or independent accounting systems. This should be encouraged. Most CR stations do have a vision and a mission statement. However, these have not been evolved through community consultations; rather, they have been guided by the priorities of the “mother” NGOs. The vision and mission statements are also quite broad and have not evolved as specifically responding to the needs of the local communities the CR stations are addressing. Further, these are neither displayed nor broadcast on the CR station, thereby making them invisible in everyday discourse. Most critically, CR as an institution seems to be built on the lines of a nonprofit organisation rather than as a community movement (Arora et al., 2015). To break this mould, and because CR stations did not undertake an extensive community engagement and collaborative decision-making exercise at the time of setting up, it may be useful for CR stations to rebuild these foundations to ensure sustainability. CR training workshops should include capacity-building on undertaking community engagement and community mobilisation as well as training on participatory management of operations and redesigning vertical and hierarchical management structures to make them more horizontal and equitable. 4

Financial: There are two critical areas to be addressed in designing a successful financial sustainability strategy for CR: (i) Reducing operational costs (ii) Increasing diversity of funding sources

Most CR stations have a structure of paid staff and volunteers. Many volunteers are students and young people who travel from nearby towns. They are not necessarily community members, and most do have access to other media, including social media. These volunteers are paid a travel allowance, and those working full-time are paid a salary. This pushes up the overall monthly running costs of the CR stations. Research shows that in South Asia the biggest costs for a CR station are staff salary and volunteer honorariums (Arora et al., 2015). Such a financial structure means that CR stations are seen as a livelihood opportunity rather than an opportunity for voice and expression. If the CR station is unable to pay the honorariums and salaries, the teams working for the CR station will leave. Internationally it is well understood that this premise is unsustainable. The only way to strategically think of financial sustainability of CR stations is to provide through a policy public funds for set-up, equipment purchase, replacement and upgradation, training, and capacity-building. The local community must donate a local community space, and local funds should be generated to cover the costs of running the CR station. This is possible only if enough community participation and engagement have been created for its members to see value in the activities and broadcasts of the CR station. A sense of ownership and willingness to contribute local resources to the CR station is also possible

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when complete transparency is maintained and the CR station remains accountable financially to the community it serves. This would include making all donations and incoming funds available for scrutiny through public announcements and other means of display. Diversity of funding sources is key to ensuring financial sustainability of CR stations. This would mean that CR stations develop an internal policy for community membership and stakeholding, thereby creating space for community members to contribute financially to the CR station. Local advertising and public service announcements can also form a major part of its funds. CR stations may also need to develop ethical policies with regard to accepting advertising and financial patronage so as not to compromise community interests. Currently, very few CR have such internal policies. When supported by “mother” NGOs, CR stations must have a distinct and independent financial identity through a separate bank account. Good sustainable practice would mean that the “mother” NGO provides an annual seed grant to the CR station and the CR stations’ management board, consisting of community members, designs the annual budget allocations and is responsible for making the decisions regarding expenditures. Currently, many NGOs provide funds that are tied to different projects. These funds contribute to certain project-related development programming while also contributing to staff salaries. This financial structure is not viable in the long term if desirable CR practices are to be sustained.

Sustainability guidelines for operational CR stations The following guidelines have been developed as a result of the three-country sustainability research supported by CEMCA and UNESCO (Arora et  al., 2015). The guidelines have been structured under three broad categories:

Social sustainability  1 Undertake continuous research to know and understand the community better. Participatory research training for CR teams may be useful in achieving this.   2 Use various ways, including but not limited to public meetings, small faceto-face group meetings, wall art and paintings, on- and off-air mechanisms, and online media and social media where applicable to enable community members to articulate the purpose and goals of the CR station. Allow for discussions and debate in this regard.   3 Create spaces for engagement of all members of the local community and undertake affirmative action to include especially women and those who are marginalised.   4 Increase quality, rather than quantity, of engagement with the community. Ensure that community engagement is meaningful and leads to discussions and debates on critical issues that local media like CR could highlight.

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 5 Adopt participatory content creation practices for community learning and enabling community voice in everyday programme production and broadcasts.  6 Create capacity in community members to report on local issues and encourage and publicly acknowledge community members who show initiative, join, and support the CR station and its activities.   7 Broadcast in local languages and dialects.   8 Broadcast content and information of immediate relevance to the community, such as information on local issues, debates and discussions regarding matters of community interest, and news and other information that may have local importance.   9 Build local partnerships with stakeholders, such as civil society, unions and cooperatives, self-help groups, other local media like newspapers and cable television channels, local street theatre and folk theatre troupes, and local government departments. 10 Become part of national and international local media networks, associations, and fora where ideas, knowledge, and information on strengthening local community media are shared and collaborations are supported – for example Community Media Manch (www.manch.net.in). 11 Create national networks and online platforms like Community Media Manch for sharing best practices that currently exist in CR stations, such as volunteer policies, community engagement practices, and technical and equipment guidelines for staff and volunteers.

Institutional sustainability 1 Establish clearly articulated mission and vision statements in partnership with the community and make these easily available. 2 Create internal ethical guidelines that provide adequate guidance so that decisions are in the interest of the local community. 3 Build internal capacity to reflect on national and international issues in a manner that has local resonance and relevance. 4 Create regular capacity-building programmes that will enable CR staff and volunteers to understand the purpose and principles of community radio apart from training on content creation, technology, and broadcast. 5 Create internal policies that are reflective of core CR principles, such as gender policy, volunteer policy, and advertising policy. 6 Ensure that internal policies provide strong guidelines that strengthen editorial independence of CR broadcasts. 7 Create management and governance structures for community radio that are independent of the parent/supporting/sponsor organisation. 8 Make all management decisions, and especially those related to staff salaries, growth, revenue received through advertising and other sources, etc., transparent and known within the CR team.

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Financial sustainability 1

Establish separate financial management systems, such as a separate bank account and accounting processes, for the CR station. 2 Create mechanisms for transparency and accountability to the community where monthly income and expenditures as well as annual income and expenditures of the CR station are shared. These could be regularly displayed on the CR station walls or broadcast as regular monthly or yearly on-air bulletins. 3 Provide details and publicly acknowledge members of the community who are financially contributing to the CR station. 4 Develop ways to account for – in economic terms – the “in-kind” contribution of community members. 5 Diversify sources of funding and ensure that the CR station is not completely dependent on any one source of funding, including support from the parent organisation. 6 Funding sources could include community shareholding in the CR station, local advertising, development project funds, membership fees, core funding support from the parent organisation, government advertising of welfare schemes and other such public service announcements, etc. 7 Parent organisations must create financial structures where CR stations can independently receive funds from diverse sources and account for the same. NGOs/educational institutions are the parent licenced bodies for CR stations in Bangladesh, and they should create a process to provide core funding support for the CR station and enable CR station teams to independently manage expenses through community participation rather than provide piecemeal project funds.

Notes 1 Sri Lanka’s Kothmale Community Radio Internet Project http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTEMPOWERMENT/Resources/14651_KothmaleRadio-web.pdf (accessed March 26, 2019). 2 ACORAB data www.acorab.org.np/ (accessed March 26, 2019). 3 Vinod Pavarala in CR News “Whose vision whose voice?” http://uccommedia.in/news/ cr-in-india-whose-vision-whose-voice. [Editors’ note: See chapter 6 of this volume for Pavarala’s article on NGOization.] 4 See, e.g. UNICEF 2013, “Community radio: Learning the skills  – a complete manual for community radio trainers,” available at www.unicefiec.org/document/com munity-radio-learning-the-skills-a-complete-manual-for-community-radio-trainers (accessed March 26, 2019).

References Arora, V., Ramakrishnan, N., Fernandez, L. (2015). Community Radio & Sustainability: A Participatory Research Initiative. New Delhi: CEMCA. Dagron, Gumucio A. (2001). Art of Aerialists: Sustainability of Community Media. New York: The Rockefeller Foundation.

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Box 11  CR sustainability: a social, institutional, technological and financial conundrum Rejecting the generally perceived meaning of the word sustainability to mean financial sustainability, CR experts have called for a broader understanding of the term sustainability that also includes social, technological and institutional aspects. This idea was further underlined in the working paper titled ‘CR Sustainability’ written by N. Ramakrishnan (Ideosync Media Combine), Venu Arora (Ideosync Media Combine) and Dr Ankuran Dutta (Gauhati University) which was presented at the National Consultation on ‘Strengthening Community Radio in India’ on 11th April 2017. The core of social sustainability is the creation of a sense of ownership among the community. But the problematic position of CR within the social development paradigm lays emphasis on the station being a development initiative ‘for’ the community, rather than an unfettered platform owned ‘by’ the community. Stuck in the top-down approach, CRS often end up reflecting the power hierarchies of the local community and their parent body. This is further compounded by regulatory processes that only give licenses to registered parent institutions with no mechanism for community handover of the CR station. Restrictions on the content through monitoring and content regulation, limit the level of community engagement with the station. Several mechanisms can be put in place to ensure the social sustainability of a station. For sustained volunteerism, capacity building of a large number of community members of all ages, genders and socio-economic strata can create a large pool of volunteers for the station who can contribute less time per capita without sacrificing on other aspects of their lives. A mechanism for inclusion through gender policies, diversity policies, and a statement of dedication to affirmative action for the underprivileged can provide points of references to the station for self-evaluation of inclusivity parameters. Institutional sustainability can be strengthened through an articulation of a clear purpose and objective for the CRS and continual evaluation of its progress and direction. It also helps the CRS to have clearly codified transparent rules and systems that foreground the community’s primacy in decision making, content creation and feedback. Regular capacity building exercises in technical skills, content development, management and technology along with peer reviews among CR stations, can benefit the stations and strengthen their sustainability. Studies reveal a positive correlation between the financial sustainability of a CRS and the financial strength of its parent body. But these financially sound CRS usually rank low in community ownership and independence.

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Seeking multiple sources of funding can ensure that the CRS is not overly dependent on its parent body. A  revised approach to the CR Support Fund, with the set-up of an autonomous sectoral institution, would provide greater transparency and responsiveness of decision-making, faster disbursal of funds, and more sectoral impact in a shorter period. CRS should be encouraged to explore sources of local advertising revenue, and the DAVP should streamline the revenues payable to the stations for Government-distributed advertising and content. To ensure technological sustainability, CRS should check for modularity, technological redundancy and scope for local repair of equipment while buying technology. CRS would benefit from establishing partnerships with local repair services and doing preventive maintenance procedures like regular dusting to take care of their equipment. Regulatory frameworks can reduce tariffs and cost for CR equipment and advocate to expand local manufacture of audio equipment to make technology more affordable for CRS. UNESCO Chair team Source: CR News Vol. 8, No. 1, Oct-Dec 2017

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Part III CASE STUDIES

12 CONFLICT AND COMMUNITY RADIO IN INDIA Solutions possible and impossible Pradip Ninan Thomas The context The context for community radio (CR) in India is a rainbow of cultures, religions, and ethnicities. One breathes multiculturalism with every breath one takes in India. And this despite the continuing efforts of the saffron brigade to Hinduise India. This is a country that was at first colonised by pre-Vedic groups, then by the so-called “Aryans,” invaded by Alexander the Great, by Buddhist kings such as Emperor Asoka and Chandragupta Maurya, by a host of invaders from Central Asia, starting with Muhammed of Ghazni in the tenth century, followed by the Mughal Rulers in the fifteenth century and by invaders from the Occident – the Portuguese, French, and English. So, it is pretty difficult to avoid any of these legacies even if one wanted to. Sooner rather than later the cultures of India seem to catch up with you. Hindu pilgrims worshipping at a Catholic shrine, Muslim priests officiating at a Hindu temple, Sikhs worshipping at an Orthodox Syrian Christian shrine, classical “Carnatic” musicians who are of Muslim extract, flower-makers at a Hindu temple who are Muslim, and so on. And yet, and despite the “daily dialogue of life” and of life lived in multi-religious neighbourhoods, there is a sense in which these traditions of consanguinity are in retreat in the face of those whose “imagined India” is resolutely narrow. Post-independent India has been a witness to a number of fissures related to caste, religion, and ethnicity. And the issue is whether the CR movement is robust and self-confident enough to deal with some of these fissures at a local level in the immediate aftermath of communal conflict or simply involved in the building of local spaces that are open to all. Is the CR movement in India independent enough to deal with such issues, or is it beholden to the state and NGOs whose interests are in “developing” communities within strictly bounded meanings of development? What does this context of caste, class, religion, and ethnicity that every CR station finds itself in mean to the contemporary CR movement in India? If CR is crucially about “community,” what can it do to turn communities into relational communities? How can the CR movement in

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India come up with agendas for peace and reconciliation that are not prescriptive but reflect context and the possibilities for peace in context? There are no easy answers to these questions precisely because these are complex issues. And prescriptive, one-size-fits-all solutions will not work because of the great variety in the contexts of “communalism” and caste-related conflicts.

Community media in India In terms of diversity and variety of media, there can be few countries in the world that can boast a media environment that is close to what can be found in India. While community radio is nearly two decades old, India has been home to a variety of alternative media experiments, from its agitprop radical theatre for social change organised by the Indian People’s Theatre Association (IPTA) and pro-independence journalism in the colonial era to popular theatre, radical cinema, and participatory video, along with online activism, such as that of the feminist group Blank Noise and the Pink Chaddhi Campaign in the postindependent era. Constitutional rights, democratic polity, freedom of expression, and secularism have provided the pillars for both life and media in India, and these guarantees have been upheld for the most part by the rule of law. However, and in spite of such guarantees, memories of the history of occupation, the trauma of the Partition, and the fraught politics of caste, religion, and other markers of identity have continued to shape India’s engagement with democracy. Access to new media has of course increased the scope for both the “argumentative” Indian and a variety of opinion-makers and trolls who specialise in being apologists for divisive agendas. Given such opportunities and the tensions that arguably are germane to multicultural and multi-religious societies, it is not at all surprising that the state in India has attempted to prohibit the “broadcast” of any material that is deemed inflammatory or that demeans religious and minority sensibilities and feelings. After all, there is ample evidence from the Balkans and Rwanda that radio can be used as a channel to incite hatred and violence against the “Other.” However, with or without the use of the media, India has witnessed episodic paroxysms of rage against minority communities – episodes during which the public media, in particular, have remained mute observers.

The compulsions of inter-faith relations in spite of communalism Arguably, India’s tryst with democracy, secularism, and the rule of law has always been undergirded by the imperatives of realpolitik and the compulsions of majoritarianism and associated with a dominant politics as well as religion. The demolishing of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, the blood-letting post Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination in 1984, and the Godhra episode in Gujarat in 2001 reminded the world of the complex nature of inter-faith relationships in India. It also revealed India’s very problematic inability to stand by its constitutional guarantees related to secularism.

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What is particularly poignant about Ayodhya is the fact that this holy city had a tradition of inter-faith relationships that hardly anyone knew of outside of the city. In fact, Muslims and Hindus had co-existed for years in Ayodhya. A team of scholars who visited Ayodhya a few years after this incident had this to say: “Even today, despite the bitterness of the last eight years, the flowers offered for worship in the Ayodhya temples are almost all grown by Muslims. The Muslims still weave the garlands used in the temple and produce everything necessary for dressing the icons preparatory to worship. Until some years ago, the making of the crowns of the Gods was the near-monopoly of Muslim master craftsmen such as Rahmat Sonar and Nannu Sonar; the thrones for the Gods are even today made by the likes of Balam Mistri, a highly respected Muslim carpenter” (Nandy et al., 1997: 2–3).

Secularism Scholars in India have queried the very idea of secularism given the deeply religious nature of the Indian polity, while apologists for majoritarian rule have observed the close correspondence between dominant religion and Indian culture. For all its commitments to upholding secularism, even public radio in India (All India Radio, or AIR) has acted as a conduit for majoritarian culture precisely because it made equivalences between Hindu high culture and Indian culture. So, while Indian high culture was an acceptable framework for AIR, other minority religious cultures were only given space during key festivals. In my work on Christian broadcasting in India, this was cited as a reason for investing in Christian broadcasting, which was beamed into India from transmitters placed outside the country. Today, explicitly religious Christian groups have opted for online radio, for which there are no restrictions, although those with deeper pockets have invested in cable and satellite channels that have also, for some inexplicable reason, been spared the restrictions that have been placed on radio. There is evidence of inconsistency in broadcasting regulations related to religion. The turn towards a politics undergirded by religious nationalism has contributed to even more complexity and has placed in relief the tenuous nature of the project of democracy in India.

Religion, politics, and CR in India This preface is necessary because it provides an introduction to the “terrain” and context of community radio in India. While CR is meant to cater to the interests of “community,” those interests include all that can strengthen community, including religion. The issue is one of how one goes about “doing” religion on CR. The policy guidelines for the setting up of community radio stations in India clearly state that any organisation that is deemed to be explicitly political or linked to political parties will be barred from applying for a licence, along with individuals, for-profit organisations, and organisations “banned” by the government. While the guidelines do not forbid religious organisations from applying for a CR licence, they do, under 5. Content Regulation & Monitoring,

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specify that licencees should not broadcast content that “c. Contains attack on religions or communities or visuals or words contemptuous of religious groups or which either promote or result in promoting communal discontent or disharmony.” While an explicitly religious organisation will probably find it difficult to procure a licence, current CR licencees do include religious organisations that are involved in either development or educational work or both. The issue here is whether such licencees are fronts for an explicitly religious organisation, and it is of course even more of an issue if the front organisations that hold a licence represent a religious organisation that is wedded to an explicitly divisive agenda. However, in the short life of the CR movement in India, exceptions have already been made. Mayank Jain (2015), writing for the website Scroll.in, has highlighted the fact that the government has overruled recommendations from committees involved in licencing CR, resulting in government departments and other organisations being granted licences. “[R]eligious groups have long been receiving licences, despite the screening committee rejecting their applications. In such cases, the government manages to overrule whatever we suggest,” said a member of the committee, speaking on condition of anonymity. “There are many temples, churches and other religious organisations in India running community radios under the garb of being an NGO while we all know that they are not.” While doing a rather random survey of functioning CR stations, I came across a couple of stations that seemed to be run by local government departments in Madhya Pradesh – the Vanya stations set up by the Tribal Welfare Department and “Vanya,” the creative division of the MP government. While the intent is arguably good given government presence through campus radio, that in any case accounts for the largest tranche of licences under CR in India; this should not be a matter of concern. However, there is a counter-argument against the state sector cornering licences for CR given that this goes against the letter and spirit of CR. Here, for example, is a news item (Bari, 2011) on the launch of these stations in MP: It is perhaps for the first time in the world that a government has decided to launch a tribal community radio station with a view to ensuring their direct participation in the government. Such community radio stations will also be launched at Baiga-dominated Chada in Dindori district, Gond-dominated Chincholi in Betul district, Bhildominated Nalchha in Dhar district, Meghnagar in Jhabua district and Umri in Guna district. Besides, community tribal radio stations will also be launched in Saharia-dominated Sesaipur, Bharia-dominated Bijori in Chhindwara district. The MP tourism website mentions that a number of BJP bigwigs, including Nitin Gadkari and the CM of MP, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, were amongst many present at the launch of a CR station for the “Bhil” community in Bhabhra on July 3, 2011 (see MP tourism website). The presence of senior government

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officials would suggest that they see CR as yet another channel for government work, and it remains to be seen to what extent these tribal communities have become empowered as a result of their participation in these CR stations. Madhya Pradesh seems to be the state that has managed to expand and stretch our understanding of CR stations. Another interesting example is that of “Azad Hind,” a Bhopal-based CR station that is devoted exclusively to propagating the history, thoughts, and actions of Indian freedom fighters under the aegis of another government department, Swaraj Sansthan Sanchalnalaya, Bhopal, a cultural wing of Govt. of M.P. Again, this is a very interesting project, although it is difficult to understand the “community” angle. From these examples, it would seem that some CR stations have become a convenient tool for government propaganda for whichever government is in power at any given time. That this has happened in the little more than a decade since the advent of CR is indeed a sad indictment of the CR movement in India, although given the topheavy history of government ownership of public radio in India and the politics of CR in India, this is to be expected. Going through the list of CR licencees, I have come across a variety of stations that do seem religious, although it is difficult to ascertain whether any are fronts for communal or political organisations. The Prajapita Brah Kumaris Iswariya Vishwa Vidyalay (PBKIVV) that runs Radio Madhuban 90.4 FM located in Sirohi, Mt. Abu, Rajasthan, for example, is run by the Brahma Kumaries, a very enlightened, open, and inclusive Hindu sect. At the same time, though, it would seem that some of their programmes do contribute to the propagation of a larger Hindu culture – for example the programme Pathami Sanskrutam that is broadcast Sundays at 2:30 pm to “bring back the love for Sanskrit language among people” and Yogic farming during their weekly 7 pm programme Mera Gaon Mera Aanchal. Yogic farming is being promoted as a chemical- and pesticide-free alternative, although it does involve farmers practising meditation in their fields so that peaceful minds contribute to the nurturing of and caring for Mother Earth. While it can be argued that this is not “explicit” religion, nevertheless, in a context in which classical Hinduism is being propagated as part of a religious national agenda, one can raise the question as to what extent such programmes either wittingly or unwittingly feed into larger agendas. The same critique can be levelled at other CR stations in India that are currently being run by religious institutions. Many religious institutions are involved in really important social and development work that helps their communities, although more work needs to be done to explore the extent to which the ownership of a CR station by a religious body affects the tenor of the programmes on offer. While there are examples of CR in India being involved in bringing together communities, especially those that have been affected by natural disasters, I have not as yet come across CR stations involved in intentional initiatives aimed at dealing with caste-related conflict, particularly as it relates to Dalits and Dalit communities and the other major fault line in India, Hindu-Muslim conflict. It is clear that one of the roles of CR in a multicultural and religious context is to ensure that the commonalities, as well as the differences, between communities are celebrated. However, there is a need to differentiate between contexts – the

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breakdown in the relationship between particular communities and the contexts characterised by “primordial” struggle. While the former can be dealt with by CR, the latter – and I include both caste-related struggles and Hindu-Muslim animosities within this category – are a lot more difficult to deal with precisely because there is a dearth of “enabling environments” that value the need for “Voice,” voice-making, and the strengthening of relationalities and sharing as the basis for meaningful social change.

Theorising voice An important recent contribution to understanding the public sphere is the theorising of Voice, particularly via the works of Nick Couldry (2009, 2010) and others such as Charles Husband (2009), who have made a case for the right to be understood. In their way of conceptualising voice, its validation is linked to the human imperative to deepen the human tryst with freedoms and the fulfilment of the human potential to respect, listen, and understand the other through inter-subjectively defined projects. As Couldry points out, neoliberalism plays down the need for people to give an account of themselves and instead devalues voice while privileging the voices of power. In this context, Couldry’s (2010: 2) definition of voice as value and process goes beyond the traditional understanding of voice as simply the right to speak. “Voice as a value” refers to the act of valuing, and choosing to value, those frameworks for organising human life and resources that themselves value voice (as a process). Treating voice as a value means discriminating in favour of ways of organising life and resources that, through their choices, put the value of voice into practice by respecting the multiple interlinked processes of voice and sustaining them, not undermining or denying them. Valuing voice, then, involves paying particular attention to the conditions under which voice as a process is effective. “ ‘Voice,’ as used here, is a value about values or what philosophers sometimes call a second-order value” (emphasis authors). However, voice, in this way of thinking, is a normative ideal that needs to be resurrected “in the process of mutually recognising our claims on each other as reflexive human agents, each with an account to give, an account of our lives that needs to be registered and heard, our stories endlessly entangled in each other’s stories” (Couldry, 2009, 580). However, putting voice-making into practice is difficult precisely because caste in India is primordial consciousness and Hindu-Muslim animosities have deep structural roots. The Hindutva family of organisations has openly decried Muslims in India and questioned their Indianness on many occasions, and despite the best efforts by the saffron brigade to saffronise Dalits, major caste-based fault lines remain.

The Dalit context So, how does one envisage a CR initiative that deals with communication, peace, and reconciliation in the context of conditions characterised by contemporary forms of primeval conflict and traditions of humiliation? Hamelink (2011), in

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his book Media & conflict: Escalating evil, refers to the many acts of humiliation characterised by de-individualising, discriminating against, disempowering, and degrading people (4–5) in our contemporary world today. When an entire group of people have from time immemorial been humiliated as a matter of course ritually, socially, and culturally, humiliation is not an episodic instance of “evil” – such as the treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay – but an experience that is constant and cumulative in its impact and that accompanies entire communities from birth until death. The Dalits are discriminated against even in death. In India, in the recent past, we have had attempts at theorising the specific circumstances of the exploitation of Dalits. “Humiliation studies” is one attempt to generate a “new conceptual language” capable of capturing “complex dimensions of social reality” that do not fall within the purview of established social and political theorising (Guru, 2009: 19). Such interventions expose the fault lines in the social sciences in India, which are caught between the doxa of the academy and the perceived universality of received theory. So, at the outset, the context of caste is not the canvas of conventional war, genocide, or episodic conflict but a permanent situation that has not been drastically altered by the forces of legislation, education, and political mobilisation. While the agonistic public sphere is the basis for many dialogues in India, caste does not invite dialogue and is arguably anti-dialogic. In the context of alternative journalism, initiatives such as Khabhar Lhariya have Dalit journalists creating and celebrating Dalit consciousness and Dalit rights through a type of niche reporting that acknowledges all news that affects this community. When rape is acknowledged, routine humiliations exposed, and the identity of murderers unmasked, Dalit self-belief and dignity are strengthened and their collective consciousness enhanced. However, this change is by no means transformative given that these are acts that are routinely contested by the dominant castes who control the means of mediation. The issue, of course, in the specific case of CR, is whether there are enabling environments that are supportive of such actions. This is, in other words, a situation characterised by a permanent state of contestation. In the context of communication for peace  – and in particular its theorisation  – I  am not sure if sufficient attention has been given to understanding contexts such as caste-based conflicts, which are characterised by both lowand high-intensity conflicts that are expressed every day through age-old social modalities and reinventions in the context of modernity and globalisation, nor understanding the ways in which these markers of identity continue to structure contestations over the ritual, social, and material. Lower caste and indigenous communities in India and mobile communities like the Roma in Europe have habitually attracted primeval prejudices, and any reconciliation does seem like a very remote possibility. One can argue that peace as a necessary condition for communication is dependent on the state of the prevailing communication environment – in other words, a communication environment that is supportive of inter-subjectivity and inter-subjective affirmations of mutuality. A strong communication environment is one that is based on a culture of rights and that affirms mutuality.

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Community media in the context of conflict One of the scholars who has done extraordinarily important work on CR and its potential for peace and reconciliation is the Colombian Clemencia Rodriguez. In her 2011 book Citizen’s media against armed conflict: Disrupting violence in Colombia, which is based on fieldwork in communities that have been torn apart by drug militias, left-wing guerrillas, and state-sponsored paramilitary forces, she is keenly aware that community media are vulnerable and that their ability to “denounce and announce” is based on their location, standing, and connections with international networks and local and international social movements. Peace and reconciliation are highly risky endeavours, and it is therefore not surprising that in countries racked by violence, such as the Philippines, Mexico, and Colombia, CR radio stations and CR activists have been the targets of fire-bombs and assassinations. She is critical of professional peacemakers who expect community media to “do” peace but who do not give sufficient attention to the contexts of peace and the risks associated with such initiatives. She sees building trust as an essential element in bringing people together and recognises that the focus for CR and community media projects is not on grand initiatives but on redemptions of the everyday – an everyday that consists of going to school, going to the market, playing together, all things that get disrupted when there is violence in the neighbourhood – that have been disrupted by conflict. In her words, “How many processes of social cohesion, conversation, social bonds, new friendships, instances of getting to know someone, keeping up with someone’s life, agreeing or disagreeing with someone, are thwarted when people abandon local public spaces? When this isolation starts to occur, citizen media have a vital and unique role to play. By triggering communication processes that draw people back into their local public spaces, citizen media can help communities re-appropriate their spaces from the logic of war” (235). The building of trust is critical to the building of relationships and common values. In a more recent article, Omar Rincon and Clemencia Rodriguez (2015) explore how citizen media can be used to “tell the story of the Colombian war.” As I see it, such opportunities are based on the level of existing consanguinities, trust, political will, and mutual belief in the commonalities that unite rather than the differences that divide. Perhaps, in the present context in India, it will be difficult to engage with the stories of caste and Hindu-Muslim rivalries since these remain contested and contentious.

Towards an ethic for CR: respect as the basis for common values Clifford Christians (1997: 7), a professor of communication ethics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, has suggested that the basis for a contemporary ethic of communication could start from a recognition of the “primal sacredness of life” that binds “humans universally into an organic whole.” He refers to life in terms of created order itself and creation, the act of life-giving and life-making, as a fundamental characteristic of the natural world. Human

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beings, as a species that is indebted to creation, are required to reflect this fact of life in their own lives and to nurture and protect the results of creation, the natural environment, and human diversity. He suggests that, despite huge cultural differences amongst peoples, each community, tribe, association, and nation believes in something that approximates to the “sacredness of life,” meaning that the urge to protect, nurture, and preserve life, rather than take it, is a foundational impulse common to all communities. He calls this a protonorm, a foundational norm. Can the “sacredness of life” become the basis for common values within the CR movement in India, or are institutions such as castes, which are based on “difference,” inured to the worth and dignity of the “Other”? Common values, however, imply more than just private or public values. They consist of both public and private values, but with a crucial difference. While our pact with public values is largely taken for granted and almost systemic in nature, common values point to an intentional, shared corpus of understandings that contribute to the processes of relating to people and are geared to the making of relationships. Taken in this sense, common values are an extension of private values into the public domain – into civil space – the private values that we would like to extend outside ourselves towards the making of relationships. In general, common values point to the intentionalities expressed by the sum of attitudes, behaviours, beliefs, and expectations we take with us to our meetings with others. This becomes significant in our encounters with cultures, religions, ways of life, and people – our neighbours, for example – who are “different” from us. Common values are essential for the formation of community, whether online or offline. Mahatma Gandhi often referred to the need for “basic religion,” and by that he meant the common ethical humanity that undergirds expressions of religion but that is often hidden or negated by the politics and passion of religion. That is one way of explaining the basis of common values. However, common values also have roots in the social. This can be expressed in terms of shared social values that engender and allow for the makings and expressions of humanity. The human community is larger than any given religious community, and common values are the ties that bind people together in spite of real inter- or intra-religious differences. One can therefore say that common values have their roots in religion and society. The key to a trusting relationship between castes and faiths is the need for mutual respect for one another. Respect implies that although we are all different, there is something that is common to us all – and that is worth. Respect is about recognising worth in the other and accepting it implicitly. It stems from a recognition of the fact that I am who I am because of all the others I have encountered and will continue to encounter in my life. Acceptance does not mean a blind acknowledgement of difference – a serial rapist or murderer or, for that matter, a bigoted fundamentalist does have rights in a liberal society. While a convicted felon or bigot must have rights, it is equally important that such rights be exercised within a culture of rights and responsibilities. Respect implies that people have the right to be different, to think differently, to pray differently, to abide by world views based on faith and not Western forms of rationality as

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long as this does not infringe on their neighbour’s freedom to be different. In other words, common values make sense in the context of an underlying consensus on responsibilities. The granting of respect implies the recognition of the other’s human dignity. Respect is more than tolerance, for tolerance is, in a sense, grudging. One can tolerate but not respect. So, the need to work towards a society rooted in mutual respect is, I believe, a primary responsibility of the state and community. Respect is a non-negotiable attitude. The need to privilege respect is also based on the recognition of a very simple fact of life. Now this may sound opportunistic, but it is not. Look at the way life is structured  – the minute and the complex – in traditional societies and modern contexts and it becomes immediately apparent that functionality is the very basis of the structure of life. We generally, as a rule, accept our neighbour because the fallout of acceptance is healthier for all concerned than the fallout of non-acceptance. There is a popular television programme called Neighbours from Hell in the UK, which deals with the problem of difficult neighbours. Thankfully, such examples are relatively rare. Each of us has a responsibility for creating space for neighbourhood. It is definitely better to have a neighbour who respects you for what you are and who also recognises the consequences of accepting you as their neighbour. Now one can fashion a typology of respect ranging from one that is based on pure opportunism at one end of the scale to one in which respect is a kind of dharma or duty, a deep form of respect. It is that special something that stands out even in a context where human relationships have broken down and death stares neighbours in the face. We have heard so many stories of people in the Balkans, in Rwanda, in Nazi Germany, in India and Pakistan during the Partition, of white people in the USA before the civil rights movement, who did not conform and who adhered to the courage of their convictions that life is precious and that all people have the right to life. Their courage in the midst of hatred is a remarkable testament to the human spirit. Such instances of humanity point towards the possibility of organising life in society based on standards that we have yet to fully recognise. Each one of us is responsible for the making of common values. It cannot be otherwise.

Possibilities for CR in peace and reconciliation To come back to the contexts of CR in India, some of the conflicts that typically abound in India are difficult to deal with because these conflicts are primordial – enshrined in myth and tradition – conflicts that have been recalibrated within the globalised environments in India and given new meaning by religious nationalists across the board. Religious nationalism merely accentuates these divides – and here I would point out that it is not just majoritarian nationalism that is to blame for the violence but also minority fundamentalism. However, I  think that CR can deal with the issues that currently affect all communities in rural India, such as the issue of “land” in the context of the

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Land Acquisitions Act that in its present avatar does not even require the state to ask consent from farmers whose lands have been designated for expropriation. This is certainly a contentious issue but potentially a unifying issue given that all communities, irrespective of caste and religion, are affected by the state’s exercise of its right of “eminent domain.” The common enemy that is the state, private land estate contractors, and faceless MNCs looks formidable, although there are many examples of social movements in India that have faced odds and won, such as the right to information movement and the right to food movement. Surely access to land is the basis for life itself. And, in India, we have so many examples of people whose lives have been disrupted because of large dams and infrastructure projects, such as roads and SEZs. Surely there are ways in which the CR movement can help forge the unity that is required on issues related to land and livelihoods. In other words – and arguably – it would be far easier for CR to deal with conflictual issues that are “common” to all communities rather than with the many intractable and deep issues that are a lot more difficult to confront and deal with on a sustainable basis. I do not think we yet have the enabling environments in India required to facilitate sustainable engagements aimed at finding solutions to intractable problems. However, CR can certainly help in the lessening of low-intensity conflicts that are common to all communities and that arise out of the lack of access to basic resources and rights. This is by no means a lesser task for CR stations given that the lack of access to land, livelihood, and so many basic rights is often the basis for inter-community conflicts of one sort or another.

References Bari, P. (2011), First Korku community radio station of MP to go on air on November 1. The Siasat Daily, October 30. Available at: https://archive.siasat.com/news/first-korkucommunity-radio-station-mp-go-air-nov-1-227469/, accessed on March 25, 2019. Christians, C. (1997), The ethics of being in a communications context. In C. Christian and M. Traber (Eds.), Communication Ethics and Human Values. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage, 3–23. Couldry, N. (2009), Rethinking the politics of voice. Continuum, 23(4), 579–582. Couldry, N. (2010), Why voice matters. London: Sage. Guru, G. (Ed.). (2009), Humiliation. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Hamelink, C.J. (2011), Media and conflict: Escalating evil. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers. Husband, C. (2009), Between listening and understanding. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 23(4), 441–443. Jain, M. (2015), From forced Mann Ki Baat broadcasts to ban on politics, community radio in India is choking. Scroll, May 12. Available at: http://scroll.in/article/725837/ from-forced-mann-ki-baat-broadcasts-to-ban-on-politics-community-radio-in-indiais-choking, accessed on March 25, 2019. Madhya Pradesh Website. Available at: http://www.mptourism.com/tourist-places/placesto-see-in-alirajpur.html, accessed on December 20, 2018. Nandy, A. et  al. (1997), The Ramjanmabhoomi and fear of self. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

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Rincon, O. and Rodriguez, C. (2015), How can we tell the story of the Colombian war? Bastardised narratives and citizen celebrities. Popular Communication, 13(2), 170–182. Rodriguez, C. (2011), Citizen’s media against armed conflict: Disrupting violence in Colombia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Box 12  Voices for peace & change in South Asian region The UNESCO Chair on Community  Media (University of Hyderabad) and AMARC Asia-Pacific, in collaboration with UNESCO, International Media Support, Community Radio Forum of India and the Indian Academy of Self Employed Women, organized a two day seminar on “Voices for Change and Peace: Taking Stock of Community Radio in South Asia,” in New  Delhi on January  17–18, 2013. About  60 activists, academics, advocates of community radio (CR) as well as eminent journalists from India, Bangladesh,  Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan,  and the Maldives participated in the seminar. The Group included Ashish Sen, President, AMARC Asia Pacific, Bangalore, Vinod Pavarala, UNESCO Chair on Community Media, University of Hyderabad, Stalin K., President, Community Radio Forum, India, Goa, AHM Bazlur Rahman, Bangladesh Aruna Roy, MKSS, Rajasthan, Kalpana Sharma, columnist/author, Mumbai, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Journalist and political commentator, Delhi, Patricia Mukhim – Shillong Times, Shillong, Sanjaya Mishra, Director, CEMCA, Delhi among several other CR enthusiasts. The group noted that the CR scene in South Asia is as diverse as the region. India, which is home to about  145 community radio stations today, the majority of which are run by educational institutions, is grappling with a community radio policy that is almost a decade old. Despite having the oldest community radio policy in the South Asian region, the growth of the sector in India has been sluggish. Bureaucratic procedures, the formidable setting up costs, and the demands of building  people’s capacities for broadcasting, among other things, have been thwarting the growth of the community radio in the country. Nepal, on the other hand, has a  thriving community radio sector but remains to formalise a CR policy. Recent attempts in Sri Lanka to promote independent community radio broadcasting may finally take it beyond state-managed CR projects such as the Kothmale Radio. Bangladesh, with a few stations on-air, has been treading a cautious path,  seeing CR primarily  as a medium to address issues of development and disaster management. There have been active conversations in other  South Asian countries  like Maldives,  Bhutan, Pakistan and  Afghanistan about the exciting possibilities  that CR can bring into their respective national mediascapes. The Group articulated several concerns that make the emergence and sustenance of the third tier of community broadcasting in the South Asian region a  challenging task. Problems such as  restrictive policy frameworks, inadequate  allocation of spectrum for communities,  and the

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lack of a  sustainable support system are  among the issues that need to be addressed urgently for a genuine democratisation of media spaces in South Asia. Apprehensions over security arising out of the activities of a variety of non-state actors in South Asia have also contributed to a somewhat hesitant opening up of airwaves in certain areas. Urging the need for an enabling and equitable environment for community radio in the region, the group worked on a ‘Recommendations for a more Democratic Environment for Community Radio in South Asia.’ Report compiled by Kanchan K. Malik and Preeti Raghunath Source: CR News Vol. 4, No. 1, Jun-Aug 2013

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13 EVALUATING COMMUNITY RADIO An analysis of a toolkit for self-assessment Vasuki Belavadi The announcement in 2013 by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) at the annual National Sammelan of Operational Community Radio Stations that it was keen on introducing a process of performance evaluation of community radio stations (CRSs) generated much debate regarding whether it was the right time to do so. However, after a few rounds of discussions, MIB agreed, in lieu of an external evaluation of the sector, and in the spirit of colearning and improvement, to a process of self-assessment of the CRSs. By then, three toolkits for self-assessment had been developed by different agencies with stakes in the sector in India. MIB adopted all three of them as part of what it called a “peer review” process. This chapter examines the participatory processes that went into the development of one of the toolkits  – Community Radio-Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT). This toolkit was developed by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media team,1 and the participatory consultative processes and reasons behind situating it in the self-assessment, co-learning, and continuous improvement framework constitute this chapter. The author, who was also a member of the toolkit development team, simultaneously used action research methods to examine the evolution of the toolkit. This chapter surveys the methods and tools employed to put together the toolkit, the conceptual frameworks it draws from to develop the parameters and indicators, the transformation it underwent during the consultative processes and field testing, and the usefulness of the toolkit for self-assessment of CR stations in establishing a community of practice. Towards the end, it examines the potential for an online community of practice to bring CR practitioners onto one platform to share experiences and thereby lead to continuous improvement of the sector.

C4D and M&E: an abbreviated review Communication for development (C4D) and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are perhaps the most contested terms since they were coined in the early ’50s and ’70s respectively. In fact, Thomas (2014: 8) wonders if C4D has an identity

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and a tradition of theorisation it can call its own to make it distinct from other areas of communication. While one can argue that C4D has enriched itself by borrowing from several “isms” (Marxism, imperialism, feudalism, socialism) and schools of thought, such as feminist theory, Thomas almost laments the existence of several fault lines regarding the theory and practice of C4D, policymaking and implementation, and technocratic and managerial approaches versus people-centred approaches. Various critiques of Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramm’s dominant approaches, followed by the emergence of the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), were accompanied by a scathing review, particularly by scholars from Latin America, of the dominant paradigm approach to the practice of C4D. They argued that the dominant paradigm was philosophically guided by behaviourism and functionalism and ignored the socio-political and economic contexts in which it was being implemented (Sosale, 2002). Rooted largely in praxis,2 several Latin American scholars advocated a dialogic communication process rather than a unidirectional process. A  dialogic communication process required development researchers and practitioners to seek out the experiences, understandings, and aspirations of others to jointly construct reality and formulate actions. In essence, even the one-way model of communication was rejected by these scholars. No sooner had Latin American scholars objected to the dominant paradigm than scholars such as Lerner, Schramm, and Rogers acknowledged that their work oversimplified development by focusing on an individual while ignoring cultural specificity. The rejection/passing of the modernisation paradigm led to participatory approaches to development. This resulted in a change in the way communication tools were used for development. Participation became the key word. The participatory approach essentially incorporates the concepts in the framework of a multiplicity of realities. It stresses the importance of cultural identity of local communities and democratisation and participation at all levels – international, national, local, and individual. The report of the Belgrade UNESCO meeting in 1977 defines participatory communication as follows: •

Access refers to the use of media for public service. It may be defined in terms of the opportunities available to the public to choose diverse and relevant programmes and to have a means of feedback to transmit its reactions and demands to production organisations. • Participation implies a higher level of public involvement in communication systems. It includes the involvement of the public in the production process and also in the management and planning of communication systems. • Participation may be no more than representation and consultation of the public in decision-making. • On the other hand, self-management is the most advanced form of participation. In this case, the public exercises the power of decision making within communication enterprises and is also fully involved in the formulation of communication policies and plans (as quoted directly in Servaes et al., 1996: 18).

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Communication for development, as it is accepted today, is characterised as being people-centric, research-driven from the grassroots, and socially inclusive. It is about engaging with communities in bringing about a desired positive change in the lives of people.

Changing contours of M&E Alongside the changing contours of C4D, the methods employed to monitor and evaluate development and the effectiveness of development communication projects have also undergone a transformation. From a purely external evaluation paradigm, M&E has now come to be recognised as something that should be participatory, i.e. involve stakeholders in every step of the project, including monitoring and evaluation. Servaes et al. (2012) summarise three evaluator models followed by the funding agencies: 1 The expert-led paradigm in which an external evaluator takes the lead in evaluating a project. This is characteristic of most projects led by UNICEF’s MDG and the World Bank and mostly focuses on results. 2 The participatory paradigm in which community participation/leadership is key to the success of the project. This paradigm, they say, is often noticed in the frameworks adopted by agencies such as Oxfam, FAO, and the UN. A key characteristic of this paradigm is that, as opposed to predetermined objectives, indicators, and outcomes, the tools must be community-based, simple, easy to understand, and measurable. The tools and methods, too, should be developed by the community in question. 3 The mixed methods paradigm, which emphasises the participation of the community but does not open all aspects of evaluation to the community. This framework is flexible and allows for the setting up of indicators depending on the social context in which change is to occur (adapted from Servaes et al., 2012). Conlin and Stirrat (2008: 194) acknowledge that while traditional evaluation practices have remained relevant, evaluators are being faced with challenges like never before. Given changes in funding and management patterns, evaluators often find it difficult to assess if a particular result is a consequence of a particular intervention. With funding being seen as more for empowerment, evaluators are increasingly faced with challenges of harmonising the systems employed by the funding agency and partner countries regarding management and evaluation. While funding was once limited to a “project,” donor agencies have now begun to fund sector-wide approaches (SWAps). Normally phrased in the MDG framework, funding bodies and recipients look at a broad range of activities, including policy reform, interventions, and outputs thereof. This further complicates the evaluator’s work since attribution becomes difficult. Citing examples of the Asian Development Bank and the Ugandan Poverty Reduction Programme, Conlin and Stirrat (2008) assert that besides

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methodological issues, evaluators are facing a recurring problem: How far should evaluators restrict their activity? Should they restrict their evaluation to just one project or include other socio-economic processes? With the growing recognition that development is not just the result of one-time, restricted, appropriate intervention but an outcome of several other processes, evaluators are now beginning to include other stakeholders, such as NGOs and civil society organisations, in their assessments. While they are doing so, they have two choices: Either remain completely independent or give in to the “capture” of the evaluation process by the policymakers and implementers. If evaluators were to adopt different approaches depending on the context, it would certainly give rise to the legitimacy of the process itself. Will “interpretative” methods be accepted by the funding agencies, recipients, and other stakeholders? Will they be accepted by the various actors involved in development? These are some of the questions that keep cropping up. Hence, a quick review of the different M&E methods is in order.

Changing approaches to M&E The log frame approach has been in vogue for over four decades and has come to play a major role in planning, monitoring, evaluating, and managing international aid and development interventions. Tacchi and Lennie (2013), while mentioning that this framework’s use “is stronger than ever,” also critically analyse its shortcomings. They criticise this framework as inflexible and “bad at accommodating local culture, or at capturing unexpected or emergent outcomes or change.” This approach is therefore seen as having limited usefulness in complex situations since it stifles participation, reinforces relationships of power and control, and focuses on accountability, “reflecting an audit culture that seeks to reduce uncertainty to measurable goals” (Tacchi and Lennie, 2013: 117). Tacchi and Lennie (2013) further explain that the causal analysis and results frameworks have both been criticised for their emphasis on results, outcomes, and deliverables rather than the processes that have gone into the project. Even when some participatory methods like in-depth interviews and focus group discussions are included in the framework, community members may hesitate to speak to outsiders or even fully speak their mind. An exhaustive list of factors and assumptions, possible disagreements regarding determining factors, and biases that may creep in with the involvement of programme staff in the evaluation process further complicate the problem.

Participatory evaluation methods As observed earlier, participatory methods have come to be recognised as important in all aspects of a programme since the ’90s. Participatory evaluation is an approach where programme implementers are involved in all steps of the evaluation process. This method focuses on the “learning process approach” (Aubel, 1999: 8). The evaluation activity is concerned not just with the extent to which

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activities were carried out and the results thereof but also how those activities were conducted. In the case of community radio (CR), all those involved in the running of the station – representatives of the community, staff members, management committees, advisory bodies – must ideally be involved in conducting the evaluation activity. Based on the information collected, the lessons learned are fed back into future planning for and processes of the station. This way, the community radio station stands to gain and is more likely to provide better service to its community. In a participatory approach, the evaluator (acting as the facilitator and also a member of the community radio station, in this case) collaborates with other CR station stakeholders, designs the evaluation objectives and methodology to collect information, and develops recommendations for future use. Since it is possible that all community radio stations may not have the capacities or skills to conduct an evaluation using participatory methods, a toolkit that facilitates the process would make the periodic assessment easier. Puddephat (2008: 7) advocates a toolkit approach that sets out a series of indicators but allows the assessor to select those most appropriate for the environment. A toolkit thus developed could be used as a diagnostic tool without comparison. Puddephat also strongly suggests that indicators be tailored to the national context.

An assessment toolkit for community radio stations When it chose to develop a toolkit, the UNESCO Chair was certain that even the development would be participatory in nature. The toolkit to be developed would also be diagnostic and help community radio stations constantly improve themselves using the continuous improvement framework. This section of the chapter will discuss the process involved in the development of the toolkit and how it came to be adopted in other contexts. At this juncture, it is pertinent to point out that CR-CIT is not the first of its kind to attempt to help the assessment of community radio stations. The World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) released a document called “Community radio impact evaluation: Removing barriers, increasing effectiveness” in 2007, outlining the principles on which to evaluate community radio stations based on the praxis model. The goal of AMARC was “to understand the communication processes facilitated by CR, to highlight the effects of CR as well as finding ways to increase the social impact of CR in achieving poverty reduction and development objectives in democracy building, inclusiveness, good governance and accountability” (AMARC, 2007: 36). The document clearly states that the measurement of a CR’s social impact must be people-centred, that quantitative indicators do not tell the whole story, and that qualitative indicators are required to measure the impact of the communication process. In 2013, the Wits Radio Academy, South Africa, developed a “diagnostic tool” (The Healthy Community Radio Station, 2013) that uses a series of

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detailed checklists to develop a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of a particular station. It lays out five major parameters on which to check the health of a CR station: Mission and governance, management and staff, infrastructure and finance, programming, and community involvement. The tool mentions that the assessment could be taken up either by members of the staff or by somebody from outside the station or by a combination of the two. It provides weightage to each of the five parameters totalling 100 percent. The higher the score, the healthier the station. It is evident that the tool has been developed in the context of South Africa. However, the emphasis seems to be on managerial aspects, while some basic characteristics of a community radio station, like gender equity, local cultures and identity, and transparency and accountability, have been left out. A few years earlier, in 2009, the Radio Knowledge Centre, Community Radio Support Centre (CRSC) in Nepal released the Community Radio-Performance Assessment System (CR-PAS) (CRCS, 2012). Developed through participatory means – the consultation process involved over 95 percent of the radio stations – the toolkit allows for CRSC to assess CR stations on seven parameters – namely, participation, ownership, governance, programmes, resource structure and resource management, station management, and financial management. A CR station that scored less than 35  percent on these parameters was labeled as “failing to be community radio.” The grading proceeded from evolving CR (35–44 percent) to model CR (80 percent and above). The danger with the grading model is that it tends to create a competitive environment in the community radio sector similar to commercial radio. Community radio stations work towards creating an alternative public sphere3 for the unheard. It is possible that a competitive environment diverts the CR sector from its core principles of equity, justice, providing a voice to the voiceless and enabling horizontal and vertical means and processes of communication in a community. In India, until 2013, when the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) expressed its intent to set in process a formal review of the community radio stations in the country, a few CRs, funded by their parent organisations (educational institutions, NGOs, and Krishi Vigyan Kendras), had already initiated a process of evaluation. In most cases, the evaluations – mostly quantitative – were done either by external experts with funding from multilateral agencies that funded the setting up of the CRs or by the NGOs/educational institutions themselves to investigate their performance over a period. While not doubting the intentions of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting behind the initiation of the performance evaluation, one can safely infer that it was mainly to check for compliance with the policy guidelines and to assess the performance of the community radio sector as a whole. However, the UNESCO Chair’s approach was to develop a toolkit that would enable CR stations to reflect on their practices and processes to be able to offer better services. Given this background in the field of M&E and community radio assessment, the UNESCO Chair on Community Media set out to develop a self-assessment toolkit for CR stations with support from the Commonwealth Educational

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Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA). While preparing the toolkit, it was important to keep in mind the following: • • •

National policy/guidelines on community radio (national legal framework) Principles of community radio and practices (universally accepted) Principles of social and financial sustainability

The overarching objectives of this exercise were: • •

Develop a self-assessment toolkit for CR stations Create a community of practice for co-learning amongst stations

Conceptual underpinnings The development team (consisting of this researcher and two other members) was clear that the toolkit would have to be developed in a participatory manner. However, it also drew inspiration for developing the toolkit from the participatory practices and discourses prevalent in other sectors, such as education and management. The broad principles behind the development of the toolkit were the principles of continuous improvement, co-learning, self-assessment, peer review, and creating a community of practice. Continuous improvement (CI): Continuous improvement (CI) is a management concept. The need to improve, whether at an individual or organisational level, hardly needs emphasis. Management guru Deming defines CI as “[i] mprovement initiatives that increase successes and reduce failures” (Bhuyian and Baghel, 2005: 761). A more comprehensive definition is as follows: Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve products, services and processes to provide excellence and added value for the customer. It is important to emphasise that continuous improvement isn’t one particular system or specific way of doing something; it’s a mind-set, based on the knowledge that there is always a better way of doing things and therefore a journey that never ends. (From 4 Factors that Make a Continuous Improvement Program Successful, 2017) Co-learning (CL): Co-learning simply implies that participants investigating a problem reflect on the challenges and options available and find out from each other how their respective learning took effect in a given environment. While co-learning has been defined differently in different contexts, it is broadly accepted as “an integrated and community-based research approach to support natural resource management decision-making” as a means towards attaining sustainability. There is no apparent pedigree as to the origin of the term. The most frequent use of “co-learning” appears to be a process of interactive and experiential dialogue and collaborative interaction in a particular field with a specific objective (Law, 2011: 4).

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The characteristics of a co-learning relationship are that all knowledge is valued and that co-learners care and trust each other, reciprocate and share knowledge with each other, and, finally, learn from each other (Brantmeier, n.d. as cited in Rubrico, J.G.U., and Hashim, F. 2014). Self-assessment (SA): Self-assessment is a slowly but steadily growing phenomenon in the education sector. Some universities are moving away from the traditional method in which teachers assess students based on the latter’s performance vis-à-vis an assignment. As a practice, self-assessment is growing out of a concern that traditional methods have not been all that successful in developing independent learning and thinking (Boud, 1992: 186). In the management of organisations, self-assessment has yet to take off as a fully recognised practice. Some organisations, like big corporations that believe in continuous improvement, have begun to use it, citing the following reasons: • • • •

To find opportunities for improvement To monitor and measure the progress of improvement initiatives To create quality awareness amongst staff members To acknowledge best practices and reflect upon them (Teo, 1997)

NEF4 Consulting, in its booklet on conducting self-assessments, lists the benefits as follows: • Systematically examines everything the organisation does • Generates discussion that gets everyone involved in problem-solving and sharing good practice and improvement ideas • Can improve communication and ease disagreements • Provides an opportunity to celebrate and build on achievements • Gives a focus for improvement • Offers no hiding place for problems • Is inclusive and democratic • Links what the organisation does with the results it achieves • Encourages organisations to look at the evidence they have that they are working well Development of indicators is the most crucial part of the development of such a toolkit. Indicators are a way of measuring if the progress is as per the aims and objectives of the organisation. They are used to monitor the performance against set principles or targets. They also help in measuring to what extent the organisation has met goals and provide hints on what could be done to achieve them. While quantitative indicators are useful for measuring “how much” progress has been made, qualitative indicators help the organisation measure to “what extent” they have been made and, importantly, how to move forward. There are essentially four types of indicators – namely, input indicators, output indicators, process indicators, and outcome indicators (Danida, 2005). It is important that the toolkit contains indicators that reflect all four types to make it comprehensive and universally applicable at the same time.

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Policies and codes: a desk review A desk review of the policies and codes of practice from some selected countries with an active community radio sector was conducted based on the availability of policies, guidelines, and codes of practice (put in place either by regulators or community radio associations and related organisations) in the public domain. The review of policies, regulations, and codes of practice of community radio was fundamentally based on the principles laid down by AMARC and the Community Media Forum, Europe. The countries covered in the desk review include Australia, South Africa, Nigeria, Nepal, Ireland, USA, UK, Canada, Thailand, and India. The objective of the desk review was to get a ringside understanding of the philosophy and principles of community radio, which would, in turn, lead and help create a set of non-negotiable criteria. Both similarities and differences in practices in the nine countries were accounted for, with the hope that they would provide the basis for arriving at a set of commonly agreeable parameters for the toolkit.

Consultations The toolkit development team held two separate consultations: one with CR stations and another with CR experts, researchers, and advocates. The criteria for selection of the CR station representatives were geographical representation, ownership pattern, rural or urban CR stations, experience, and gender. The development team adopted the Charrette method (Glenn, 2009). CR stations first shared their good practices and operational realities, following which the development team shared the eight parameters that emerged out of the desk review. After detailed discussions, the consultation arrived at nine parameters  – namely, community participation and mobilisation, financial sustainability, technical management, participatory governance structures, volunteers, on-air standards of broadcast; policies and procedures, grievances and feedback from listeners, and content-sharing and networking. While most of the parameters were self-explanatory, the development team prepared brief notes discussing each one and also included an explanation of some of the terms where necessary – e.g. for the toolkit, the term “grievances” was being defined as “negative feedback” or complaints from the listening community of a CR station. “Feedback” was considered to be listeners’ responses to programming: appreciation and suggestions for changes and improvements. The participants, divided into teams, discussed and worked on the possible indicators for each of the nine parameters over a two-day period. They rigorously discussed the non-negotiable as well as cross-cutting principles, adaptation to specific contexts, nomenclature of indicators, wording of the options, and several other topics. Participants felt that issues such as gender, participation, representation of marginalised groups, and capacity-building should cut across parameters like community participation and mobilisation, technical

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management, governance structures, volunteers, and (station’s) policies and procedures. The development team created a draft toolkit and shared it with the participants for further feedback. During this period, the development team firmed up the parameters and indicators to further refine the toolkit at the next consultative workshop. A month later, the development team organised another consultative workshop involving CR advocates and stakeholders who had not participated in the first workshop, with the objective of validating the parameters and indicators developed in the earlier workshop. This workshop had eight experts, including advocates, capacity-building facilitators, CR support agencies like Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) and Panos India, and one expert on audience research from Australia. The remaining six participants were CR practitioners, chosen again based on the regional criteria laid out earlier. The second consultation focused on designing the structure, refining the parameters and indicators, and defining and describing ways of self-administering while ensuring that principles such as access, participation, gender, and diversity cut across all parameters. The second consultation emphasised the need for creating a detailed user guide as well as definition and description of indicators under each parameter and for creating a modular structure for built-in user flexibility and field testing it to further validate the parameters and indicators. Soon after revising the toolkit draft and releasing a version in the public domain, the development team undertook field testing in four CR stations across the country. The field testing led to the addition of a couple of indicators to suit both urban and rural contexts and null indicators (e.g. no policy in place) to make the performance indicator clearer. The important features of the revised toolkit, also released in the public domain, were that it contained the five “W’s” and one “H” on using the toolkit, a detailed explanation of what was labelled the self-assessment and peer review (SA&PR) process, a detailed checklist of the data to be kept ready by the CR station before actually applying the toolkit, and a detailed user guide, followed by the toolkit itself. By the time the revised version (version 2.0) of the toolkit was released, the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had set in motion the peer review process. A total of 67 CR stations that had expressed interest in the process used the Community Radio-Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT) to assess themselves. The UNESCO Chair on Community Media, of which the author is a part, later conducted validation and adaptation workshops in both Bangladesh and East Africa. CR stations from Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Tanzania participated in the workshop for East Africa. The objective of these workshops was to adapt CR-CIT to country context and modify the parameters and indicators as required. When the workshops concluded, CR-CIT versions for Bangladesh and each of the five countries in East Africa had been developed. The toolkit underwent major changes for East Africa to suit the socio-cultural and regulatory practices in those countries.

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CR-CIT: an analysis Community radio is a service that a community provides for itself through an institutional mechanism. Assessing its performance, preferably two years after it has been set up, is important to know if the CR station is moving in the right direction. As mentioned earlier, the UNESCO Chair developed the toolkit in a participatory manner, keeping the following principles in mind: • All key stakeholder groups determine measures to be used. • Parameters and indicators are developed to gather information on both short- and long-term measures to be put in place. • Results are used continually to improve systems. • Continuous quality improvement activities are integrated into all aspects of systems. • Performance and system measures are part of the continuous quality improvement process being assessed. • Personnel and relevant stakeholders have access to data. • Data obtained from using the toolkit inform all major decisions. Measures related to improving participation, especially from marginalised groups within a community, in programming and production, including locals as experts, having gender-sensitive workplace policies in place, providing orientation to various stakeholders on both internal and regulatory mechanisms, etc., are process measures. The CR-CIT provides such indicators throughout. Another set of performance-related measures linked to assessing programming variety, conducting capacity-building programmes, adopting methods to attract volunteers, managing simple maintenance tasks, etc., has been covered under various parameters. Indicators about assessing the CR station on adherence to regulatory mechanisms also find a place in the toolkit. The amount of locally produced content may be seen as both performance and process measures. In countries like India, where there are specific provisions in government policies/guidelines that at least 50 percent of content has to be produced locally, such indicators also serve as an assessment of regulatory measures. Maintaining archives for up to three months is another such requirement, although, in this case, the ideal would be to preserve archives since the inception of the CR station. Issues such as protecting against accidents and having alternative sources of power supply also need to be measured. Indicators to assess such risk management measures in place have also been included in the toolkit. A significant part of the toolkit is that, besides providing indicators, it also provides ideas and suggestions on which CR stations could work towards improving efficiency. Notes taken during assessment and goalposts with deadlines can serve as a ready reference and also be communicated to stakeholders to improve individual and organisational performance. It is these goalposts, deadlines, and the discussion that follows on how to achieve them that lead to continuous improvement.

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The Community Radio-Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT) is flexible (allows for modular application); has principles of participation, gender, and access – crucial for a community radio station – that cut across all parameters and indicators; and allows CR stations to develop their own goalposts and deadlines to achieve them. One of the most important characteristics of this toolkit is that it also prepares the CR station for an external evaluation if needed. Since the toolkit covers management, technology, programming, production, and revenue and does so within the framework of participation, access, equity, and other fundamental principles of community radio, working on the goalposts before an external evaluation is to take place would keep the CR station in good stead. A detailed user guide provides explanations for the inclusion of a certain indicator under each parameter and examples of how it should be treated during self-assessment. Any ambiguity that may arise in interpreting certain terms is eliminated by the explanation provided in this section. Illustrated examples provided throughout the user guide make it easy for the CR station to complete any pre-assessment work. The toolkit has four types of indicators. The first measures performance quantitatively. For example, under the parameter “content generation and programming,” the question, What percentage of people involved in programming at the CR station are from the community, is meant to elicit answers in terms of percentages. The higher the percentage, the higher the participation. This type of indicator requires homework, and the checklist provided at the beginning of the toolkit therefore prepares the station to collect such data during a pre-meeting. The second type of indicator is the one that provides multiple options. The more options a CR station ticks during its self-assessment, the better its performance. Variety in terms of programming, options available for feedback, and grievances fall under this type of indicator. The third type helps a CR station move towards the ideal even as it assesses itself. For example, if a CR station indicates that 50  percent of the people involved are volunteers, the ideal would be to move towards 100 percent. The fourth type of indicator is just a close-ended question that results in either a yes or no response. Does the CR station have internet connectivity? If the answer is no, it could mark it as a goalpost. The toolkit makes it clear that it is not to be used for impact assessment and evaluation by an external agency, although it prepares the CR station for one at a later stage. The adaptation thus far by six countries other than India has proven that the toolkit is universally applicable given that it is premised on fundamental principles, processes, and practices in the CR sector.

Communities of practice (CoP) The ultimate objective of developing the toolkit was the creation of a community of practice (CoP). Drawn from a principle of knowledge management, CoP is comprised of groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a

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passion about a topic and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis (Wenger, 2002: 4). Communities of practice connect people who might not have interacted with each other, provide a shared context, enable dialogue, and stimulate collaborative learning, resulting in the diffusion of knowledge. They also help introduce collaborative processes through which better practices can be implemented. CoP has been recognised as an important way of improving the chances of success through collaborative learning. CoPs can exist in a variety of forms and sizes and may include physical meetings and online networking, small or big, local or global, homogeneous or heterogeneous, depending on the intended/stated objectives (Wenger, 2002). One of the major advantages of CoP is that it is dynamic and tends to bring in fresh ideas and new interests, thus benefitting all members. This also results in presenting individual experiences and practices in a given context, critically examining those practices, providing suggestions/alternatives, and arriving at practices best suited to one’s environment. This approach enables the sector as a whole to grow positively and, in this case, empower community radio practitioners to provide better services to the communities they serve. Still in its embryonic stage, Community Radio User Experience, or CRux (http://crcitcop.uccommedia.in), is an online platform for CR practitioners, enthusiasts, trainers, and researchers set up as a community of practice for the CR sector across the world. The participation of CR practitioners, advocates, and researchers during development; the involvement of peers during field testing; and the training of a cadre of certified peers may all be viewed as tasks for building a community of practice. Co-learning occurs at every stage through an exchange of ideas and experiences, enriching both the toolkit and the perceptions of the CR practitioners and thereby the CR stations. CRux as an online community of practice has been set up based on the nine parameters in the toolkit and enables registered members to debate policy issues, discuss existing practices in their contexts, and share experiences so that peers from across the world can benefit. Registered members of CRux can launch new topics, respond to topics already online, share experiences and visual documentation of self-assessment, add and participate in polls, send personal messages to other members, and share interesting topics on CoP on social networking sites. CRux is moderated and, like most specialised CoPs, has boundaries regarding interaction and membership. However, since it is open to enthusiasts, trainers, and researchers, along with CR practitioners, the danger of exclusivity and insularity is minimised to a great extent. One of the advantages of CRux is the manner in which knowledge is shared. Since most of the members belong to a specialised domain, commonly used technical jargon can be freely used. It also has the choice of using a conversational form since it acts as a forum. What differentiates CRux from other fora is that it is not project-based. It is a platform based on processes and practices, thus creating the space for mutual engagement.

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CRux holds the potential to become a platform for the diffusion of innovative practices and processes and to expose members to emerging critiques of the sector, build relationships, foster networking, promote policy advocacy, and share intellectual resources, thereby strengthening the sector across the world. Good practices emerge from the interaction of members working collectively to improve the CR sector in their respective countries and indirectly contribute to the same in other nations as well. In developing and sharing solutions to mutual problems in a given context, the members enrich the sector while at the same time improving their service to the communities they serve. This assumes that every good practice that emerges out of CRux takes advantage of local resources and opportunities. Such reflexive exercises not only lead to a strong CR sector but may also help stave off any misdirected efforts at external monitoring by the state (Pavarala, 2015). Self-assessment toolkits such as CR-CIT and fora such as CRux hold the potential for the long-term sustainability of community radio and help strengthen it as an alternative voice that represents the interests of communities. With active engagement by the stakeholders of the sector, continuous improvement might be an achievable goal.

Notes 1 The UNESCO Chair on Community Media (www.uccommedia.in) serves as a knowledge and resource centre delving into the various facets of community media. 2 Simply put, praxis involves putting theory into practice. 3 For a better understanding of this concept, see Pavarala, V., & Malik, K.K. (2007). Other voices: The struggle for community radio in India (p.  208). London, United Kingdom: Sage. 4 New Economics Foundation (NEF) consulting self-assessment workbook: Measuring success. Retrieved from www.proveandimprove.org/documents/self-assessment.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019.

References 4 Factors that Make a Continuous Improvement Program Successful (2017). Retrieved from www.processexcellencenetwork.com/innovation/articles/continuous-improve ment-4-factors-that-make-a-conti. Accessed on March 28, 2019. AMARC (2007). Community radio impact evaluation: Removing barriers, increasing effectiveness. Retrieved from www.amarc.org/documents/articles/evaluation_2007. pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019. Aubel, J. (1999). Retrieved from www.alnap.org/system/files/content/resource/files/main/ participatory-program-evaluation-manual.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019. Bhuiyan, Nadia and  Baghel, Amit (2005). An overview of continuous improvement: From the past to the present.  Management Decision, 43(5), 761–771.  https://doi. org/10.1108/00251740510597761. Accessed on March 28, 2019. Boud, D. (1992). The use of self-assessment schedules in negotiated learning. Studies in Higher Education, 17(2), 185–200. doi:10.1080/03075079212331382657. Accessed on March 28, 2019.

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Brantmeier, E. (n.d.). Empowerment pedagogy: Co-learning and teaching, as cited in Rubrico, J. G. U.,  & Hashim, F. (2014). Facebook-photovoice interface: Empowering non-native pre-service English language teachers. Language Learning & Technology, 18(3), 16–34. Retrieved from http://llt.msu.edu/issues/october2014/action.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019. Community Radio Support Centre  – CRSC (2012). CR-PAS COMMUNITY MHz II assessing community radio performance in Nepal. Retrieved from www.amarc.org/ documents/articles/Nepal_CommunityMHzII.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019. Conlin, S. and Stirrat, R. (2008). Current challenges in development evaluation. Evaluation, 14(2), 193–208. doi:10.1177/1356389007087539 Danida. (2005). Monitoring and indicators for communication for development. Copenhagen: Technical Advisory Service, Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Glenn, J. (2009). Futures research methodology Version 3.0. Washington, DC: The Millennium. Law, D. (2011). The co-learning approach to capacity-building and training for security sector reform practitioners-including a toolkit of ten co-learning applications. Journal of Security Sector Management, 8(3). Pavarala, V. and Malik, K.K. (2007). Other voices: The struggle for community radio in India. New Delhi: Sage. Pavarala, V. (2015). Community radio ‘Under Progress’ resuming a paused revolution. Economic & Political Weekly, 1(51), December. Puddephatt, A. (2008) Diagnostic tools and performance indicators, Paper 1.2, HarvardWorld Bank Workshop, Harvard Kennedy School. https://studylib.es/doc/6192172/ chapter-2-puddephatt. Rubrico, J.G.U. and Hashim, F. (2014) Facebook-photovoice interface: Empowering nonnative pre-service English language teachers. Language Learning  & Technology, 18(3), 16–34. https://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/bitstream/10125/44378/1/18_03_action.pdf. Servaes, J., Jacobson, T.L. and White, S.A. (Eds.). (1996). Participatory communication for social change. New Delhi: Sage. Servaes, J., Polk, E., Shi, S., Reilly, D. and Yakupitijage, T. (2012). Towards a framework of sustainability indicators for ‘communication for development and social change’ projects. The International Communication Gazette (Sage), 74(2), 99–123. Sosale, Sujatha (2002). The panoptic view: A discourse approach to communication and development. In communication for development and social change. New Delhi: Sage. Tacchi, J. and Lennie, J. (2013). Evaluating communication for development: A framework for social change. Routledge. Teo, W. and Dale, B. (1997). Self-assessment: Methods, management and process. Journal of Engineering Manufacture. Retrieved from http://webdb.ucs.ed.ac.uk/operations/ honsqm/articles/self.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019. The Healthy Community Radio Station (2013). Retrieved from http://journalism.co.za/ wp-content/uploads/2018/10/healthy_radio_station_final_for_print.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019. Thomas, Pradip (2014). Development communication and social change in historical context. In Wilkins, Tufte and Obregon (Eds.), The handbook of development communication and social change. Wiley Blackwell. Wenger (2002). Retrieved from http://wenger-trayner.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/ 07-Brief-introduction-to-communities-of-practice.pdf. Accessed on March 28, 2019.

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Box 13  Manifold participation to be the headway for CR research Community Radio (CR) broadcasting has advanced from being a movement into a sector with guidelines for its operation and broadcast. Yet the sector remains under-supported in critical ways when it comes to diversity of participation. CR sector was born out of a fifteen-years need to give representation to marginalized and alternative voices. Thus it becomes important to evaluate the sector’s activities and check for gaps in the participation and diversity vis-à-vis different communities. Focusing on this aspect, marginalised Venu Arora, Executive Director of Ideosync Media Combine presented the working paper titled “Documentation, Research  & Evaluation” at the National Consultation on ‘Strengthening Community Radio In India’ on April  12, organised by UNESCO and UNESCO Chair on Community Media. The panellists comprising of Mr Shivaji Yadav, Prof. Kanchan K Malik, Dr Bidu Bhusan Dash and Mr Bijoy Patra took the topic forward and, highlighted the importance of the democratic circulation of information on capacity building, technology decisions and policy guidelines by linking it with the practice of documentation, research and evaluation. In this paper, documentation refers to the creation and maintenance of records about broadcasting and the ongoing operations of the CRS. It involves establishing facts, data collection, and coming up with new conclusions through well-articulated methodologies. Maintaining logs and tracks of produced content and contributions of the CR members, be it inside the CRS or outside of it, will help in overall research, monitoring, and reflections for the sector. It is important to engage with the CR listeners, volunteers and employees of CRS along with researching on the audience, their participation, and instances of social change that has happened within the sector. The paper presented at the National Consultation also proposed to widen the scope of policy research by emphasising on the need to study implications of national and state policies, along with the study of implications of the CR guidelines. Evaluation of CR efforts in terms of participatory practices and knowledge generation should be done on national as well as the individual organisational level to establish if the aspirations of the sector have been achieved or not. Evaluation of CR work requires setting different benchmarks which can be done by holding multi-stakeholder consultation processes to arrive at priority areas for evaluation. Partnership with researchers and institutions with specialised skills in research and analysis can help articulate the effectiveness of CR. Some work has been done by the CRS staff and volunteers to develop CR ethical guidelines, but this should be taken forward by involving multiple entities to create an

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identity for the sector. A self-regulatory body having the participation of not just CR members but also of academicians and, research organisations working with the sector will help in the evolution of policy guidelines that are distinct from state-run or commercial media. The working paper recommends strengthening the existing practices of sharing and learning within the CR sector, in concurrence with an emphasis on horizontal learning by deploying processes that facilitate exchange visits among different organisations in the CRS. This can be done through Self-Assessment and Peer-Review tools like CRCIT and the Self-Assessment Guide which would help in co-learning and continuous improvement. A CR Consortium should be worked on by the sector that will formulate a code of ethics that reflect the non-negotiable principles of the CR. UNESCO Chair team Source: CR News Vol. 8, No. 1, Oct-Dec 2017

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14 MAPPING MATERIAL MEDIA PRACTICES Sangam radio at DDS1 Madhavi Manchi In the past 25 years, India has seen an explosion of “e-solutions” intended to “solve” issues related to health, education, and poverty. Business corporations and governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGO), in varying degrees of collaboration with each other, have introduced myriad information and communication technology (ICTs) projects to rural and urban areas to induce “development.” In a rather alarming echo of a Lerner-esque (Lerner, 1958) notion of progress, a trickling down of technology continues to be hailed as an answer. Its enthusiastic cheerleaders emphatically state that increasing accessibility will empower users. However, past experience has taught us that while access to technology can enable users, it always occurs in contexts layered with power relations. It follows then that an introduction of media technologies tends to reconfigure these relations of power – some in subtle ways and others more overtly. It has been nearly 12 years since the Indian government legalised the provision of community radio licences to NGOs, facilitating platforms for the production and consumption of community radio shows via both narrowcasting and broadcasting. It might be a useful exercise at this time to understand how access might have translated on the ground. How are the capacities of the community interacting with these different media technologies “amplified” (Ash, 2012a) or dampened? Further, we need to explore how they may have complicated existing power relations (e.g. gender, caste, and class relations) or new ones that have been introduced. To take these arguments forward, I  propose that we require a little reorientation in our approach. Firstly, to map how the introduction of any media actually reconfigures power relations in a community’s life, we need to take a look at everyday practices, routines, rituals, and habits. Secondly, because the attempt is to understand how different media capacitate us, we need to study practices surrounding the production and consumption of media and not just its content. Thirdly, I argue that such an analysis of a media project requires a non-anthropocentric approach in which things matter as much as people. This chapter is an attempt to contribute to this line of thinking, and I develop these

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arguments using Sangam Radio at the Deccan Development Society (DDS) as a case study. This radio station is embedded within a larger biodiversity movement started by DDS and a network of women’s micro-credit groups, or Sangams,2 as they are locally known. Further, I  argue that the station serves important archival and mnemonic functions for the community. I  propose that the specific media practices that have emerged in this context tend to fray the processes of “cultural production” within what Joe Karaganis (2007) calls the “industrial organisation of culture” or the “culture industry.” Fraying, in this context, refers to the challenge that DDS poses to the homogenising tendencies of globalisation and neoliberalism. The next section briefly introduces DDS and its work.

Deccan Development Society DDS is a grassroots-level organisation that works with a women’s network of Sangams, or micro-credit groups. It was founded in 1983 by a group of professionals from various fields, who took over a rural development project initiated but abandoned by an industrial house (DDS – DDS Team, 2013). Today, DDS works predominantly with Dalit women in Zaheerabad, located in Medak, Telangana. Its work is spread across 75 villages and four mandals of Zaheerabad. DDS’s biodiversity movement can be classed as one of many that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in response to a growing worldwide call to reduce environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity. Initially aiming to increase food security in the region, it subsequently developed community-oriented programmes that sought to achieve various autonomies. These include food production, seeds, natural resources, market, and media (DDS -DDS Team, 2013). DDS has taken a strong stand against genetically modified crops, chemical-based agriculture, and mono-cropping. It has also been critical of the green revolution model of agriculture in India, arguing that it has “caused untold deprivation to small and marginal farmers” (DDS-Food Security: Four Major Steps, 2014). Sangam members have adopted models of agriculture that revive native landraces that have either disappeared from the region or are simply not grown due to economic unviability. Their models also revive traditional farming methods and cultural practices attached to growing native crops. The foundation of their programmes is made up of three guiding principles. These are gender justice, environmental soundness, and people’s knowledge (DDS – DDS team, 2013). Their vision includes reviving indigenous knowledge and practices that allow them to build a better, more equitable world. Thus, it matters not just what crops they grow but how they grow them. A revival of traditional seeds is matched with a revival of traditional festivals, folk stories, and folk songs. The Sangams, as micro-credit groups, have members pooling small amounts of money. These sums are then lent to members by turns. These loans are used to finance personal, agriculture, and self-employment ventures. Apart from microcredit, Sangams implement other DDS schemes in their respective villages. Each village-level Sangam is split into various committees and sub-committees that

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are charged with running individual programmes, thus decentralising day-today functioning. The DDS board has, over the years, assumed an increasingly advisory role and helps bring in funding, sponsorship, and collaborators for various programmes. Some of the DDS initiatives include a community grain fund; a community gene bank; a Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), or farmers science center; Balwadies (early childcare centres); and Pachasaale (The Green School). Pachasaale aims to provide a well-rounded education by including in its syllabi resources from indigenous knowledge systems. The Sangams have also fostered village medicinal commons, reviving traditional medical knowledge. The community also holds an annual Mobile Biodiversity Festival (MBF). The festival consists of a caravan of bullock carts, which travels to all affiliate villages over a month. With the visit of the bullock cart in each village, the members hold food and film festivals as well as village-level meetings to discuss their concerns/grievances with regard to their farming future. DDS has started a café called Café Ethnic in Zaheerabad, which serves millet-based cuisine and reaches out to the urban consumer. It also has mobile markets and has produced a millet cookbook titled Making Merry with Millets. As stressed earlier, DDS’s goals are enhancing local practices, resources, and knowledge systems, as opposed to those driven by commercial enterprises, government schemes, or other third parties. Keeping with this vision is DDS’s Community Media Trust (CMT), which is comprised of community radio and participatory video (PV) teams. It is an effort to democratise media and give voice to people who have been silenced over time. The members of the CMT come from the Sangams and play important roles in the creation and dissemination of media content. The unique feature of DDS’s community radio, Sangam Radio, is the content of its broadcasts and the close ties it has to the daily lives of community members. The seasons, rain, crop, actions, interactions, festivities, celebrations, debates, health, stories, and songs all shape the content of any given show. Sangam Radio emerges from the locales and the people who inhabit them and goes back to them. Sangam Radio has been a strong advocate for the introduction of community radio in India. It was one of the most active participants in the movement to establish a fair policy on community radio in the country. I turn next to a brief discussion of the non-anthropocentric approach – also called the non-representational approach – adopted in this study. The approach draws on ideas from fields like human geography, cyberculture studies, affect studies, and critical ethnography.

A non-representational approach DDS’s approach to biodiversity conservation can be classified as what Nazarea (2005: 17) refers to as “in vivo conservation or conservation as a way of life,” as opposed to “conservation by design.” In vivo conservation involves not only the preservation of plant genetic resources or seeds but also the excavation of knowledge, practices, rituals, and skills – cultural and agricultural – connected to these seeds/crops. It is thus connected to the community’s collective memory.

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It would be safe to say that these practices, rituals, and skills are embedded in the grime, sweat, and dirt of everyday life. They are not only symbolic gestures or utterances but are also embodied utterances and gestures. Sangam Radio’s embedment in the community’s biodiversity movement would then require the use of such an approach to this project. Hence, the attempt is to map media practices, people’s interactions with media equipment, and the processes related to the creation and consumption of media. A  nonrepresentational approach, as opposed to a representational one, allows us to create such maps of interactions and practices. It also allows us to bring things to the fore. Blackman and Venn make a compelling argument to substantiate this. Unlike a non-representational approach, “representational thinking,” they write, [A]ssumes that narrative, and producing a discursive representation of our research object(s), is enough to illustrate the mediated nature of matter, or what we might also call the “matter of mediation.” However, this could be likened to a particular academic and analytic training in attention, which excludes other ways of “noticing” and attending within our research endeavours. (2010: 9) In addition, the emphasis on things here is based on what Harvey and Knox (2014) identify as a rejection of the Kantian understanding of things. For Kantians, things, as perceived by human beings, are “the passive object of human appropriation” (Harvey and Knox, 2014: 4). A rejection of such a stance would mean considering a thing as a “subject of its own movements and capacities, existing independently of human being, unknowable and autonomous” (Harvey and Knox, 2014: 4). Further, such enquiry into things, they argue, stems from an “interest in attending to how things act back on the world, manifesting resistances, capacities, limits and potentials, and thereby challenging the normative subject/object dichotomy” (Harvey and Knox, 2014: 4). This argument resonates with the Spinozan (and Deleuzian) notion of the power or ability “to affect and be affected” (as quoted in Massumi and McKim, 2009: 1). To clarify, affect is “an outcome of an encounter between two or more bodies (which can be human or non-human, organic or inorganic), which either increases or decreases a body’s capacity for action” (Ash, 2010: 657). It is sufficient to say that all entities in a given relationship affect and are affected simultaneously. How can we use this to understand our relationship with media technologies, memory, and biodiversity? We find some clues in Andy Clarke’s idea of a cyborg (2003). He argues that cyborgs are not a phenomenon of today. We have always been cyborgs insofar as we understand them as human beings whose capacities have been extended by the technology they interact with. Humans, therefore, have always been inserted in a social, biotechnological matrix, whether it is with our phones, pencils, radios, or ploughs. These, in turn, lead to either “amplification” – as James Ash (2012a) calls it – or a dampening of capacities and also open up the potential for new ones. As he states elsewhere,

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“Technologies3 are worked into the practices of bodies and directly reorganise the perceptual capacities of these bodies” (Ash, 2012b: 188). If we were to accept this assertion and apply it to this particular study, then the question that follows is, What transpires in this community’s encounter with a community radio station, what capacities are amplified and dampened, and what new potentials are unlocked? Further, this study attempts to understand the shift in power dynamics within and without this entity in relation to the biodiversity movement. Lastly, it looks into what implications these shifts might have for notions of access and empowerment in the face of neoliberalism. This chapter draws on ethnographic data collected between November 2011 and November 2012. It includes conversations with key informants, whether as formal interviews or more informal ones shared over evening tea. These have occurred with individuals as well as in groups. They are supplemented by observations and field notes recorded during visits to DDS. The Sangam Radio team at DDS have been generous in sharing parts of their recorded and archival content – an invaluable resource for this project – with me. The team also kindly accommodated me into their everyday work schedules, and I have often spent full days at the radio station, becoming a part of the comings and goings within the station. Also included are some secondary data from the DDS website and literature published by the organisation, including annual reports and research papers. The next section begins with highlights from the history of community radio in India, drawing on accounts from Pavarala and Malik’s Other Voices (2007). It moves on to summarise DDS’s role in the movement for community radio in India and Sangam Radio’s ensuing transition from narrowcasting to broadcasting.

Sangam radio at DDS Sangam Radio was established in 1998 under the UNESCO-funded “Women Speak to Women” programme. However, it would be an arduous journey before Sangam Radio would officially make its first broadcast. Its fight is closely tied to the movement for a third tier of radio (or community radio) in India. It can be viewed as a struggle “for access to communication media and as a mechanism for social groups to reproduce their cultural identity, to voice their social and economic demands and to create new social relations” (Pavarala and Malik, 2007: 18). Radio as a medium has been monopolised by the Government of India and private companies. Commenting on the attitude of the Indian government towards community radio, Pavarala and Malik (2007) argue that the government has and continues to be hesitant in decentralising operations and refuses to free the airwaves to allow more public participation in the setting up of stations and broadcasting of programmes. Instead, they state, by announcing Phase 1 of the auctioning of licences to set up 140 private FM stations in 40 cities in November 1999, the scenario has shifted from a government monopoly to highly commercialised broadcasting (Pavarala and Malik, 2007: 27). Further, it has not permitted private FM stations to broadcast news or programs related to current affairs,4 restricting its use to just entertainment.

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In sum, a demand for an independent third tier of radio in the country has received a tepid response, a mere token gesture that has confined community radio to a “campus” avatar “that allow[s] ‘well-established’ educational institutions to set up FM transmitters and run radio stations on their campuses” (Pavarala and Malik, 2007: 27). As a consequence, a number of non-profit organisations/NGOs, activists, and civil society organisations demanded a policy that genuinely fosters autonomy and self-reliance and with which communities can set up radio projects, especially for marginalised groups. DDS, along with Sangam Radio, was one of the organisations that was part of this move. At the time of this study, the movement had seen some success. The government passed a policy that licenced community radio stations started by NGOs, including Sangam Radio. By 2011–2012, Sangam Radio had moved over from narrowcasting and had celebrated three years of broadcasting to its community. A  detailed account of this transition follows in the next section along with a discussion of the different radio shows the station produces. Narrowcasting to broadcasting: Sangam Radio is located in a village roughly 30–40 minutes away from the main DDS office at Pastapur. The station is made of local materials and effortlessly merges into its surroundings. The building consists of a reception area, a small meeting room, and a recording studio attached to the control room. Within the control room is a computer as well as a mixer, microphones, and recorders. Also present are shelves filled with tapes of past shows. Content that is digitally recorded is stored on a backup drive. The recording studio is adjacent to the control room and allows for small groups of people to record at one sitting. After computerising their set-up, Sangam Radio began employing software called WaveLab for recording and editing and a software programme called Green for broadcasts (field notes, November 2011). From 1998 to 2009, Sangam Radio members, with a team of Sangam supervisors and programme coordinators, would make decisions on the type of content to be produced, correlating with seasons and local events. Through these years, shows were recorded and edited on audio tapes. Without a means to transmit to a large audience, the team would take the tapes to each village Sangam and play it back to the members. This way they took their radio programmes out to their community via a type of “analogue network.” After playing the programme in each meeting, the team would take feedback, ideas, and suggestions from listeners as potential inputs for future shows (interview with Geetha,5 November 2011). Sangam Radio, during its days of narrowcasting, would have fallen under what Ravi Sundaram (2007: 50) calls a “non-legal” domain. Such non-legal acts become a significant means of resistance in the face of the government’s response to a demand for community radio. With narrowcasting, Sangam Radio canned over 400 hours of programming on a variety of issues. Pavarala and Malik (2007: 180) note that playing cassettes back in meetings helped women reconnect with traditional crops and farming methods. Importantly, making the venture a women-run enterprise was not a perfunctory gesture of gender inclusion: “[W]omen also influence the nature of message production” (Pavarala and Malik, 2007: 239–240). The shift from

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narrowcasting to broadcasting required new means of producing and consuming radio content. This is described in the following section. Processes of content creation: At the time of this study, Sangam Radio was run by three women. Geetha and Sunitha are the two station managers and radio jockeys. Asha helps with the set-up of recording equipment, editing, and general maintenance of the studio. The station broadcasts seven days a week, from 7:00 to 9:00 pm each day. The slot between 7:00 and 8:30 pm consists of pre-recorded programmes. Audience requests are taken from 8:30 to 9:00 pm. These requests consist of songs or stories and past episodes of the shows. The songs and stories are from the folklore of the region. Locals acknowledged as experts on various matters are brought in to record debates, interviews, or discussions on their respective topics. Each piece of content is based on the crop, agricultural methods, cultural practices, and festivals of that season. A failure to broadcast shows based on the current season, Geetha states, would be of no use at a later date. She explains this process of creating shows: Now it is a season for sowing. We look at what crops are generally sown around this time. For instance, now is the season to sow senegalau (chickpeas), vomam (bishop’s weed), and aavalu (mustard). So, for the next fortnight, our diet consists of food cooked with these crops. We know that some villages yield a high rabi6 harvest, and some others yield a higher punasa harvest. For instance, village C has a higher punasa crop, so at the moment they find it difficult to get a supply of crops like vomam, senegalu, etc. On the other hand, if you go to say village P, their rabi crop is better. So we focus our programmes on what these villages do to get a good yield, how they cook these crops, what new recipes are possible, etc. . . . If we don’t do so while it is the season, then it won’t be useful for anybody later. (Interview with Geetha, November 2011) One more example reiterates this point. In a show called Mana Oori Pantalu (the crops of our village), residents from different villages inform their audience of the crops for that season, with tips and suggestions on agricultural methods. Mana Ruchulu (our cuisine/our tastes) focuses on recipes one could try with the millets/vegetables of a given season. Another programme, Yarralla Muchatlu (light-hearted talk or gossip between co-sisters), is structured as a light-hearted conversation between two women of a family. Through their conversation, they advise each other (and the audience) on topics like health, agricultural practices, and other cultural practices. The second method of content creation is through the participation of the Sangam members and other residents of the affiliate villages. Geetha explained that while anyone is welcome to record with them, Sangam members are more familiar with the radio station. Hence, they tend to bring non-members from their village to record programmes. Once a month, people from each affiliate village record approximately an hour of content, including songs, stories, debates,

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and more (interview with Geetha, November 2011). Apart from studio recordings, Sangam supervisors and radio jockeys conduct field recordings. Instead of village residents coming to the studio, the jockeys or supervisors go to them and record for the required shows. There is also a planning committee that sits down and helps decide the content for shows, especially around special occasions and festivals. It is similar to the committee that existed during the narrowcasting period, which was comprised of Sangam supervisors, CMT members, and programme coordinators. Inspiration also comes from daily life. One jockey created a radio debate on the financial independence women gained from participating in micro-credit groups and employment versus the exploitation of that income by some men in the household. The debate was based on a conversation she overheard on her daily commute to work. One more means of community/audience participation is through letters or phone calls of requests to the radio station. These, as mentioned earlier, are aired live throughout each day’s broadcast. The CMT and the radio team manage the daily working of the radio station. However, the DDS administration – usually the field officers and director – often weighs in on some decisions. Such interactions highlight some of the organisational hierarchies within the DDS community. For instance, there has been some difference of opinion on how to treat sponsored advertisements or public service announcements. Some members feel like the station could earn good revenue by airing them and have expressed this to the concerned administrative staff. This suggestion was made a number of times, but some team members feel like their views have not been taken seriously enough7 (field notes, September 2012). This incident illustrates how interpersonal relations are fraught with power dynamics. Similar expressions of power can be seen in our relationships with machines. The next section unpacks a few such interactions. The transition from tapes to computers: Around the time Sangam Radio received its broadcasting licence, it also moved to a computerised set-up for production and transmission. It has taken the team months of practice to edit with the ease they now have. Reminiscing about the early days of training, Geetha says, It used to be difficult, no matter how hard we tried. A cassette would play instantaneously when you hit a button. With computers, cutting it at the right time is easier, it’s neater. Things like a “fade out” and “fade in” are quite tough on an audio tape. With a computer, fade out, fade in, volume control, etc., are much easier. (Interview with Geetha, November 2011) Sunitha claims that jumping from one point to another is easier on a computer, simplifying editing. She explains that “on a tape, you don’t know which corner of it has the content you need. A lot of time has gone by before you find it (interview with Sunitha, September 2012). Today, the team looks back at these mistakes with amusement, but it seemed like a herculean task then. Sunitha

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relates this anecdote about making announcements between shows while on air: I was always afraid I would make mistakes while announcing. We used to record these announcements and paste it [sic] in line with the programmes. I remember one of our field officers was present on the first day and helped us out. We sat down, recorded, and saved the files. When we went back later to retrieve them, we couldn’t find the files. And this happened just as we sat down to do the broadcast for the day. God knows where they went [laughs]! I  just don’t know where they went! I worked on it all morning and even skipped lunch. I started at 9:00 am, and I was in a bad state at 7:00 pm. I wondered what happened and went home very upset. (Interview with Sunitha, September 2012) Sunitha took to making live announcements between programmes with her husband’s encouragement. She would make the announcements into the microphone and play the program from the tapes or computer. So she had to just line them up from then on. The team expressed that they felt joy, fear, and excitement in the process of mastering computer skills. One of the fears was of making mistakes with keyboard shortcuts, especially the cut, copy, paste, and save commands. Further conversations revealed that, on top of gaining computer literacy, language became a barrier to access. The team would use English language computer keyboards to spell out Telugu words. Asha knows a minimal amount of English, making it comparatively easier for her. On asking her how she gets around this, she says, I pick out the English alphabets based on the Telugu ones I need. I am a little familiar with English alphabets and how they sound, and I relate it [sic] back to the Telugu ones. So for [sic] e.g. if I need to write “Katha” (story), I use “Ka” and “tha” from the English keyboard. (Interview with Asha, July 2012) The same process is more challenging for Sunitha, who is not fluent in English. She tried teaching herself to associate the sounds with the corresponding alphabet. “I spell it out in my own way, and I know how I have spelt a particular word,” she says (interview with Sunitha, September  2012). She is aware that there are numerous mistakes but says, “I  understand how I  spelt it, so I  can understand it. It is okay” (interview with Sunitha, September 2012). On the one hand, this practice of spelling Telugu words using the English alphabet could be read as a creative way to negotiate the barriers posed by language and literacy. On the other hand, the English language keyboard is an indicator of biases that technologies continue to carry. While it has become easy to hand over technologies, make them ubiquitous in a community, and train people to use them, it is seemingly small issues like these that continue to reproduce hegemonies in terms of both hardware and software.

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Gee (2005) makes the case for an increase in the availability of software applications like word processors in Afrikaans dialects to make access to (digital) technologies better. “Access,” then, can mean not only varying degrees of ownership or availability for use but also ease of comprehension and the ability to learn the skills to operate them. The observations of Jo Tacchi et al. (2009: 508) in relation to a participatory media project in Sri Lanka substantiate this argument: The social and political contexts in which the technological and human intermediaries operate shape the processes that emerge. Local power relations and inequalities can simply serve to reinforce existing power dynamics or shift them in ways that benefit neither the wider community nor the most marginalised. This emphasises the need to pay close attention to local contexts and power dynamics and recognise that any introduction of new technologies and media will happen in richly layered social and political contexts, with or without intermediaries. While computers and recording equipment posed one sort of challenge, adapting the community’s folk culture to a recorded format for radio was another. This is elaborated in the following section. Adapting folk culture to radio: A special mention needs to be made of the variety of folk songs and stories and how some of these are adapted to radio. These have a long history in Telangana, even playing a major role in the Telangana uprising of 1946–1951. The station uses three to four kinds of songs on air. Sangam supervisor, Saritha, spoke to me about some of these songs, providing a rough classification of them. There are the chaitrika patalu,8 usually songs about the relationships between men and women. A bhootalli matha pataa is sung in dedication to Mother Earth during festivals. Further, there are songs praising political heroes such as Ambedkar. In fact, there is a collection of songs on his life and work called Ambedkar patalu. There are the uyalla patalu, which are sung by women and girls while playing on swings, depicting the stories of the gods and goddesses. They end with the word “uyalla,” (meaning “cradle”) at the end of each line. Another popular type of song is the peerala pataa, sung by Muslim mendicants. These are broadcast especially around the Islamic festivals of Muharram and Eid. The stories used are of three major kinds: Bicchapolla katha (mendicants’ stories), burrakatha (stories of the head/skull), and hun ante katha (“say yes” stories). These three types, like the songs, are indigenous to the Telangana region. The bicchapolla kathas are stories that are usually sung – a format similar to ballads. These storytellers hail from a particular caste called the bicchapolla, or mendicant, caste. They have for generations been singing these songs at events in upper caste homes in exchange for alms. The burrakatha is a very popular form of folktale that is also similar in format to a ballad. It usually occurs as a conversation between two or more performers – a narrator, a joker, and a political commentator. The reference to burra, or head, comes from the resemblance the performer’s musical instrument shares with the human skull.

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The third type of story is the hun ante katha. Consider this form in illustrating how Sangam Radio has adapted this to their shows. Here, the storyteller proceeds from one point of the tale to another only when the audience says “hun.” “Hun” is a sound or word similar to the English “hmm.” Depending on the context, it denotes agreement or a signal for the narrator to continue. Adapting this to radio can be tricky. So, while the storyteller at Sangam Radio sits in a studio recording a hun ante katha, another person sits in front of the narrator nodding or saying “hun” to help the storyteller proceed. While the “hun” response is not always recorded or heard on the radio, tiny pauses are often heard at relevant points when the recording is aired (field notes and sample recording from Sangam Radio, 2012). Often, the basic format of these songs and stories can be retained but have the lyrics spontaneously composed to describe a current situation or range of emotions, from happiness and anger to sadness and determination, amongst others. It can encompass encouragement, motivation, and a call to arms or satire. For example, uyalla patalu are often modified to express the importance of a girl child in the family and urge people to treat women with more respect (sample song, Sangam Radio 2012). Such adaptations played an important role in the Telangana uprising of 1946–1951. Many folk songs and stories, which have mythological or historical messages, were changed to describe the problems of the people and carry the message of the revolution (Dhanaraju, 2012: 3–4, Sundarayya, 1973b: 38). In a similar fashion, the folklore of Sangam Radio opens up capacities for a new kind of expression (e.g. Ambedkar patalu) or reconfigures old ones (e.g. uyalla patalu on the importance of the girl child) for the DDS community. In other words, the form of the song affords its singer, and audience, ways to express deep-seated sentiments. The capacities for myriad expressions become fertile, as I argue in the following sections, when such songs are transmitted via radio or video.

Community radio as communal archives Sangam Radio, as outlined, creates radio content based on agricultural seasons, folklore, and events, recording them on audio tapes and computer hard drives. These recordings become a vast community-based archive. Saritha comments on the archival role of the radio station. She says that “compared to the elders, youth prefer film songs. But with Sangam Radio, these songs are preserved, and both the young and the old like listening to them. They would have been forgotten if they were not preserved via radio” (conversation with Saritha, September 2012). Brian Larkin’s (2007: 78) observations on pirate media and “pirate archives” in Nigeria are relevant here. He argues that new infrastructural forms create and recreate conditions for everyday urban life. Piracy, in turn, “creates new kinds of archives inconceivable outside of this mode of media reproduction.” While this case is very different from pirate media and archives, what is relevant is how new technologies “organise sensory perception, provide new relationships between people and things and give rise to different forms of affectivity,

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sociability, and leisure” (Larkin, 2007: 78). Not only are these cultural artefacts recorded and archived but they are also played and replayed to the community through the radio programmes. Hence, the radio station also serves a mnemonic function for the larger biodiversity movement at DDS. It facilitates the community’s engagement with its collective memory and mobilises it for future political action. Thus, Sangam Radio works to “amplify” – as James Ash (2012a: 18) puts it – certain affects. His arguments on video game technologies can be extended to this case. He says, “[T]hese systems transport the potential for the reactivation of memories regarding an affective encounter or the potential production of new affects” (Ash, 2012a: 18). We could view Sangam Radio as such a system that creates and “transport[s] the potential for the reactivation” (Ash, 2012a: 18) of the collective memories of the region through its extensive use of local events and folklore. It allows the creation of new forms of expression, as in the case of the uyalla paata on the importance of the girl child or the retelling of a hun ante katha. The community radio’s recordings are now a highly coveted resource. A major television channel in erstwhile Andhra Pradesh attempted to persuade Sangam Radio to share their archives. They wanted to use archival material in a popular TV program that showcased folk songs and artists. This request was vehemently opposed by the community. They refused to let private companies co-opt years of their work and asserted their ownership over their inheritance (interview with Sunitha, September 2012). By contrast, Sangam Radio agreed to play public service announcements on consumer rights introduced by the government (field notes, September 2012). The DDS community often struggles with the commodification of their cultural artefacts at the hands of the formally organised media industry, both private and government, resulting in uneasy working relationships with them. Such relationships could be described as what Ravi Sundaram (2007) calls “cultures of insubordination.” Ito (2007: 105) describes them as practices that “produce alternative cultural forms that are disseminated through everyday peer-to-peer exchanges below the radar of commodity capitalism; they are a mode of cultural production that does not overthrow capitalism but operates in its shadow . . . and both relies on and disrupts the dominant mode.” These “cultures of insubordination,” then, constitute a slow fraying or chewing away at the peripheries of commercial and organised industries of media. They entail working in grey areas and margins to preserve alternatives to dominant and hegemonic systems.

Fraying the edges of the media and culture industry Joe Karaganis (2007), speaking on “structures of participation” in digital cultures, points out that digital cultures, like a lot of cultural activities, allow the embracing of new capacities for making and sharing cultural work. What makes digital technologies particularly different is that they “create the conditions for a shift in the organisation of culture, away from the exclusive reliance on culture

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industries to manage these transitions of scale” (Karaganis, 2007: 225). Further, he writes that digital technologies have done more than “encroach on the productive roles once reserved for a large-scale enterprise” and have in fact “broken open the carefully disciplined networks of distribution and promotion that makes [sic] cultural goods available and visible in crowded media environments” (Karaganis, 2007: 225). I find that Karaganis’s argument holds true for non-digital media forms like radio when their structures of participations change. At Sangam Radio, the lines between the traditionally assigned roles of producer and consumer have blurred. A structure of participation where a marginalised woman can produce her own radio show, share it with her community, and have an important say in creative and managerial decisions in the production processes could potentially upset the “carefully disciplined networks of distribution and promotion” that Karaganis (2007: 225) alludes to. This tension is most evident in the aforementioned incident of the private television channel pressuring Sangam Radio to access their radio archive. This argument is closely related to the next and final argument, which proposes that such media could become “collective assemblages of enunciations.” It also resonates with Felix Guattari’s notion of “free radio” and “post media.”

Guattari’s free radio and collective assemblages of enunciation Livesey (2010: 18), in his reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s work, speaks of an assemblage as a “complex constellations of objects, bodies, expressions, qualities, and territories that come together for varying periods of time to ideally create new ways of functioning.” Assemblages have a horizontal and vertical axis associated with them. Of interest here is the horizontal axis, which deals with two things. The first is a machinic assemblage of bodies, actions, and passions, and the second is collective assemblages of enunciations that consist of “acts and statements, of incorporeal transformations of bodies” (Deleuze and Guattari, as quoted in Livesey, 2010: 18). Guattari spoke of Italy’s 1970s radio project – Radio Alice – as one such collective assemblage of enunciation. In the mid to late 1970s, the then Italian government had a monopoly over radio airwaves (déjà vu?), with high levels of regulations on broadcasting. A number of pirate radio stations soon arose to challenge this monopoly. Radio Alice was one of these short-lived but prominent and catalytic pirate or “free” radio (as they referred to themselves) stations that the government saw as an “intolerable threat” (Padovani, 2011: 207). Their programming is described as a mix of poetry, far left politics, performance art, innovative music, and callins (Downing, 2004: 2150). The call-ins to the radio station, particularly, were described as a powerful source of information wherein callers phoned in to report events as they occurred. This allowed people to join marches and protests as they happened on the streets. It was touted as playing a catalytic role in the riots of 1977 in Bologna (Padovani, 2011: 206). Goddard (2013: 48) describes this as free radio’s ability to “create a self-referential feedback loop of political

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communication between producers and receivers, tending towards breaking down the distinctions between them.” Further, the totality of technical and human means available must permit the establishment of a veritable feedback loop between the auditors and the broadcast team: whether through direct intervention by phone, through opening studio doors, through interviews or programmes based on listener made cassettes. (Guattari, as quoted in Goddard, 2013: 48) It was these forms of media production that Guattari was inspired by, hailing them as the harbingers of the “post media” era. Considering this, I argue that Sangam Radio is a potential form of post media, with interesting parallels to free radio. Villagers travelling to Sangam Radio, jockeys and Sangam supervisors producing content through field recordings, everyday conversations inspiring debates, and audiences punctuating daily broadcasts with feedback or requests facilitate the “breaking down of distinctions” between producer and consumer, establishing that “veritable feedback loop” (Guattari, as quoted in Goddard, 2013: 48). It becomes, as Genosko (2013: 21) states, “[A] node in a complex media ecology that is sustained by micropolitics built upon experimentation that perfuses a social assemblage.” Goddard (2013: 50) sees such collective assemblages of enunciation as a cause for the panic on the part of the order of social forces because they begin to mobilise massive and unpredictable political affectivity and subjectivity that are “autonomous, self-referential, and self-reinforcing.” Such mobilisations of unpredictable political affectivity can become a contagion – a much needed one, perhaps, to break existing hegemonies along the lines of gender, caste, and class.

Conclusion In January 2015, the social networking site Facebook introduced a new feature to ring in the New Year. Shah (2015: 1) describes it as the use of a predictive algorithm to remind us of what the past year looked like. He notes that, initially, one could choose whether to avail oneself of this feature. But later, he writes, “Facebook transformed from a helpful friend to a nagging aunt and decided to put this summary on the top of our pages, urging us to look at the recap of the year whether we wanted to or not” (Shah, 2015: 2). Shah’s observations confirm the complicated relations we share with media technologies. In a time when memory is often conflated with storage (Chun, 2008), and big data and predictive algorithms curate and decide what is important (Shah, 2015: 1), it can be argued that this situation is two-sided. On the one hand, we often tune out sapient technologies that incessantly record and regurgitate our every move. On the other hand, projects such as Sangam Radio do the very opposite. They work to stem erasure and hold on to their affirmative ways of life against neoliberal forces that threaten obliteration. To summarise, Sangam Radio serves important archival and mnemonic functions. It helps the community engage with its collective memory and cultural

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artefacts on a daily basis. It stands as counter-memory, providing alternative narratives. The use of a non-representational approach helps highlight practices that fray the neat, uniform edges. It draws our attention to the periphery – to all that is grey and disruptive. In turn, it helps us understand how such interactions transform capacities and reconfigure relationships of power, complicating our notions of empowerment and access. Finally, I argue that we need to continue to fight for alternative media like community radio, especially in the face of neoliberal forces. Wendy Brown and Shenk (2015) argues that neoliberalism is not just an economic doctrine but is also a “governing rationality.” To elaborate, it generates and legitimates extreme inequalities of wealth and life conditions [. . .] it leads to increasingly precarious and disposable populations [.  .  .] it produces an unprecedented intimacy between capital (especially finance capital) and states, and thus permits domination of political life by capital [. . .] it generates crass and even unethical commercialization of things rightly protected from markets. (Brown and Shenk, 2015: 1) Such a governing rationality has deeper implications for democracy, wherein the political woman/man, or Homo politicus, is vanquished due to her/his preoccupation with “enhancing present and future value through self-investments” (Brown and Shenk, 2015: 1). Brown states that democracy, however, requires us to have at least a modest orientation towards self-rule and an understanding that our freedom rests in such self-rule. Extinguishing this political dimension “takes with it the necessary energies, practices and culture of democracy, as well as its intelligibility” (Brown and Shenk, 2015: 1). Are these not the very processes at play this very moment? The degradation of lands and ways of life in the Zaheerabad region are an illustration of this. However, as Wiedemann and Zehle (2012: 5) ask, What happens when, like the DDS community, “subjects and objects join in a refusal of roles in the great game of reification”? Importantly, how can we all refuse to play this game? The answer lies, perhaps, in life-affirming practices like that of the DDS community. While these are not perfect and have yet to reach the ideals they have set for themselves, they provide much needed spaces to nurture diversity and creativity.

Notes 1 A version of this chapter was previously published as “Community radio and collective memory: A  mapping of material media practices at a community radio station in Telangana” in Subversions, 2(2), 2014 Mumbai: TISS. http://subversions.tiss.edu/ vol2-issue2/madhavi/ 2 The use of the term “Sangam” in this context can have two connotations. One relates to regional history in Telangana and the Telangana People’s Struggle of 1946–1951. The Communist Party had a major role to play in rallying people to the struggle. The party had village-level units, which were referred to by the people as “Sangam” (see Sundarayya, 1973a: 18–19). These were the places where people came to seek justice and right wrongs and managed to abolish exploitative practices at a systemic level.

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The second connotation is connected to Buddhism and the Dalit movement. Sourayan Mookerjea (2010: 111) suggests that the term derives from the Buddhist conception of an egalitarian and cooperative political community that was formed by the Buddhist movement in the fifth century BCE and can be understood in light of the revival of Buddhism by Dalit mass conversions in the twentieth century. In DDS’s context, it might be hard to pinpoint which connotation is predominant  – it could be either or a combination of both. However, what is common to both connotations is that “Sangam” is synonymous with an egalitarian collective, cooperative, or meeting. 3 Ash (2012a: 10) elaborates on the concept of technology, following Stiegler. He states that technology “can be understood as inorganic organized being, which is a form of being that is irreducible to either biological bodies or inert passive matter.” 4 At the time of writing, this stance had seen some relaxation by the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting, which allows private FM radio stations to broadcast news from AIR news bulletins. See The Hindu (2014) and The Times of India (2014). This stance, however, only continues to reflect the aforementioned attitude of the state towards completely freeing airwaves. 5 While the actual names of the organisation and radio station have been used in this study, the names of participants have been changed to maintain anonymity. 6 Rabi and punasa represent the two major agricultural harvest seasons in Zaheerabad. Rabi is the winter harvest and punasa is approximately the spring to summer harvest. 7 Specific details of this event have been altered slightly to maintain the anonymity of the people concerned. The issues of importance, however, have been brought forth as is. 8 It is to be noted here that the term “patalu” is the plural form of the term “paata” in the Telugu language, with both terms meaning “song.”

References Ash, James (2010). ‘Architectures of Affect: Anticipating and Manipulating the Event in Processes of Videogame Design and Testing’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol 28, pp. 653–671. Ash, James (2012a). ‘Attention, Videogames and the Retentional Economies of Affective Amplification’, Theory, Culture and Society, Vol 29, No 6, pp. 3–26. Ash, James (2012b). ‘Technology, Technicity, and Emerging Practices of Temporal Sensitivity in Videogames’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol 44, pp. 187–203. Blackman, Lisa, and Venn, Couze (2010). ‘Affect’, Body and Society, Vol 16, No 1, pp. 7–28. Brown, Wendy and Shenk, Timothy (2015). ‘Booked #3: What Exactly Is Neoliberalism?’ Dissent. Available at: www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/booked-3-what-exactly-isneoliberalism-wendy-brown-undoing-the-demos. Accessed 26–3–19. Chun, Wendy (2008). ‘The Enduring Ephemeral, or the Future is a Memory’, Critical Inquiry, Vol 35, No 1, pp. 148–171. Clark, Andy (2003). Natural- Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence. Oxford University Press, New York. Deccan Development Society (2013). ‘The DDS Team’. Available at: http://ddsindia.com/ www/ddsteam.htm. Accessed 26–3–19. Deccan Development Society (2014). ‘Activities- Food Security: Four Major Steps’. Available at: http://ddsindia.com/www/foodsec_4steps.htm. Accessed 26–3–19. Dhanaraju, Vulli (2012). ‘The Telangana Movement (1946–1951): A Folklore Perspective’, International Journal of Social Science Tomorrow, Vol 1, No 8, pp. 1–7. Downing, John. D.H (2004). ‘Free Radio Explosion in Italy’, in Christopher H. Sterling (ed.), Encyclopedia of Radio. Routledge, London, pp. 2149–2151.

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Gee, Quintin (2005). ‘Review of Script Displays of African Languages by Current Software’, New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, Vol 11, No 2, pp. 247–255. Genosko, Gary (2013). ‘The Promise of Post-Media’, in Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles, and Oliver Lerone Schultz (eds.), Provocative Alloys: A Post-Media Anthology. Mute Books, Luneburg, Germany, pp. 14–25. Goddard, Michael (2013): ‘Felix and Alice in Wonderland: The Encounter between Guattari and Berardi and the Post- Media Era’, in Clemens Apprich, Josephine Berry Slater, Anthony Iles and Oliver Lerone Schultz (eds.), Provocative Alloys: A  Post-Media Anthology. Mute Books, Luneburg, Germany, pp. 44–61. Harvey, Penny and Hannah, Knox (2014). ‘Objects and Materials: An Introduction’, in Penny Harvey et al. (eds.), Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion. Routledge, London, pp. 1–17. Ito, Mizuko (2007). ‘Technologies of the Childhood Imagination: Yu-Gi-Oh!, Media Mixes, and Everyday Cultural Production’, in Joe Karaganis (ed.), Structures of Participation in Digital Cultures. Social Science Research Council, New York, pp. 88–110. Karaganis, Joe (2007). ‘Disciplining Markets in the Digital Age’, in Joe Karaganis (ed.), Structures of Participation in Digital Cultures. Social Science Research Council, New York, pp. 222–244. Larkin, Brian (2007). ‘Pirate Infrastructures’, in Joe Karaganis (ed.), Structures of Participation in Digital Cultures. Social Science Research Council, New York, pp. 74–84. Lerner, Daniel (1958). The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East. Free Press, New York. Livesey, Graham (2010). ‘Assemblage’, in Adrian Parr (ed.), The Deleuze Dictionary (Revised Edition), Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 18–19. Massumi, Brian, and McKim, Joel (2009). ‘Of Microperception and Micropolitics: An Interview with Brian Massumi’, Inflexions: A  Journal for Research-Creation, Vol 3, pp. 1–20. Mookerjea, Sourayan (2010). ‘The Sangam Strategy: Lessons for a Cooperative Mode of Production’, Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture and Action, Vol 4, No 1, pp. 110–132. Nazarea, Virginia D. (2005). Heirloom Seeds and Their Keepers: Marginality and Memory in the Conservation of Biological Diversity. The University of Arizona Press, Tucson. Padovani, Cinzia (2011). ‘Free radio movement (Italy)’, in J.D. Downing (ed.),  Encyclopedia of Social Movement Media. Sage Publications Inc., Thousand Oaks, CA, pp. 206–209. Pavarala, Vinod, and Malik, Kanchan K. (2007). Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Shah, Nishant (2015). ‘Was 2014 a great year? It’s time to take control of your memories’, The Indian Express- EYE Supplement. January  4. Available at: http://indianexpress. com/article/lifestyle/life-style/was-it-a-great-year-its-time-to-take-control-of-yourmemories/. Accessed 26–3–19. Sundaram, Ravi (2007). ‘Other Networks: Media Urbanism and the Culture of the Copy in South Asia’, in Joe Karaganis (ed.), Structures of Participation in Digital Cultures. Social Science Research Council. New York, pp. 48–72. Sundarayya, P (1973a). ‘Telangana People’s Armed Struggle, 1946–1951. Part One: Historical Setting’, Social Scientist, Vol 1, No 7, pp.  3–19. Available at: www.jstor.org/ stable/3516269. Accessed 26–3–19. Sundarayya, P (1973b). ‘Telangana People’s Armed Struggle, 1946–1951. Part Two: First Phase and Its Lessons’, Social Scientist, Vol 1, No 8, pp. 18–42. Available at: www. jstor.org/stable/3516214. Accessed 26–3–19.

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Tacchi, Jo, Watkins, Jerry, and Keerthirathne, Kosala (2009). ‘Participatory Content Creation: Voice, Communication, and Development’, Development in Practice, Vol 19, No 4–5, pp. 573–584. The Hindu (2014). ‘Private FM Channels can Broadcast AIR News: Govt’. Available at: www.thehindu.com/news/national/private-fm-channels-can-broadcast-air-news-govt/ article6217504.ece. Accessed 26–3–19. The Times of India (2014). ‘Private FM Radio may be Allowed to Broadcast News’. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Private-FM-radio-may-be-allowed-tobroadcast-news/articleshow/36823630.cms. Accessed 26–3–19. Wiedemann, Caroline, and Zehle, Soenke (2012). ‘Depletion Design’, in Caroline Wiedemann and Soenke. Zehle (eds.), Depletion Design: A Glossary of Network Ecologies. Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam, p. 5.

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Box 14  Three years and counting: new paths ahead Sangham Radio, the first community radio station in rural India, located in Machnoor village of the Zaheerabad mandal in Medak district, Andhra Pradesh, completed three years of being on air on October  15, 2011. General Narsamma and Algole Narsamma, the two dynamic community radio managers, have been with the station from Day One, and even before as the Deccan Development Society (DDS) experimented with narrowcasting during the years of waiting for the CR policy. During their modest yet spirited third anniversary celebration, they took time off to have an informal chat with Vinod Pavarala and Kanchan K. Malik:

On the changes that have come about in the last three years of Sangham Radio General  & Algole: There has been a change in the nature of participation. Now people call us by themselves and talk to us. Although there is enthusiasm to listen to the programme we broadcast, we would like to see people treat radio with the same eagerness as they treat television. There should be a certain “looking forward to” aspect. We are trying to change programmes that suit audiences’ tastes and grab their attention. Some training may come in handy here for us. Also, the number of participants has increased slowly and gradually. Previously we would carry out a maximum of 10 recordings in a month. But now, it has gone up to 20 or more. Some people come from surrounding villages to record programmes. Many people come by themselves to talk about agriculture and other issues, while we invite some. School children also respond to advertisements on the radio and come and participate. We feel they come to know of this radio and how to participate from each other. If we look at the listenership, earlier, the listeners would only request for songs. But now, they call to ask about farming also. For such questions, we seek information from the KVK (Krishi Vigyan Kendra, run by DDS) and then broadcast it. For example, a couple of days back, a person called up complaining about a problem with his ginger crop. There were times when we used to wonder that it is we who talk on the radio but are people listening? But whoever we ask, they say that the programmes are good and that they listen to everything. They do advise us to think of something new, but at the same time assure us that they like all the broadcasts. Listeners also ask us to re-broadcast programmes; if we have it, we play it for them on demand. In the two hours of our transmission, we plan for

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one and a half hour, and half an hour is left free for listener’s demands, be it songs, discussions or dramas. We have 7 to 8 callers every day. We can share with you stories where after listening to the radio, people have given up the use of chemical pesticides. After a series of radio programmes on pesticides, a person in Madina village has started making his own organic pesticides enough for his small piece of land. To attract a larger audience, we need to make programmes that have a variety of emotions like seriousness, anger, comedy etc. For that, we need to get people who can enact roles. We know of a lot of daughters-in-law who do not feed their elders at home. To make such people realise their mistake, we need to script it into a drama to make it more effective. We are asking our fellow villagers to take part in making such dramas. It would be good if that happens. In the older days, people used to sit together and talk a lot. When they meet somebody, they would ask about the well-being of their relatives and friends. But now, the culture has changed with the advent of mobile phones. They do not bother to sit together and talk. If we take such topics and make them into dramas, they influence people better than just talking out the issue. People come from other villages and tell stories and narrate skits. Recently we had done a short piece on a lame husband and a stammering wife – the comical dialogues about their silly fights all the time, and then when asked to leave him she says “How can I leave my husband? He is so good”. We broadcast this programme twice because people enjoy such programmes.

On the original vision of Sangham radio General & Algole: We are moving in the same direction – hundred percent. First, we wanted to know what the villagers are saying – a platform to discuss various things like food security, work, agriculture, land situation, health issues, education etc. It is not just about disseminating information; it is about gathering people’s knowledge. People come up to talk, and they can talk about various issues that are being discussed. People have begun feeling like they own the radio. Radio is progressing in the right direction. For people like Ambappa (an elderly man), it is very good. His knowledge is being imparted to people through the radio, and we can broadcast this in the future too. But for young people like me, we need to know what is new? How do we get used to it? How good or bad is that? To make programmes like that, we need to make every show innovative. Ambappa needs one kind of programmes, young people want to listen to something else, and children would prefer different programmes. We need to cater to everyone’s tastes.

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On women’s issues and participation General  & Algole: In Sangham radio, 95  percent of participation is by women. They are happy that their voice is being recognised. They are very happy if people are asking for re-broadcast of their programmes. One major difference that has come about is that if the radio weren’t there, women wouldn’t go about telling people what they know, their knowledge wouldn’t be recognised. But now, they have got a voice. We have the knowledge of older people now; they might be gone. But we have recorded their knowledge, which is a priceless asset. Women also call us up for suggestions regarding various health issues and ask for repeating of programmes also. Domestic violence has considerably gone down in recent times, with the radio playing a contributing role. Other than health, we have programmes on communities, languages, songs, environment etc. The participation of women is enormous in all these aspects. But, now we are thinking of radio dramas. To collect good performers on a single platform is difficult. Every small programme recording takes off a day’s earning. If the radio station made some payment to participants, many more women, as well as men, would come forward.

On balancing work and family life General & Algole: Sometimes it is stressful managing kids and work, like when we have meetings in the mornings, and we need to come in the night for transmission and go home and cook food. In all this running around, some work will be left out, and if the backlog of chores continues for 2–3 days, then it becomes stressful. But if I feel burdened and talk about leaving work, my family tries to find a solution to the problem, but they don’t ask me to quit. Even if there is something wrong with the radio programme, they give me feedback. Source: CR News Vol. 2, No. 3, Jul-Sept 2011

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15 GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY VIA COMMUNITY RADIO A case study in rural India Bidu Bhusan Dash The regression of the mainstream media from being watchdogs of democracies to profit-making ventures created an alternative sphere to raise the voice of the unheard. If democracy is partly about “the men/women in the street” expressing their views, community radio has to play a certain role in the promotion of democracy (Myers, 2007). Community radio (CR) is a catalyst for building community and fostering civil society. Many CR stations have demonstrated this across the global south (Siemering, 2000). Community radio can succeed, as it is itself a democratic media institution that is accessible to and participatory for common people, unlike mainstream media houses. The democratisation of airwaves in India has created immense possibilities for community radio stations in the country since 2003. Within the last 15 years, there has been dramatic growth of community radio stations in India; at present, there are about 217 operational CR stations. This study was based on the community radio station at Lalitpur, a district of the Bundelkhand region in the state of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Based on multi-dimensional ethnography, the study explored the actual and potential role of community radio in the promotion of grassroots democracy, where the society, culture, and economy are very much undemocratic in nature, i.e. feudal and patriarchal. Using organisational ethnography, the study found how much community radio as an institution has been able to prove its democratic nature. Using audience ethnography, the study explored the socio-political changes in the society, and using ethnographic content analysis, it analysed the specific programmes of community radio stations meant for the promotion of grassroots democracy. In addition, ethnographic action research was used by the author to facilitate grassroots democracy through community radio. Finally, it was found that people’s involvement in community radio programmes improved their participation in grassroots democracy. However, it is difficult for community radio to produce and broadcast such programmes in a feudal society, especially when the basic task is to promote democracy. Community radio promotes democracy within the media initiative and also within the community where it operates.

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A typical case involves the community radio programme Gaon ki Chaupal (public space/open forum in a village), which is produced by two community reporters in a village set-up. Community reporters arrange chaupals and facilitate the process in the villages wherein villagers discuss their issues and concerns in an open forum. They discuss the schemes and projects run by the state and central government as well. The discussions are recorded and produced by the community radio station. This chapter analyses people’s participation in planning at the local level through a programme on community radio, and it does so through field observation and ethnographic content analysis. After the analysis, it was found that the process of programme production as well as the produced programmes encourages people’s involvement, empowers the community, and promotes grassroots democracy in a feudal society.

Background The idea of a community radio station owned and managed by a civil society organisation was legalised only two years after the Policy Guidelines for Setting up Community Radio Stations in India were passed by the Union Cabinet in 2006 even though the community radio movement was started in the country much earlier, in 1995. Some of the over 200 stations currently in operation have programmes on local governance. Pasumai CR at Dindigul of Tamil Nadu addresses the issue of good governance. Similarly, Ilanthalir CR at Sriperumbudur produces a programme – Gramangal Arivom (village profile) – in an interview format to create awareness of governmental schemes and plans, such as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), importance of local governance, community participation in panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), and lifestyle of the village community (Government of India, 2012). One such CR station is Lalit Lokvani in the Bundelkhand region of India, which produces Gaon ki Chaupal (village chaupal), a programme to promote rural local governance and grassroots democracy in the community and thereby empower the marginalised. Bundelkhand: Bundelkhand is one of the most deprived regions in India, as far as human development indices are concerned. It is a part of Madhya Pradesh (MP) and Uttar Pradesh (UP) in Central India. This chapter will focus on Lalit Lokvani, which is in the Lalitpur district of Bundelkhand, UP. Lalit Lokvani: Lalit Lokvani, 90.4 FM, is a CR station managed by a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Sai Jyoti Gramodhyog Samaj Seva Samiti (popularly known as Sai Jyoti) and, at the time of the case study, was financially supported by the United Nations International Children Education Fund (UNICEF). Sai Jyoti had been working in that region for over a decade on issues like health, education, sanitation, human rights, and community empowerment. The CR station commenced operating in Alapur, a remote village in Lalitpur district, in 2007. It produces several programmes on various issues and concerns of the local people and disseminates information through narrowcasting1 and broadcasting, focusing on community empowerment in general and empowerment of the marginalised in particular. Major issues and

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concerns in the locality were identified through a training programme involving the community reporters. They include child marriage, dowry, domestic violence, family planning, lack of education, superstitions, discrimination, exploitation, untouchability, migration, addiction, unsustainable livelihoods, and government schemes. Lalit Lokvani provides space and voice to the unheard people in the community through its programme production process and people’s participatory approach and breaks the culture of silence through its use of the voices of marginalised people in its programmes. This is clearly revealed in the vision document of its parent organisation Sai Jyoti. The vision document of the organisation says that its objective is “to bring equality in the society through developing resources for the livelihood of the poor, Dalit and tribal where they can develop themselves socio-economically and empower themselves to repudiate inequality.” The vision document foregrounds the participation of the marginalised in the process of empowerment and development. Therefore, Lalit Lokvani tries to ensure the participation of the marginalised in its programmes to achieve the vision of the parent organisation. One of the major objectives of Lalit Lokvani is to produce programmes that address the development needs of Bundelkhand, along with other programmes that offer local communities an opportunity to showcase the rich linguistic and cultural heritage of the region. Lalit Lokvani started its formal radio production in Alapur village in January 2009. It covers a transmission range of 15 km, reaching over 120 villages, comprising a population of around 200,000. The programmes are broadcast for five hours, between 7 am and noon, and repeated from 3 to 8 pm every day. There are 13 members in the programme production team, who take the responsibility to produce and disseminate programmes through narrowcasting and broadcasting. Out of 13 members, ten are working as community reporters, two as assistant station managers, and one as station manager. There are three women, including one from the Dalit community, amongst the ten who work as community reporters. There is one more Dalit community reporter, but there is no tribal reporter in the initiative, though the Saharia tribe is one of the major groups in the community. The members of the team have been provided technical training in reporting, researching, programme production, narrowcasting, and broadcasting. Apart from these 13 members, there are about 40 village reporters who assist in the programme production process. Out of ten community reporters, two are assigned to produce the Gaon ki Chaupal programme. Village reporters assist in the production process when the programme is produced in their concerned villages. Before describing Gaon ki Chaupal, the status of chaupal in the Indian villages, and particularly in Bundelkhand, will be described in the following sections.

Chaupal – A sign of power and communication “Chaupal” means “gathering place” in Hindi (Kim et al., 2007). It is usually the common meeting place of the caste groups in a village, although the term is often used to refer to a gossip group too. A chaupal is a place where villagers

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of all ranks, ages, castes, and faiths sit together and discuss different serious and general issues. Villagers sit at the chaupal, smoke, play cards, talk, and gossip and otherwise spend their leisure time. The chaupal is the centre of all administrative, social, cultural, and recreational activities in the village (Chandhoke, 1990; Gupta, 1990). There are also chaupals based on castes, such as Jath chaupal, Brahamin chaupal, Gujjars chaupal, and Dalit chaupal (Chandhoke, 1990; Link and Mehta, 1966b). The village chaupal is supposedly meant for panchayat and all-village meetings, but women and Dalits are never allowed to sit with others in the caste chaupals (Link and Mehta, 1966a). Hence, the chaupal is considered a symbol of power, where marginalised groups, by virtue of caste and gender, have no space. The poor villagers also cannot share their views confidently in this space. Thus, the village chaupal is less than democratic in nature, and people’s participation is not ensured. People congregate at the village chaupal in the evening to exchange news and information. Problems and issues related to health, environment, education, class issues between different groups, and inter- and intra-caste marriages are discussed at the village chaupal. Apart from these, other important issues related to developmental programmes, schemes, and information related to agriculture are also widely discussed (Varma, 1995). The community television set is also kept and played at the chaupal (Chandhoke, 1990). As the village chaupal is the place for sharing news and views, it could easily be adopted into a programme format for radio and television. The chaupal programme addresses development issues such as health, hygiene, community awareness, literacy drives, numeracy, untouchability, and gender equality. The state broadcaster of India, All India Radio (AIR), has been airing different programmes since its inception, but it is AIR’s chaupal programme that has become the most popular amongst the local people. In this programme, men and women from different villages participate and share news and information with their fellow brothers and sisters in their villages. Even today this is one of the most interesting programmes on AIR. Television has also been transmitting such programmes (Mishra, 2004). While the real-world village chaupal does not give space to all, the chaupal programme on state radio is able to provide space to all in general and women in particular, though most of the programmes are produced in-studio with women’s cooperation, who are proficient in their field.

Lokvani’s Gaon ki Chaupal Since the village chaupal is the symbol of power and communication and excludes women and people of lower castes, why did Lalit Lokvani, a participatory rural communication mechanism, plan to produce a programme called Gaon ki Chaupal? How does the process of programme production and dissemination ensure participation of people from all sections of the village? How does this programme promote grassroots democracy through people’s participatory planning at the local level and empower villagers in general and marginalised sections in particular? How does an episodic programme of a community radio initiative promote people’s participation in planning at the local level?

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To find out the answers to these questions, the case study in this chapter analyses the democratic structure of the CR station, which plays a vital role in the promotion of local democracy, and also tries to understand citizens’ views and comments. The author evaluates the content of the radio programme and shares his experience of making some interventions just like an insider. To explore how an episodic programme of a CR station promotes grassroots democracy through people’s participation in planning at the local level, the author observed the process of developing content in a participatory way during the field recording of Gaon ki Chaupal. Also, the approach of the producers involved in programme production was observed along with that of the village reporters during recordings in the villages. Apart from observing the procedure, a few interactions were held with the villagers in different corners of villages. Moving with the community reporters in the field gave the author an understanding of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. The author also discussed extensively with the programme production team the objective of Gaon ki Chaupal to understand the spirit and objective of each episode produced. In-depth interviews with the villagers of different age, caste, and sex groups regarding the status of the chaupal were conducted extensively in the villages. Discussions with the programme production team and villagers were also held with a view to exploring the benefits of the programme to the community’s development. In this context, the participatory planning and empowering nature of Gaon ki Chaupal was observed in detail. The findings were also shared and discussed with the production team after data analysis to plan for any future action or changes.

The need for a new chaupal The meeting of the gram sabha (village meeting), conducted by the gram panchayat (village panchayat), the first tier of Panchayati Raj (local-level government), is held only once a year in Uttar Pradesh. Uttar Pradesh has the lowest presence of female ward members (16.2  percent) and male ward members (44.4 percent) attending community meetings to discuss local issues and concerns compared with other states in India (Government of India, 2008). The rate of involvement of female and male ward members in campaigns, such as to reduce school dropouts in the state, is the lowest in the country. Barely 25  percent of the pradhans (heads of village panchayats) monitor the activities of the Anganwadi workers (AWWs) in Uttar Pradesh (Government of India, 2008). This clearly indicates that the involvement of people, especially women, in the developmental activities led by the state or local government is very minimal. When the pradhans should be active enough to involve people in the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the programmes of local government, they themselves fail to do so. In such a situation, Lalit Lokvani thought of promoting grassroots democracy through people’s participation and involvement – including ward members and pradhans in the PRIs – via the Gaon ki Chaupal programme. This programme, it was hoped, could promote democratic decentralisation ensuring people’s participation through

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capacity-building, by equipping them with different skills to participate in locallevel planning, implementation, and monitoring. Lalit Lokvani felt that the programme had the potential to empower the community as a whole – including the marginalised sections of the society. Keeping in view the various objectives of knowing the present status of the villages; sharing information regarding programmes and schemes of central and state governments amongst the villagers in a participatory way; providing space to the villagers to raise their issues, problems, concerns, and challenges; and empowering the people themselves, Lalit Lokvani started production of Gaon ki Chaupal. It is a 25- to 30-minute episodic programme with an aim of covering every village within the coverage area of Lalit Lokvani. Omkar Yadav and Mansingh Chandel, two community reporters of Lalit Lokvani, are assigned to produce at least one episode of Gaon ki Chaupal a week. They go to a particular village and contact villagers, ward members, and pradhans, producing the programme on location. The village reporters facilitate the whole process and arrange a chaupal in the village. In the absence of a village reporter, the community reporter does it solely. The villagers discuss their problems, issues, concerns, and challenges of the village in an open forum, in front of all the people present there, including the pradhan, in an otherwise casteist, patriarchal, feudal society. They also discuss the schemes and projects run by the state and central governments in the village. The pradhan shares his personal opinion, and the community reporter records it and comes back to the studio. Thereafter, he edits and broadcasts it. The programme is then narrowcast (played on recorders in listening sessions) in the villages. Produced programmes: Gaon ki Chaupal started regular production in February 2012. The first episode of Gaon ki Chaupal dealt with Era village and was produced in November 2011. This spawned the idea of producing the programme episodically. The assistant station manager (programming), Pankaj Tiwari, said, “We had no conceptual clarity [sic] how to make it episodic. Era chaupal gave us a direction. We thought to include an interview with the pradhan or rozgar sevak and vox pop of the villagers. One programme could be produced, where issues and concerns of the people would surface.” By July 2012, 14 episodes of Gaon ki Chaupal had been produced in as many villages. The concerned villages were Era, Nayagaon, Jakhloun, Barod, Uttamdhane, Chandera, Bamhori, Sepura, Padoriya, Bandaraguda, Sagoriya, Jiron, Jamundhana Kala, and Piprai. Lalit Lokvani planned to produce another 50 episodes and broadcast them in its coverage area, particularly in Lalitpur district. After the completion of these 50 episodes, the episodes would be renewed, with new issues and concerns and new voices. Though the production of this episodic programme has been assigned to two community reporters, it is Mansingh who has produced most of the programmes. Pankaj said, “It can be assigned to other community reporters since all our community reporters are well trained to produce programmes and cover the whole area.”

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The process of programme production The community reporters plan for a month and identify four or five villages for the production of Gaon ki Chaupal. At first, they collect secondary information about the concerned village and prepare the background. Secondly, they contact the village reporter and the pradhans concerned to finalise the date to conduct the chaupal in the village. After finalising the date, they go to the village and record the programme. If the village reporter is available, he facilitates the process. As the feudal patriarchal social set-up prevents women and marginalised people from speaking in front of the pradhans, community reporters meet the women and marginalised people separately to record their voices. They return to the studio and edit the recorded programmes by incorporating some background information of the village, one or two folk songs, and the signature tune. After broadcasting the programme, the community reporters go to the village concerned for narrowcasting and feedback collection. Disseminating programme: All the episodes of Gaon ki Chaupal are broadcast and narrowcast. One episode is broadcast once a week, in the morning (7–8 am), in the rural development segment. Gaon ki Chaupal is also narrowcast in the village. Gaon ki Chaupal, Chandera village, was once narrowcast in Mairti Kala village. After listening to the narrowcasting, the villagers of Mairti Kala responded that they had no information about the schemes and programmes supposedly implemented in their gram panchayat. Narrowcasting the programme could raise people’s voices against the faulty system. However, the presence of people from the marginalised section was less in the narrowcasting session. The participation of women and Dalits is negligible if the intended audience is a mixed group. As the number of radio sets has decreased in the villages and been replaced by mobile phones that remain mostly in the hands of men, women are deprived of the opportunity to listen to the programmes broadcast. Sharing information, involving people: The programme begins with the selfintroduction of the pradhan, and the pradhans generally take the major slot in the programme. After the pradhan, the ward members take the second largest slot. In a few of the programmes, villagers were completely excluded as far as space/voice was concerned. Mansingh, the community reporter and producer of Gaon ki Chaupal, said, “Except the pradhan, villagers have no information about the implementation of various state and central government schemes and programmes, such as total sanitation campaign, pension schemes, health, primary education, Indira Awaas Yojna, MGNREGA, and so forth [sic]. Even some pradhans have no information about all the schemes and programmes in detail. This programme enhances the knowledge of pradhans as well as villagers, through which pradhans will be able to implement the programmes and schemes properly as well as [sic] people can raise their voices.” Open meeting: As mentioned earlier, in Uttar Pradesh, the village meeting is conducted once a year (Government of India, 2008). In response to this, Mansingh said, “This is due to shared corruption, as the open meeting is confined to the pradhans, panchayat secretaries, few ward members, elderly persons,

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and youth in gram panchayats, mostly from a particular political party.” To promote this village meeting, community reporters have to go to the villages. They organise the Gaon ki Chaupal in a particular village with the help of a village reporter. They ask villagers, ward members of the concerned village, and the pradhan of the gram panchayat under which the village figures. They then ask the pradhan about the implemented government schemes and programmes in the gram panchayat. After speaking with the pradhan, community reporters ask the villagers whether they are getting any benefit out of these schemes and programmes or whether they are working only on paper. One of the questions asked by community reporters is whether the gram panchayat conducts open meetings. Most of the pradhans say that they organise open meetings after the notice is circulated in the villages prior to the day of the scheduled meeting, whereas the villagers counter pradhans and say, “There is no open meeting in the last year.” Even Gajaraj, the female pradhan of Jamundhana gram panchayat, admits that “there is no open meeting in the panchayat because panchayat secretary does not cooperate in conducting.” Through the Gaon ki Chaupal, the community reporters appeal to the villagers to conduct an open meeting and discuss issues there.

Women in Gaon ki Chaupal Because the chaupal is a public space used by older men, women are never allowed to go there. A  woman going to a chaupal is seen as having a “bad character.” It is said that no woman of good character would ever set foot in a village chaupal (Mishra, 1977). Traditionally, the chaupal has been a “masculine” space, and rural women have not resisted this practice. They prefer to keep themselves veiled when they pass by the chaupal even when nobody is present there. Even an older woman refuses to climb on the chaupal at the time of need, and the older men of the village may break this practice only under exceptional circumstances (Chandhoke, 1990). As mentioned earlier, the chaupal is associated with power in the Bundelkhand region. In Nunawali village, while talking to a young Sahariya man, I found that he talked to us while standing, refusing to sit in front of us, but an upper caste man talked to us while sitting down. We observed that women are restricted from sitting on the chaupal in Kuchdon village during the narrowcasting programme. Dayalal, a 70-year old Yadav man, said, “I have not seen any woman ever attending the chaupal. Women are not allowed to sit on the chaupal, and they respect it.” Dalip, who is in his sixties, said, “There are four chautaras2 in the village, and all belong to the Sahariya caste. Only men sit in these chautaras. We share the bed in the night. But we cannot share the chautara in the daytime. Unmarried girls can sit on the chautara. Women cannot sit on the chautara. We will beat them. We will drive the government away if it takes any step. Women cannot sit on the chautara in front of us. Educated women can sit. If my wife sits on the chautara, I will drive her away.” Samantra, a woman who came to this village after her marriage, said, “This place is for men. If we sit there, it will be disrespect to them.” When the author suggested building another chautara

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for women, she said that she would not allow men to sit there. Another woman, Kanchanbari, said, “Only men are permitted to sit on the chautara, not us. As it is the rule, we have to obey. If we sit on it, we have to pay one hundred and one rupees as a penalty. If a girl sits, she pays nothing, as she is the daughter of the village.” In a challenging tone, she adds, “If you write on chautara that it is meant for women, then we will be permitted to sit there. But we cannot sit on the panchayat chautara. If we sit, our husbands will beat us and say, ‘Why do you disrespect us?’ ” When asked what she would discuss on the chautara if she were permitted, the woman said, “We will discuss about employment.” Shyam bai said, “We cannot sit on the chautara. We respect our brothers-in-law, fathers-in-law. Children can sit. Men from all the castes can sit. But we – the women – cannot sit.” Mulu Sahariya, the village reporter of the Kuchdon village, said, “Women will never sit on the chautara. In case of emergency, very few women may sit.” According to the Government of India report (2008), the highest concentrations of illiterate female pradhans are found in Uttar Pradesh. In Uttar Pradesh, 93 percent of female pradhans spend time on household chores – the highest in the country when compared with other states. Involvement of female pradhans in family planning campaigns was recorded as less than 40  percent in Uttar Pradesh. A relatively lower proportion of female pradhans was associated with community-based organisations (CBOs) compared with their counterparts. Uttar Pradesh also showed a very small proportion of female ward members associated with CBOs. About 16 percent of the female ward members reported facing gender-based discrimination often (Government of India, 2008). Women’s participation and voices in the Gaon ki Chaupal are negligible. For instance, there are no voices of women in ten out of 14 Gaon ki Chaupal episodes. So, Gaon ki Chaupal has been quite ineffectual in ensuring women’s participation in rural local governance. Out of about 70 respondents in 14 episodes, only five are women’s voices, including one pradhan and a ward member. While the female pradhan spoke for about seven and a half minutes, the female ward member spoke for about half a minute. A woman from Sepura village spoke for about one and a half minutes in Gaon ki Chaupal, whereas two women from Bandarguda village spoke for two and a half minutes in the same programme. The total time of 14 episodes of Gaon ki Chaupal is 329 minutes, including the signature tune, in-studio presentation, folk songs, and voices of community reporters, members of PRIs, and villagers. Out of the total 329 minutes, women spoke for a total of only 12 minutes. Men were asked for responses about issues and concerns of women and widows, though these questions were meant for female respondents. The author explored the reasons for the dismal participation of women in the programme. When asked, Mansingh expressed his anger and said, “Mahilaon ko bola jaata hai, wahan nahin jana. Dau baitha hai” (“Women are told not to go there. Elderly persons are sitting there”). He added, “The major concern in gram panchayat is that, generally, men come, whereas elected women ward members do not come. I am trying to meet more and more women to know about their issues and concerns and to share information about the schemes and programmes.”

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Promoting participatory planning and development The question of local-level participatory planning was put to the elected members of PRIs as well as to the villagers in Gaon ki Chaupal. The pradhan and their elected member supporters claim that open meetings are held in the panchayats, where people, including women, sit together and raise their voices regarding their issues and concerns and plan for the development of the villages, whereas the members of the opposition offer counter-arguments. This claim of holding open meetings regularly, raising the community’s voices in open meetings, and preparing village planning in the presence of all villagers may be considered a significant step towards critically questioning the domination of the community by certain individuals and groups. Even though the problem of caste and gender discrimination in effective participation remains unresolved, Gaon ki Chaupal plays a significant role in equipping people to participate in local-level planning, monitoring, and implementation of rural local governance. Mansingh said, “This programme will play a vital role to reduce corruption and bring [sic] development in the villages.” In a nutshell, the programme plays the role of promoting a participatory, accountable, and transparent governance system while at the same time empowering people to question the authorities. It also gives people an opportunity to address and manage their issues without outside dominance or impositions.

Empowering community and community reporters Gaon ki Chaupal empowers not only the villagers but also the community reporters. It has given tremendous scope to the community reporters to be able to ask pradhans about schemes and programmes in front of villagers. The community reporters do the same without any hesitation. Sharma said, “Contacting pradhans and discussing with them enhances the skills of the community reporters. It adds to their personality and identity too.” The marginalised groups, especially tribal groups, Dalits, and women, are unable to speak in the village chaupal. Voices against the pradhan are not raised since people are afraid to say anything against him. However, when pradhans share information about schemes and programmes, the villagers feel satisfied. Mansingh said, “When all the schemes and programmes implemented through gram panchayat are declared in an open meeting, pradhans cannot do any corruption.” Villagers feel happy about their voices being recorded by community reporters. They call the radio station and demand the broadcast of the Gaon ki Chaupal programme as soon as possible, as they are eager to listen to their own voices on the radio. They also request that community reporters inform them in advance so that they can inform their friends and family members about the broadcast. A few pradhans feel good, too, and they demand the production of new episodes in their respective villages. Dhaniram, the pradhan of Jamunia panchayat, and Nathuram Niranjan, the pradhan of Era panchayat, made such requests. And the pradhan of Piprai gram panchayat said, “I request our honourable chief minister and prime minister to fix educational qualification for pradhans. Educated pradhans can develop their

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panchayats.” The argument for a literate pradhan may be problematic, as it goes against poor, illiterate people, but it demonstrates that they are empowered enough to appeal and negotiate.

Challenges for Gaon ki Chaupal The programme producers face a lot of challenges during programme production and dissemination due to corruption and the patriarchal feudal village setup. Mansingh said, “I face a lot of difficulties in dealing with women in Gaon ki Chaupal. Villagers are unable to speak the truth in front of the pradhan. No one speaks against the pradhan, though implementation is very poor. Women do not come to the chaupal. If they come, they do not sit with the men, and also remain silent. If they speak something, it is not against the faulty system or about their sufferings. Rather, they will speak all the good things about the system.” Sharma said, “People, especially people with power, such as the pradhan and rozgar sevak, do not cooperate with us in this programme. They fear that this programme may create more awareness. They are also busy in many other tasks of the gram panchayat. They give dates, and when we go to the villages, they are not available. We motivate them to participate in the programme.” For instance, the pradhan of Jamunia gram panchayat was motivated so much that he himself said, “When you need my interview, ask me. I will come to the studio.” Sharma said, “People are not available in the villages when we go to record the programme. When we thought of adding the views of panchayat secretaries in this programme, they were unable to give time. We also contacted Block Development Officers (BDOs) at the block level for their views, but we did not get that much cooperation from them.” There are many challenges in dissemination. If people speak against the pradhan after listening to the broadcasts, the pradhan sometimes threatens the programme producers and warns them not to produce such programmes in the future. The narrowcasting of such programmes is conducted with much caution, as supporters of pradhans are present on such occasions. The Gaon ki Chaupal programme is largely acceptable to one group of people in the villages, but there is also a group that is excluded in the process of programme production. Though the objective of programme production is to involve all groups of people, achieving this is difficult. Marginalised sections, i.e. women, tribal groups, and Dalits, are especially not encouraged to get involved and participate in the programme, whereas the most powerful people, such as the pradhans and youth in the villages, are involved in the process of programme production. Hence, those who participate in the programme tend to like the programme. Due to the socio-political situation, it becomes difficult for the team to provide space to the excluded groups in programme production. After analysing the pros and cons of the episodic programme, the author offered a few possible suggestions to the programme production team. The discussion first addressed the process of programme production, especially the inclusion of the voices of neglected people, such as women, the elderly, Dalits,

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and tribal groups, to develop programme acceptance amongst all sections of listeners in the villages and to bring changes to the villages by helping people think more critically so that they are empowered and involved in participatory planning in rural local governance. The production team, especially community reporters, need to try to ensure marginalised people’s involvement in every episode of the programme. If the involvement of the marginalised in the radio programme is ensured, empowerment of the community and people’s participation in participatory planning at the local level will be possible. Discussions were also held regarding programme format and process of dissemination. As far as format is concerned, it is a feature format, and a folk song of about five minutes’ duration comes at the end of the programme. During the discussion, Sharma said, “There are a thousand songs in our programme bank. We have to select songs related to schemes for mix-down.” Within a programme of 30 minutes’ duration, an in-studio discussion of five minutes can be added at the end. The episodes are a mix of interviews of elected representatives of PRIs, vox pops of villagers, and Bundeli folk songs. Songs are related to issues and concerns of the people or rural local governance. There is no specific signature tune for this episodic programme. The programme begins with a piece of folk music. The signature tune can be prepared in the community, taking four to five people’s voices, including that of women and men, but it is not like AIR’s in-studio recorded signature tune. A  radio promo can be broadcast regarding the next Gaon ki Chaupal recording, broadcasting, and narrowcasting schedule. The process and programmes help encourage people’s involvement, empower the community, and promote people’s participation in planning at the local level. Women’s active participation needs to be ensured in Gaon ki Chaupal through the initiative of the community reporters, and they need to directly visit and motivate women to participate and discuss their issues and concerns in an open meeting. If they do not come forward, their voices need to be recorded at their homes. Then, later on, they can be motivated to participate in open meetings. Apart from these rural women, accredited social health activists and Anganwadi workers (ASHAs and AWWs),3 as well as female school teachers, may be included in the programme to ensure participation and empowerment.

Notes 1 Narrowcasting is a process of dissemination of radio programmes among marginalised groups, such as rural women and tribal populations, in a village. The community reporter goes to the village with a flash drive and tape recorder, invites listeners, and plays a recorded programme. After the listening session, the reporter facilitates discussions in a participatory and interactive spirit. 2 Chaupal is Hindi, whereas chautara is Bundeli and is used especially by local people in Lalitpur. 3 Frontline female workers deployed by the state to deliver and monitor various development programmes, especially those aimed at women and children.

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References Chandhoke, S. K. (1990). Nature and Structure of Rural Habitations, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company. Government of India. (2006). Policy Guidelines for Setting up Community Radio Stations in India, New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Government of India. (2008). Study on EWRs in Panchayati Raj Institutions, New Delhi: Ministry of Panchayati Raj. Government of India. (2012). Compendium 2012: Community Radio Stations in India, New Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Gupta, A. K. (1990). Politics of Articulation, Mediating Structures and Volunteerism: From ‘Chauraha’ to ‘Chaupal’, Working Paper No 894, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Kim, D. K., Chitnis, K., Vasanti, P. N. and Singhal, A. (2007). ‘Opinion Leadership Networks and Diffusion of e-Chaupal in Indian Villages’, Journal of Creative Communications, 2 (3), 345–360. Link, E. P. and Mehta, S. (1966a). ‘Health Education in Village India: A New Goddess for an Old’, in A. H. Niehoff (Ed.), A Casebook of Social Change in Developing Areas, Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 219–224. Link, E. P. and Mehta, S. (1966b). ‘Factionalism in Village India: What to Do’, in A. H. Niehoff (Ed.), A Casebook of Social Change in Developing Areas, Somerset, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 227–232. Myers, M. (2007). ‘The Promotion of Democracy at the grassroots: The Example of Radio in Mali’, Democratization, 5 (2), 200–216. Mishra, K. K. (2004). ‘Chaupal as Multidimensional Public Space’, in M. D. Muthukumaraswamy and M. Kaushal (Eds.), Folklore, Public Space, and Civil Society, New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, 123–137. Mishra, S. N. (1977). Patterns of Emerging Leadership in Rural India, Kolkata: Associated Book Agency. Siemering, W. (2000). ‘Radio, Democracy and Development: Evolving Models of Community Radio’, Journal of Radio Studies, 7 (2), 373–378. Varma, A. K. (1995). ‘Management of Rural Newspapers’, in V. S. Gupta and R. Dyal (Eds.), Rural Press Problems and Prospects, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 41–47.

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Box 15  Inclusion for all: community radio for the unheard Inclusion of all sections of the society and diversity of listeners characterise the Community Radio (CR) as a sector, given that it is based on the principles of access and ability to represent one’s voice. Engaging the attention of media practitioners on this aspect of CR, a working paper titled “Inclusivity, Equity and Diversity” was presented at the National Consultation on ‘National Consultation on Strengthening Community Radio in India’ in New Delhi on April 11. The working paper was presented by Pinky Chandran of Radio Active and was put together by Ashish Sen, Pinky Chandran, Kanchan K. Malik, Arti Jaiman and Radha Shukla. The paper attempts to identify the challenges of inclusion vis-à-vis the marginalised population and diversity in the ownership pattern of CRs and in their daily programming. Assessing the community radio policy guidelines of 2006, which characterise that at least 50% of the content production and programming be carried out with the participation of community members (Government of India, 2006), the paper tries to come up with ideas to improve the ownership of the marginalised sections in the operations of the CRs. The paper affirms that community radio is not just for those having no voice, but also for those with alternative viewpoints. Expounding participation as a layered concept, the paper states a need to identify, acknowledge and air the unheard voices ranging from sex workers and, rag pickers, tribals to people with disability and other minority communities. This is essential for their enhanced representation and inclusion in the CR sector. The paper points out that societal segment like LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex and Asexual) or Dalits are often represented unilaterally by the main-stream media and there is the negligence of diverse standpoints that these communities hold. Hence, CR must act as a platform for such alternative voices to share their side of story, views and culture. The paper also mentions that various selfevaluation tools namely the Community Radio Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT) and the Community Radio Self-Assessment Guide have been great mechanisms to assess the levels of inclusiveness within CRs and these also help in setting standards for participation. However, the necessity to promote inclusion must also be understood by the policy makers to come up with guidelines that facilitate the participation of the marginalised. The paper emphasised the need for CRS to assimilate the changing dynamics of cultural diversity in terms of lifestyle, social equation with peers, and establish new networks and connections which are favourable to these revisions. Identifying the need to promote awareness on gender equity and inclusion, the paper advocates of

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incorporating AMARC gender guidelines in the capacity building efforts aimed at volunteers and managerial staff at CRS. The policy makers can try to emulate the Community Radio legislation in countries such as Australia, Canada and South Africa which accentuate on the inclusion and significant participation opportunities for the marginalised. UNESCO Chair team Source: CR News Vol. 8, No. 1, Oct-Dec 2017

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16 COMMUNITY RADIO FOR CREATING COMMUNICATION CHANNELS Theoretical musings emanating from Himalayan rural locales Priya Kapoor The state has not adequately acknowledged the active role of community media during emergencies in its disaster mitigation policies (Harvey, 2011). Scholars assert that community media has strong potential for synergies with climate change debates, especially during instances of “natural” disasters  – namely, earthquakes, floods, landslides, forest fires, and resultant emergencies, such as the high death toll and displacement of masses of people in the recent 2017 floods in South Asia (Gettleman, 2017), disease and pestilence after Hurricane Harvey (Mechanic, 2017), and March 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima Daiichi, Japan (Birowo, 2010; Rundblad et al., 2010; Spence et al., 2011; Kanayama, 2012; Ewart and Dekker, 2013). While local radio has provided critical support during earthquakes, landslides, and floods, other media, such as cell phones and television, have also pulled their weight with regard to getting vital emergency messages to vulnerable communities (Spence et al., 2011). Community-based radio has a definite edge over other popular communication technology – even the cell phone – due to its portability, extensive reach, low price, oral delivery, community engagement, and regular listenership (Harvey, 2011). While communication scholars do not doubt the reasonableness of employing portable, widely available, and cheap communication technologies during a calamity, it is the seemingly disconnected discourse of climate change and disaster preparedness that has not found common ground so far. Drawing upon fieldwork in Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand, this chapter makes the case for climate change and broadcast policy that marries theoretical and practical knowledge of community radio with disaster preparedness and climate change. This chapter will examine how policies articulated by the National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India, despite their acknowledgement of the usefulness of media and communication inputs, do not address the needs of discrete community radio centres and their listenership, nor do they conceive

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of media as formal partners during disaster preparedness (long-term planning) and relief (short-term). Rural community radio centres have vastly different ground realities in the constituencies they serve, such as the geographical challenges of mountain locales, and constrained sources of funding and volunteer inputs. I  am guided by observations of communities reached by Henvalvani Samudayak Radio and its capacity to serve areas impacted by climate-related occurrences, such as forest fires, earthquakes, cloudbursts, and landslides. My insights are drawn from employing critical/qualitative field research methods, such as in-depth interviews and participant observation of Henvalvani’s members and listeners, drawn from the over 300 villages of Tehri district, of which Chamba is the urbanising centre and home of Henvalvani. My insights are also drawn from a family of theoretical positions known as cultural studies to gain an understanding of the ways channels of communication are facilitated during times of disaster in Uttarakhand in the absence of  – or with mere fledgling – state support. The next section focuses on the key ideas of climate change relevant to this chapter.

Climate change Climate change talks culminating in the Paris Agreement emerge from the realisation, acknowledged at the highest scientific, activist, and political levels, that the human impact on the earth’s environment and ecology is deleterious. If we are unable to mitigate this influence, we stand to slowly kill off all life on earth (Stager, 2011). Harvey et al. (2012) quote Hulme (2009) as saying that “climate change is also an issue that was . . . subsumed within the scientific method and due also to the contentions in public debate about the veracity of anthropogenic climate change, remains quite wed to notions of expert knowledge and scientific method” (p. 102). That is, not all state actors and publics realise the immediacy and seriousness of the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement is “formally binding upon its Parties, even though the scope of states’ obligations will clearly depend on the interpretation of the language in each provision” (Savaresi, 2016: 19). Despite the legality of the Paris Agreement, it provides leeway to member nations to fulfil domestic obligations with little consultation from other nationstates. This is in contrast to the Copenhagen talks in 2009, which advocated a top-down method for implementation, recalling an approach embedded in the Kyoto Protocol (Savaresi, 2016). India’s stance towards the varied agreements, from Kyoto to Paris, is significant for the climate movement, as India continues to be a chief actor in climate negotiations (Atteridge et  al., 2012). Despite its own climatic vulnerability, India is the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter (Leiserowitz et al., 2014). A joint study on India’s position on climate change by Leiserowitz (2014) clearly shows a bifurcation in India’s political posture. One camp agreed to reduce greenhouse gasses by 20  percent preceding the Paris talks, whereas another advocated for India to take a stance against inequity, arguing that the developing world must not bear the burden of greenhouse gas reduction. Local

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issues like pollution, water, and flooding have come to the fore as an outcome of the climate discourse amongst government departments. While climate change is fast becoming a global topic, it presents complex challenges for local communities whose chance at traditional livelihoods has disappeared and quality of life has significantly deteriorated despite grandiose national development schemes, ranging from rural youth employment to toilet construction. This chapter explores how the mobilisation of youth in the Chamba region of Tehri Garhwal, Uttarakhand, was able to deliver meaningful direct and indirect support to assuage damage from the devastating flash floods during the monsoon of 2013. Examining the extent of regional youth involvement alerts us to the unique role that community radio and its volunteers play during extreme weather events in their local communities. The author’s research shows that a genealogy of social movements in and around Chamba, Uttarakhand, has created a critical momentum of volunteerism, civic engagement, and ownership amongst inhabitants in the region. This momentum remains untapped and unrecognised institutionally, in policy terms, even though Uttarakhand’s Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre is well established and has had a codified policy since 2007. This middle range of the Garhwali Himalaya, popularly known as DevBhumi, has seen environmental upheavals since the 1800s. The clear-cutting of forests in British India due to its access and proximity to the Silk Route, the ceding of ownership of forests from community to state during colonial and postcolonial times, and the building of the Tehri Dam, resulting in the displacement of indigenous populations and the submergence of over 150 villages, with the loss of vast historical and cultural capital, are some of the instances of epistemic violence in the region. Noteworthy are the myriad centres of community radio that have emerged in the surrounding rural areas, some with NGO assistance but without governmental help. In contrast to the movement towards independent and community-based media, mega satellite cities like Gurgaon, near New Delhi, have just one community radio centre (Gurgaon-ki-Awaaz) that provides a foil to the ultra-commercialisation of the social and business centres there. One can argue that the proliferation of radio in mountainous terrain is more meaningful than a city that offers its listeners many other ways to connect, dissent, be listened to, and entertain themselves.

Radio as a beneficiary of local and global social mobilisations and the emergence of a new movement Radio Mandakini, TERI Radio (Kumaon Vani), and the longest-running community radio hub, Henvalvani Samudayak Radio, are all located in the mountainous northern state of Uttarakhand, India. Based upon over 13  years of fieldwork and observation, I  argue that community-based interventions and collectives such as Henvalvani would not have been possible in Tehri Garhwal had the youth not witnessed and absorbed the energy from mobilisations such as Chipko and the Tehri Dam agitation. The environmental movements were cut short in duration and impact by the heavy-handed decisions of the state,

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but institutions such as the van panchayats (forest council), mahila mangal dals (women’s group), and yuva mandals (youth groups) have addressed some of the issues (Ogra and Badola, 2016) regarding gendered relationships, ownership of forests, and forest-dependent livelihoods the Chipko laid bare. Emma Mawdsley (1998) objects to invoking Chipko to romanticise the purpose of the villagers, who primarily wanted to conserve their livelihoods. She also asserts, opposing Vandana Shiva’s gender essentialism (Mies and Shiva, 1993), that both men and women were equal stewards in the fight to stymie commercial interests from colonising the forests of Garhwal. Mawdsley thinks Chipko is dead or a distant memory and simply a “metaphor.” Mawdsley’s analysis yields that mountain communities have become well informed and politicised. The agitation for an active homeland movement (Uttaranchal) to break away from Uttar Pradesh has organised youth such that they are apt to seek power and a voice for themselves in the political sphere (Mawdsley, 1998). Radio collectives such as Henvalvani have inherited the will to earn a space on the airwaves and in local politics so their volunteers can assert their identity in Garhwali, primarily, and also provide a voice to a listener base that has never imagined itself an actor and participant in the broadcasting world. This cohort of youth, whom I  understand to be the second generation of Chipko, has not been a mute observer of the drastic socio-economic, cultural, and physical change in its mountainous environs. It wants to maintain relationships and alliances with the world outside and has called on the region’s rapidly migrating citizens to aid its communities at times of extreme environmental hazards. Migration has created a destitute quality amongst several villages. Today, there are village localities in Garhwal that are almost fully depleted of their primarily male inhabitants, lost to city migration and a quest to find a paying job. If one looks around the bare mountains, the agricultural terraces look like they have not been farmed for some time. Chipko was a movement in the 1970s and 1980s that centered on community ownership of forests so as to earn the local village folk a right to a livelihood, whereas the radio movement is an effort to provide a forum for the youth to raise their voice in their own language, rather than Hindi (primarily spoken in Uttar Pradesh), and to maintain a solid regional identity that can only come from a sense of place and linguistic solidarity. It is a state that has constantly had to remake itself due to its ever-changing demographics. The Chipko movement of the 1970s and ’80s has now seen the emergence of the more contemporary Save the Seeds movement of the 1990s. The recent farmer agitations (in 2011–2012) in Tehri Garhwal are a micro and local response to the 2011 Anna Hazare anti-corruption movement. While some political science scholars consider the “I  am Anna” movement defunct and unsuccessful, it awakened a desire for accountability in public life and also the power of collective action. While the larger national movement did not succeed, the “minor” localised identity and social justice struggles have continued. These local movements share historicity, global political resonances, and a crisis of faith with Arab Spring (2011), which was led by Arab youth who largely relied on social and alternative media to demand a democratic process and political accountability in their countries. The

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rise of community radio in India must be seen as a new, alternative medium, as it speaks to close-knit communities that are bound by a need to express collective identity through language, locality, and politics. Given these conjunctures, exploring how CR responds during times of disaster is the need of the hour. The next section takes a step back into the media history of communication for development (C4D) and explains why it seems obligatory that community radio be seen from the lens of a development medium in the service of national development. This is how most NGOs and civil society understand the potential of community radio. Even so, grassroots radio stations such as Henvalvani have tried to stay away from designations that seem to narrow their focus or purpose even though Henvalvani’s volunteers do not deny the common good and development function of broadcasting.

Historical drivers of media policy India’s colonial past, the postcolonial period, and the adoption of the developmental juggernaut determined the course of media planning. A long spell of state-controlled media gave way to the liberalisation of the economy in 1991. Television, then FM radio, became the public sphere that neoliberalism dreamed of, not the democratic hearth for dissent and public debate that the Frankfurt School theorists, from Adorno to Habermas, envisioned. Development theories presupposed that the quickest and most effective way to change consciousness amongst the public was through technology-driven communication (Jayaweera, 1987a), which explains the hard sell of mass media infrastructure to the third world (Servaes, 1983). The countries of the Global South realised that they were not merely purchasing some pieces of technology; rather, they were “getting effectively sucked into a particular mode of development that is dominated by the global capitalist system” (Jayaweera, 1987a: xvii). Technology, then, is not mere machinery but an entire world view (Murphy et al., 1986). The “mirage of perfect communication” through technology presupposes communication to be the straightforward process of transmitting development knowledge as useful information from the sender to the receiver (Hobart, 1993: 11). It is no wonder then that the hypodermic needle theory of communication and the Laswellian hypothesis lasted longest in the field of development communication (Samarajiwa, 1987). It is unclear why development communication has viewed media in the third world as “all good, thoughtful, dedicated and completely committed to bringing about big changes” (Krippendorf, cited in Samarajiwa, 1987: 25), whereas the tradition of mass media criticism in North America and Europe during the ’60s and ’70s favoured the view that mass media are “philistine, trivial, distractive and harmful to social good” (Samarajiwa, 1987: 25). Modernity was causally equated with communication technology (Jayaweera, 1987b). This formulaic approach to national development did not affect progress as designed. Wilbur Schramm was a communication consultant to several newly postcolonial governments. His hopes lay in institutionalising mass media for national development. Schramm hoped for the media to effect social change where

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“western middle-class lifestyle” (Golding, 1985) was deemed the most appropriate model. Schramm was enamored of “what the media can do.” Following are the three main tenets of his theorisations: 1 Mass media can inform large numbers quickly. It can help teach “even when teachers or schools are unavailable” (Schramm, 1967: 29). In Mass Media and National Development, Schramm (1964) says how easy it is to learn, either voluntarily or involuntarily, from mass media. Mass media widen horizons, raise aspirations, and help focus attention. 2 The ideal media strategy calls for a mix. The best communication strategy blends interpersonal channels with electronic media channels of information. “Interpersonal channels of communication [the bazaar, the coffee house, the puppet show, the local meeting] play an important part in mediating the effects of mass media even in the most advanced societies” (Schramm, 1967: 11). 3 Mass media and communication multiply development efforts. The function of communication in developmental change is to say that “it serves as a multiplier. One of the publications of the Communication Media division of the U.S.A.I.D. is called The Multiplier” (Schramm, 1967: 17). Here Schramm echoes Lerner (1958), who, in his writings, regarded mass media as the “mobility multiplier” (p. 52). For Lerner (1958), “physical experience through transportation” (p. 52) is multiplied when replaced with mediated experience through mass communication. The theory of development expounded by Schramm in a series of writings from the ’60s and ’70s did not differentiate between development as the process of social change and development as functionally building mass media infrastructure. Moreover, communication and mass media are undifferentiated in his theorisation. Propagated through consultancy work, Schramm’s theory of development had its audience-reach in several countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. He wrote, “[T]he growth of modern communication must go along closely with other modernisation. It can lag slightly behind without greatly delaying the general pattern of advance. . . . If it runs slightly ahead, it can, to a degree, hurry the general rate of advance” (Schramm, 1967: 9). Communication as development and communication modernisation become a chief theme in his theory of national growth. Even though national development goals are easy to state, planners know that a straightforward path to modernisation is not possible. For that reason, the antecedents of development planning, with regard to establishing media institutions in rural areas, burden the independent and local founding of radio in Uttarakhand. Development planning in postcolonial India has typically been state-initiated. A new forum of communication without state dependence feels seemingly redundant because of dominant broadcasts by All India Radio (AIR) and commercial FM radio. A  community-owned radio station, with its core group of youth stakeholders and volunteers, who could have sought other gainful jobs with their degrees in the social sciences from local universities, is liable

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to be held in suspicion or not taken seriously by governmental bodies. Age, language, and class (members of farming communities rather than city-bred administrators) go against community radio votaries. This suspicion often leads to non-cooperation between volunteers and government officials in times of crisis situations. I argue that community radio may fulfil certain development goals just because of its geographical location and proximity to rural areas and agricultural families who comprise its listenership. As such, it is a democratic forum for the educated youth in the region to communicate their thoughts; provide pertinent, culturally based information; and carve out a potentially economically viable career for themselves. Mawdsley (1998) cautions us against maudlin thoughts about village folk as conservationists who desire forest preservation. Chipko has engendered an ethic of conserving the environment so indigenous communities can eke out a livelihood. The need to earn one’s keep is paramount in the region. Subsistence farming in the era of climate change, with frequent landslides and wild pigs, has been arduous and non-profitable. The next generations crave a different kind of reliance and dependability on the environment and would rather not farm under the current conditions of drought and monsoon havoc. Development policies in the region have made farming unattractive to the local youth. That trend is widespread in all of rural India.

Disaster prone region When floods struck Uttarakhand during the monsoon of 2013, there were a record number of landslides as well as loss of livestock and village housing. The land rolled down paved roads and pathways, farming land, and other essential lifelines, such as electricity connections. A field visit in 2014 recorded over 30 landslides, from Haridwar to Chamba, along the main roadways. There were many more landslides once I travelled to the villages, which are off the road and on different sides of the mountain and often not visible from the beaten track of the highway. The loss of lives and livestock was steeper than officially reported. Pilgrimage tourism was devastated, as 500 persons went missing at Kedarnath, a popular pilgrimage site. Later, the loss of life was estimated unofficially at approximately 5,000 persons. At the peak of the monsoon season in 2013, the Meteorological Department estimated a 375 percent increase in rainfall. Most reports show that the Meteorological Department will be ill-prepared for action during similar deluges in the future. Henvalvani invited the chief meteorological scientist in the district to its studio to talk about the weather, and listeners were able to call in to ask questions. This move was commended even by state-owned AIR personnel. This is the juncture at which community radio becomes significant as a disaster intervention. Cell phones that have otherwise revolutionised mountainous and rural communication also fall prey to monsoon deluges. As an ode to the resilience of radio, there is a proliferation of community radio centres in Uttarakhand, with Henvalvani being the oldest. Other radio centres are Radio Mandakani, and TERI radio. Most community radio centres are operated by

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committed local youth, who raise money working in shops to repair and fix electrical gadgets and come from families of subsistence farmers to operate their radio stations in the absence of adequate government or private patronage. The backing of civil society has facilitated their training and all the systematic setting up of listening clubs to increase their listener base and the networking amongst the youth broadcasters.

Engaging sustainability, climate change, and ecology Within the framework of development theories, engaging with current conversations on climate change is important. Uttarakhand is prone to earthquakes, extreme monsoons, and landslides. These periodic signs of devastation extract a human toll and lead to loss of flora and fauna and major ecological damage. While the global public sphere is rife with discussion of climate change, there is no public discussion about the connections between natural crises and inputs from community radio operating in local contexts. The lack of a public sphere for exploring the interplay of disaster interventions and community radio does a disservice to the community radio movement and the citizens of mountainous communities. I  am careful to say “intervention” and not “coverage” because community radio is situated within the community that is adversely affected during climate disasters. It is not an external entity. Since disasters are understood principally in relation to relief efforts, community radio remains unsupported, as external non-profit agencies and organisations primarily administer relief activities using centralised relief protocols. Unlike community radio, commercial FM radio has seized upon the profit motive and distanced itself from civic responsibility. Community radio embraces civic participation, being wholly defined by deep engagement with its immediate public. The language of the currently evolving national broadcast policy must conceive of community radio as an ally. Community forms of media cannot operate effectively without broadcast policies that recognise CR stations as legitimate media practitioners even though they are not given the same status as journalists and press workers. Policy developments need further scrutiny in how they accord priority – that is tier, label – and frame community media as partners and participants in the larger media landscape. Disaster relief and preparedness need the tight partnership of the state and local community infrastructure. Community radio and other community media are decidedly local and the key disseminators of pertinent relief information. The vision of Henvalvani’s community radio volunteers is to establish and create a network or web of connections that works together during a disaster – even providing checks and balances to information that is overly alarmist or simply false. Audience members living in the remote villages of Tehri Garhwal want to know about government relief projects, government schemes that may help them through radio because CR broadcasts in Garhwali, the local language, whereas governmental directives are mostly written in Hindi. CR employs a grassroots approach during climate-related occurrences so as to field panicked phone calls from those in villages distant from the highway. CR stations take

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questions from ordinary citizens and invite officials of the weather department during the peak of a crisis for a call-in session, thereby building solidarity and support amongst the community of listeners being served.

Review of research literature on disaster and crisis radio A review of the quickly burgeoning literature on global experiences with radio and communication technology during hazards is important for this study. To recap, recent scientific knowledge on climate change informs us that climaterelated disasters will deleteriously impact several countries around the world each year. In 2017, separated by just a month, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma pummelled the Caribbean and Southern United States at the same time that South Asia was suffering from flash floods and incredible loss of life: “There is now consensus that human impacts on the environment are more complex and contingent than assumed earlier” (Vetaas and Knudson, 2004: 1). The intensity of these global climate-related crises has increased in number over the past few years. Flash floods, landslides, fires, cyclones, and earthquakes are part of the gamut. Crisis communication, risk communication, and disaster management have become major disciplines and areas of study in academia only to service governmental and non-governmental agencies involved in relief and rehabilitation. Calamities such as Hurricane Katrina (in 2005), Hurricane Harvey (in 2017), the multi-nation Asian tsunami (in 2001), earthquakes in Indian and Pakistani Kashmir (2005), and the Indonesian earthquake (2018) are just a few climate-related disasters in recent memory. Added to this list are the 2013 Uttarakhand floods that resulted in significant loss of life and livestock and destruction of agricultural and forest livelihoods, not to mention roads and housing (legal and illegal construction). Scholars who have researched climate-related crises and community radio are undivided in their opinion about the role of communication in both relief and pre- and post-disaster interventions. They have asserted that “most of the time crisis situations turn out to be, to a large extent, information and communication crises” (Pijneburg and Van Duin, 1991: 70, cited in Garnett and Kouzmin, 2007). Homing in on the role of “communication” further, scholars narrow down two important inputs: the vitality of interpersonal communication and interventions of local/community media. Interpersonal communication involves information dissemination via family, friends, and neighbours. Communitybased media is most easily understood as local radio and television inputs in disasters that lead to major public health crises (Rundblad et al., 2010). One can argue that all disasters have the potential to lead to disease and pandemics (Mechanic, 2017). When a disease is widespread and infrastructure is giving way, who is the public and what is community? I would like to borrow the definition of “community” from other scholars (Hampton and Wellman, 2001, cited in Ewart and Dekker, 2013: 366) who define the term as “networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity,” thereby not limiting their thinking of community to neighbourhoods and villages. I  suggest a

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minor modification in this definition because, in times of disaster, locality takes on a special immediacy. Being situated and place-based takes on an urgency in mountain communities.

Civic engagement and community media during crises Spence et  al. (2011), examining public interest and local radio, found that 80 percent of the 125 AM and FM stations believed strongly that their mission was civic in nature. While community radio in South Asia has a very strong regional and local identity, its public interest work is not always couched theoretically in critical coin-of-the-realm terms such as “civic engagement,” which in turn undermines its efficacy in its own communities. Other external organisations, such as the weather department, local district government, and state disaster management agencies, do not credit their service as political engagement. Community media professionals often remain the outliers amongst the more recognised state-owned and commercial media. Theoretical sub-fields such as risk communication have had to carefully evaluate their assumptions, which understand the beneficiary as an individual and not a complex being belonging to a larger social collective or community. Previous conceptions of the individual believed actors to be rational and able to act on media-disseminated (authoritative) information without exercising personhood and agency. Recent articulations of risk literature describe the individual/ audience as active, situated positively within a larger social framework, and possessing agency. Given the literature, one can work with the assumption that the public comprises several individual members. Each member of the public is imbued with resourcefulness. Factors that lead the individual to make active choices are “demographics, knowledge, and previous experience of similar situations, and general health beliefs and attitudes towards risks and preventative actions, to the transmitter, used to convey the message to the public” (Rundblad et  al., 2010: 2). It will require a paradigmatic shift within risk communication literature to be able to understand the societal complexity in any situated (as in mountain communities) public’s choice of community radio as the foremost reliable voice in times of localised disaster. “Communicating through Katrina,” a study by Garnett and Kouzmin (2007), provides some vital insights into communication challenges during crises. The researchers employed four lenses for multi-perspectival analysis  – namely crisis communication as interpersonal influence, crisis communication as media relations, crisis communication as technology showcase, and crisis communication as inter-organisational networking. They believe that employing four lenses or paradigms instead of one will allow researchers to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each lens/paradigm. The relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina provided challenges for government organisations as well as civil society relief organisations. Emerging scholarship is advocating for further scrutiny of the rubrics of inter-organisational networking with a view to improving the quality of this networking. There is a lag in identifying which networks of local

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and global organisations are helpful during a particular crisis. Just as organisations are plentiful, climatic hazards are plentiful too. Therefore, the relationship between direct beneficiaries and government organisations needs constant nurturing. Work remains to be done to “facilitate interactions among the organisations and people involved so as to develop trust and communication linkages before a crisis hits” (Garnett and Kouzmin, 2007: 183). Scholars add that “transparency and accountability, also, are challenges for all four conceptual lenses” (p.  184). It would take an unambiguous disaster management policy espousing staunch support for a government-community radio partnership for a clear understanding of support to develop over time. Henvalvani’s visibility in the hill region, through its popular broadcasts and volunteer staff, has also contributed to its ability to reach out to other development-focused non-profits in the region, forging ties as organisational allies. Having been born of myriad environmental mobilisations within Garhwal, Henvalvani and its volunteers comprise an incredibly connected set of advocates. Formal partnerships with governmental agencies are in the making and need further concretisation. Oftentimes, the government appointment of a committed administrator or district collector leads to firmer alliances between community radio and district-level administration, but then the district collector’s subsequent transfer to another location in the state or central government positions the administrator yet again as “new” within the circles of district-level bureaucracy. It takes a long time to build trust with each administrator during their, at the most, two-year appointment. Just as the region’s governmental organisations largely ignored Henvalvani during the 2013 deluge, so was a small community newspaper by the name of New Orleans Times-Picayune. Reporters’ Freedom of Information Act requests to the Environmental Protection Agency for information on environmental health and safety conditions were delayed or ignored (Garnett and Kouzmin, 2007) to the detriment of effective health and relief work. The normative theories of crisis communication favour the view that those organisations wielding greatest authority during a disaster take a quick hold of the situation via strategy management and by maintaining a two-way flow of communication (Ewart and Dekker, 2013: 366): “Normative theory, of course, cannot account for deviations from and spontaneous adaptations to orthodox communication methods, even though these often emerge as a crisis unfolds” (Ewart and Dekker, 2013: 366). In an effort to pursue effective communication, then, “ ‘government regulators,’ public interest watchdog groups, or the media may seek to justify their own existence as guardians of the ‘public good’ ” (Ewart and Dekker, 2013: 366). Ewart and Dekker (2013) offer talk radio as a possibility (where the audience is contributory and participatory rather than passive receivers of information) to resist orthodox and entrenched practices. Radio’s role in information dissemination renders it resilient during crises. Critical theories of democracy and communication privilege a participatory space where the empowered public governs the public sphere. Community media is the idealised public sphere where liberal policies are questioned to create an imagined community that interrogates the normative routes and rituals

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of government and local governance. Despite avowals of media democracy, the nation-state maintains the status quo with regard to community radio policy and the community media lobby. The community media lobby, comprising academics and activists from the non-profit and non-governmental sector, has been pushing back to carve a way to assert CR’s constitutional and legal right over the public airwaves after the unequivocal Supreme Court ruling in 1995. Community radio, as a discursive space, is poised to become part of the rich and textured regional media landscape. Gradually, once CR develops a selfsustaining model of funding, there will be further competing counterpublics that will challenge existing notions of functioning and broadcasting within the community. Perhaps, then, the negotiation of myriad levels of power and privilege will evolve in their complexity. Discursively, community radio in India comprises campus radio, rural local radio, urban local radio, mobile technologies, and mobile telephony. With changing meanings of radio, matters of hierarchy and power need revisiting so as to strengthen the bonds of effective interpersonal communication so the community, as defined by community radio volunteers, is always front and centre. Here my guide is the Foucauldian notion of power, which dictates that power is not stable and monolithic but ever-changing, circulating between myriad levels of hierarchy and relationship. Other theoretical directions derived from critical theory (discussion of which is beyond the scope of one chapter) must include writing from theorists such as Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Deleuze and Guattari, and Stuart Hall, who provide deep insight into the neoliberal human condition with respect to issues of body, politics, multiculturalism, and modern citizenship and are eminently relevant to the study of disaster management and community media. Often, commercial mass media do not always report accurately, thereby hindering efforts at evacuation, rescue, aid, and security (Garnett and Kouzmin, 2007): “Because of the crisis mentality that prevails, especially during the immediate response phase, the typical media role of an independent critical monitor is often forgone and may even result in media-spread rumours” (Garnett and Kouzmin, 2007: 175). The researchers found mass media to be of limited value when it came to notifying the families of victims and rehabilitating families. It must be noted that Garnett and Kouzmin’s study did not differentiate between community and commercial media. Based upon their research, Garnett and Kouzmin are very critical of media broadcasting contributions during a time of disaster. The reliability factor (preventing the spread of falsehoods amongst the public) as well as community embeddedness is another reason why we must lay our bets on community media. The imperative to create a viable community media public comes from an active local and global civil society and popular people’s movements that exert a counterforce on the liberal democratic state to adjust its priority and re-examine a purely market-based solution to progress and success. A study by Spence et  al. (2011) conducted in the wake of the 2008 massive flooding of the Mississippi River, which submerged multiple Midwestern states in the United States, shows that “[radio] stations in smaller markets were

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better prepared to handle a crisis, perceived a higher level of civic responsibility to cover crises, and were more likely to report believing that citizens would respond to an emergency in a pro-social manner” (Spence et  al., 2011: 227). They in turn suggest that larger markets or commercial radio stations, with better trained personnel for crisis management, do not always recognise and are not always willing to extend services, in the spirit of civic duty, to their constituent publics. The case of talk-back radio in Australia shows that local radio has the unique ability to create community. Formative research by Ewart and Dekker (2013) studied the altruistic responses of affected and non-affected persons during cyclones, bush fires, and floods in Australia from 1974 to 2011. Altruism is defined as the sense of purpose and feeling of solidarity persons feel and display through their actions in times of dire need. The need for information and the reality of listening as a collective audience heightened the sense of community on an everyday level amongst talk-back radio listeners. In effect, listeners of talk-back radio become an active community during disasters and not a latent audience, contributing suggestions and offering pertinent feedback during talkback radio programming. Talk-back radio becomes an important imaginative space, fomenting action, consciousness-raising, and a community of interest. Radio and its specialised talk-back format challenge normative theories of communication, as it “happens on the terms of audiences, producers and hosts” (Ewart and Dekker, 2013: 378).

Assessing disaster, distress, and health risk The world is witnessing an inordinate amount of climate-related calamity. Aberrant climate patterns have made communication scholars and scientists very curious about what is required before, during, and after natural disasters. Since serious health conditions, loss of life, emotional distress, and grief follow natural disasters (Burger et al., 2013), scholars have conducted numerous studies on the aftermath of large crises. They surmise that “post-disaster needs assessments are essential to understand construction and rebuilding, as well as post-disaster mental health assessments. Equally important is determining how individuals obtained information regarding the storm [as in the case of Hurricane Sandy] conditions, and evacuation routes” (Cutter and Smith, 2009; Kessler et  al., 2008, cited in Burger et al., 2013). The authors reiterate that it is important to have an understanding of the affected community’s information choices. In the earlier mentioned studies, radio – sometimes community and other times local radio – and television (in the instances that it worked during power outages) were the chief sources of information. An enquiry into the outreach of community media yielded other important information, such as identifying at-risk, vulnerable populations and gauging the patterns of media use amongst younger and older populations, that helped relief organisations assess and foreshadow needs. Each global disaster in the last 5–7 years has had an assessment of information needs for distress conditions.

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Merapi Community Radio was set up in 2001 after the Asian tsunami devastated parts of Indonesia, and the Tohoku earthquake of 2011 in Japan was served by community radio as well. By conducting an assessment of information needs, we have overwhelming evidence that the need for community media must be inserted into the extant though fledging disaster policy of the state and national government.

Conclusion: weakly defined role of community radio The NDMA, or National Disaster Management Authority, located in most, but not all, states in India is the chief governmental organisational set-up that coordinates relief during climate or natural disasters. NDMA also has the authority to find the best possible means for the dissemination of pertinent information related to the well-being of the listening public. Their website urges citizens to prepare a kit for emergencies. And amidst suggestions of headache, fever medicine, and potable water, a radio set with batteries is also listed. While the inclusion of the radio set in a prescribed list for disaster preparedness is a positive sign, the governmentalist concern for possessing a radio set is not matched by its concern for providing existing local community radio with the power and agency to operate during crises. Provided that the research literature about the role of radio in risk communication is indisputable, it seems exceedingly simplistic that the Disaster Management Authority overlooks the opportunity to interface with an overwhelmingly citizen-oriented and effective medium such as community radio. To begin with, coordination between policymakers at the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and disaster preparedness votaries needs streamlining. Scholars who have studied Hurricane Katrina remark on the fact that the “public tone communicated by federal officials was one of ‘being in control’ rather than showing appropriate engagement” (Garnett and Kouzmin, 2007: 174). The absence of key politicians during decision-making was equally remarkable during the 2013 Uttarakhand flooding. These lacunae reveal the vulnerability of a system that is constrained by its own short-sightedness. Scholars have already noted that “disasters are local [emphasis mine] in their impact, and that the first response to a crisis comes from the community itself. Local radio stations, given their resilience, flexibility and accessibility, play a critical role in informing the public, coordinating response and reconstituting community connections” (Spence et al., 2011: 232). Not surprisingly, disaster preparedness and training for its eventuality are limited and of poor quality amongst radio staff (Spence et al., 2011). Citing a study by Waxman from 1973, Spence et al. (2011: 228) assert radio as a crisis mitigation tool, for it “galvanises citizens,” community leaders, and social groups to meet common recovery goals. Despite the connectedness of community and local radio, Spence et  al. identify that “the role radio stations are required to play in a crisis is weakly defined [emphasis mine], and this can contribute to issues of coordination and preparation” (Spence et al., 2011: 230).

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In the end: integration of discourses leads to resilience Community radio practitioners cannot become competent disaster managers if the momentum of media democratisation does not sustain and CR practitioners are not given their rightful pride of place in the disaster preparedness and mitigation process. Community radio votaries are not seen as essential to the process of recovery and relief during disaster, but this has not prevented them from being willing participants. Scholars such as Saeed (2009) opine that further debate needs to occur outside of academia if the subaltern “counterpublic sphere” is to join the movement for media change. I believe that the subaltern counterpublic sphere has been instrumental in conscientizing academics and activists to rethink media and democracy during an age of neoliberal economics. I wish to reiterate my explication earlier on how the discourses of community media, climate change, and disaster management (relief) are not yet integrated enough to provide the best possible fighting chance to prepare for major disasters in mountain communities and other ecologically fragile areas. The flash floods and landslides of 2013 in Uttarakhand are a grim reminder that India and South Asia are not ready to respond adequately to extreme weather events resulting in overwhelming loss of human and animal life and severe disruption of everyday patterns in rural mountain communities.

References Atteridge, A., Shrivastava, M.K., Pahuja, N., Upadhyay, H. (2012). Climate policy in India: What shapes international, national and state policy? AMBIO, 41, 68–77. Birowo, M.A. (2010). The use of community radio in managing natural disaster in Indonesia. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 36(5), 18–21. Burger, J., Gochfeld, M. Jeitner, C., Pittfield, T., Donio, M. (2013). Trusted information sources used during and after Superstrorm Sandy: TV and Radio were used more often than social media. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Part A, 76(20), 1138–1150. Cutter, S.L., Smith, M.M. (2009). Fleeing from the hurricane’s wrath: Evacuation and the two Americas. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 51(2), 26–36. Ewart, J., Dekker, S. (2013). Radio, someone still loves you! Talkback radio and community emergence during disasters. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 27(3), 365–381. Garnett, J.L., Kouzmin, A. (2007). Communicating through Katrina: Competing and complementary conceptual lenses on crisis communication. Public Administration Review, 67(s1), 171–178. Gettleman, J. (2017). More than 1,000 died in South Asia floods this summer. New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/floods-south-asiaindia-bangladesh-nepal-houston.html?mcubz=1&utm_source=Master+List&utm_ campaign=f022602133-US+Direct++Futures+of+Black+Radicalism&utm_medium= email&utm_term=0_1f96ba5fab-f022602133-409269017 Golding, P. (1985). Media role in national development: Critique of theoretical orthodoxy. Journal of Communication, 24(3), 39–53.

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Hampton, K., Wellman, B. (2001). Long distance community in the network society. American Behavioral Scientist, 45(3), 476–495. Harvey, B. (2011). Climate airwaves: Community radio, action research, and advocacy for climate justice in Ghana. International Journal of Communication, 5, 2035–2058. Harvey, B., Burns, D., Oswald, K. (2012). Linking community, radio, and action research on climate change: Reflections on a systemic approach. IDS Bulletin, 43(2), 101–117. Hobart, M. (1993). Introduction: The growth of ignorance. In M. Hobart (Ed.), An anthropological critique of development: The growth of ignorance (pp.  1–30). London: Routledge. Hulme, M. (2009). Why we disagree about climate change: Understanding controversy, inaction and opportunity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Jayaweera, N. (1987a). Introduction. In N. Jayaweera, S. Amunugama (Eds.), Rethinking development communication (pp. xiii–xix). Singapore: The Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre (AMIC). Jayaweera, N. (1987b). Rethinking development communication: Aholistic view. In N. Jayaweera, S. Amunugama (Eds.), Rethinking development communication (pp. 76–94). Singapore: The Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre (AMIC). Kanayama, T. (2012). Community radio and the Tohoku earthquake. International Journal of Japanese Sociology, 21, 30–36. Kessler, R. C., Galea, S., Gruber, M. J., Sampson, N. A., Ursano, R. J., Wessely, S. (2008). Trends in mental illness and suicidality after Hurricane Katrina. Molecular Psychiatry, 13(4), 374–384. Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Feinberg, G., Rosenthal, S., Marlon, J. (2014). Climate change in the American mind: October 14. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication. Lerner, D. (Ed.). (1958). The passing of traditional society: Modernizing the middle east. New York: Free Press. Mawdsley, E. (1998). After Chipko: From environment to region in Uttaranchal. Journal of Peasant Studies, 25(4), 36–54, doi:10.1080/03066159808438683. Mechanic, M. (2017). Hurricane Harvey and Irma could unleash swarms of diseasecarrying bloodsuckers. Mother Jones. Retrieved from www.motherjones.com/ environment/2017/09/hurricane-harvey-irma-disease-carrying-mosuitoes/ Mies, M., Shiva, V. (1993). Ecofeminism. London and New York: Zed Books. Murphy, J., Mickunas, A., Pilotta, J.J. (1986). Underside of high-tech: Technology and the deformation of human sensibilities. Praeger: Sensibilities contributions in Librarianship and Information Science. Ogra, M.V.,  Badola, R. (2016). Gender and climate change in the Indian Himalayas: Global threats, local vulnerabilities, and livelihood diversification at the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve. Earth System Dynamics, 6, 505–523. Pijnenburg, B., Van Duin, M.J. (1991). The Zeebrugge ferry disaster. In U. Rosenthal and B. Pijnenburg (Eds.), Crisis management and decision making. Dordrecht: Springer. Rundblad, G., Knapton, O., Hunter, P.R. (2010). Communication, perception and behavior during a natural disaster involving a ‘do not drink’ and a subsequent ‘boil water’ notice: A postal questionnaire study. BMC Public Health, 10(641), 1–12. Saeed, S. (2009). Negotiating power: Community media, democracy, and the public sphere. Development in Practice, 19(4–5), 466–478. Samarajiwa, R. (1987). The murky beginnings of the communication and development field: Voice of America and ‘The Passing of Traditional Society’. In N. Jayaweera, S. Amunugama (Eds.), Rethinking development communication (pp.  3–19). Singapore: The Asian Mass Communication Research and Information Centre (AMIC).

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Savaresi, A. (2016). The Paris agreement: A new beginning? Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law, 1–11. Schramm, W. (1964). Mass media and national development. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Schramm, W. (1967). Communication and change. In D. Lerner, W. Schramm (Eds.), Communication and change in the developing countries (pp.  1–18). Honolulu, HI: East-West Center Press. Servaes, J. (1983). Communication and development: Some theoretical remarks. Leuven, Belgium: ACCO. Spence, P.R., McIntyre, J.J., Lachlan, K.A., Savage, M.E., Seeger, M.W. (2011). Serving the public interest in a crisis: Does local radio meet the public interest? Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, 19(4), 227–232. Stager, C. (2011). Deep future: The next 100,000  years of life on earth. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Vetaas, O.R., Knudsen, A. (2004). Fragile mountains  – fragile people? Understanding “Fragility” in the Himalayas. Mountain Research and Development, 24(2), 182–184.

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Box 16  When will India’s first emergency radio get a permanent license? John Nelson, Managing Trustee, Saranalayam Charitable and Educational Trust, Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu, is credited with setting up India’s first emergency radio station in December 2015 – the Cuddalore Disaster Emergency Radio 107.8 MHz in Tamil Nadu. Taijrani Rampersaud, Research Assistant, UNESCO Chair on Community Media, University of Hyderabad, spoke with him about the station’s activities and aspirations. The Cuddalore Disaster Emergency Radio 107.8 MHz hopes to transition from a six-month disaster radio license to a permanent license to continue serving the community. The station will be registered with the Saranalayam Charitable and Educational Trust and based in Vadalur, Cuddalore District, Tamil Nadu. According to John Nelson, the community radio (CR) station is currently fulfilling its mandate as a disaster station by sharing pertinent information about relief and rehabilitation in the region. Such information is packaged in the form of audio magazine programmes and short news bulletins. Other programming produced covers health and agricultural issues as well as entertainment in the form of folk songs and moral storytelling. The Chennai floods in November and December 2015 had prevented students from attending school for one month. To compensate for this loss, the station entered into a special arrangement with the Chief Education Officer enabling educational broadcasts to be carried out. Through these broadcasts, teachers delivered lessons to students preparing for public examinations.

The beginnings The Cuddalore Disaster Emergency Radio story, however, began much earlier. The heavy rainfalls which eventually resulted in flooding the district started on November 8, 2015, and occurred in three spells. The first spell was seen as normal but the second was of greater magnitude and resulted in the entire district being affected. People were unable to leave their homes due to rising water levels. The third spell, which commenced at the end of November, spread into December and resulted in a gradual increase of water that reached disaster levels. This was when John Nelson saw the possibility of a community radio station which would broadcast important messages to the affected community. On the morning of December 4, 2015, he met with the District Collector and presented this idea. By December 9, 2015, the station was officially launched. However, there were challenges involved in setting up the station within such a short time. Getting permission to set up the station,  organising

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the space for the station, infrastructure for transmission and other logistics – these were just a few of the concerns that needed to be addressed. According to Nelson, everything was a bit of a struggle in the beginning. However, they learned through trial and error. The public assisted wherever possible and as much as they could. Initially, the content that was broadcast came from the District Collector’s Office. However, as the disaster period passed, more individuals were able to participate in the programming. Content generated by teachers and doctors in the form of education and health programs exemplified the shift. The station’s management and daily operations have underscored the role and importance of community participation. It is run by volunteers who have trained in radio production about ten years ago through the Saranalayam Charitable and Educational Trust in the Vadalur village knowledge centre. This was around the time when broadcasts from the Anna University campus radio station in Chennai started in the district. The volunteers, then youths, are now mostly undergraduate students at university.

The future While the station plans to continue with its educational, health and agricultural programming once a permanent license is granted, more community development based issues will be incorporated. This apart, the programming will include a rich basket of folk entertainment programs. The memories of the 2004 tsunami and 2015 floods are also likely to exert their influence on the programming content. It is hoped that the radio station will continue to broadcast information on disaster preparedness and how to deal with the aftermath as well as act as a personal counsellor of sorts for affected individuals. Programmes will be generated by the communities and in the communities. According to Nelson, if there is a need, producers from the station will take laptops, mixers and other necessities to the communities where the content can be generated. Once the programmes are packaged, they will be taken back to the station where they can be broadcast. The Village Knowledge Centre, established under the Trust, will continue to provide volunteers for the station. Source: CR News Vol. 7, No. 1, Apr-Jun 2016

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activism 27 – 31, 34 actors 9, 13, 22 – 24, 27 – 30, 34, 54, 68, 69, 218, 271 advertising 33, 57, 109, 112, 113, 119, 187, 190, 194 – 196 advocacy 8, 23, 29, 32, 33, 35, 36 agencies 12, 13, 142, 166, 215, 217, 277, 281 agricultural methods 238 agriculture 25, 26, 51, 53, 55, 104, 169, 170, 233, 256 airwaves 6, 10, 21, 24, 29, 31, 33, 34, 44, 45, 103, 105, 106, 118, 121 All India Radio (AIR) 29, 30, 110, 169, 203, 256, 264, 273; for broadcasting by communities 30; broadcasts 177 allocation 91, 119, 120, 123, 124, 136; design 119, 120, 123, 124; discretionary 119, 120 all-women radio station 155 alternative media 4, 8, 71, 72, 151, 246, 271 Amaratunge v. Sirimal (Jana Ghosha Case) 92 AMARC 35, 46, 147, 166, 167, 185, 219, 223 Amit Mitra committee on radio broadcast policy 32 Anandaraja, N. 84 Anwar, Mahmuda 154 approach, non-representational 234, 235, 246 Arab Spring 271 Arnaldo, Carlos 54 artefacts, cultural 243 Ash, James 235, 243 assessment toolkit 219 – 221

associational-networked deliberation 33 – 37 Athpahariya radio programme in Radio Makalu 75 Atton, C. 8 auctions 37, 119, 120 backpack radio station 166 Bailey, O. 8 Bangalore Declaration 1, 28, 31, 169 Bangladesh 1, 3 – 5, 9, 11, 44, 46, 48, 148, 154 – 155, 179, 185, 190, 192; community radio in 154; CR policy 9, 44, 57, 58; NGO Network of Community Radio Broadcasters 167; NGOs Network 45, 154, 224 Bangladesh Betar 44 Bangladesh Community Radio Policy 6, 185 Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (BNNRC) 45, 49, 57, 154, 155, 167, 187, 224 Barguna 52 – 53 Batliwala, Srilatha 111 Batuvitage, G. 89 Beniger, James Ralph 138 Bhopal-based CR station 205 Braman, Sandra 22 broadcasters 46, 87, 92, 118, 121, 122, 126, 127, 187; female 153, 154, 156; private 37, 94 broadcast information 188 broadcasting 7, 8, 25 – 27, 30, 48 – 51, 93, 112, 126, 220, 255; imperialism 24 – 27; narrowcasting to 177, 236 – 238; policy 28; public service 125, 126; standards 126, 127

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Broadcasting Regulatory Policy CRTC 90 broadcast media 32; independent Nepali 66 broadcast policy 68, 268, 275 broadcasts 32, 33, 45, 46, 48, 56, 57, 85, 87, 170, 193, 195, 258, 259, 262 Brown, Wendy 246 Buckley, Steve 90 Bundelkhand 254 Cammearts, B. 8 capacity-building programmes 154, 225 Carpentier, N. 8 CBOs 176, 177, 179, 261 CEMCA 36, 153, 154, 185, 194, 221 Chahat Chowk 153, 163 – 164 Chandhoke, Neera 34 channel spacing 122, 123 Chaupal: need for 257 – 258; power and communication 255 – 256 Chopra, Deepta 151 Choudry, Aziz 110, 113 Chowdhury, M.A.A. 48 Christian broadcasting 203 Christian Communication 28, 154 Christians, Clifford 208 Citizen’s media against armed conflict: Disrupting violence in Colombia 208 civic engagement 277 – 280 civil society 2, 4, 7, 22, 30, 31, 33 – 34, 45, 69, 71, 117, 127, 185, 272, 275; groups 4, 5, 10, 33, 36, 94, 105, 139, 166; larger 34, 35; movements 95; organisations 3, 4, 10, 88, 106, 110, 111, 218, 237, 254 Clarke, Andy 235 climate change 13, 51, 180, 268 – 270, 274 – 276, 282 co-learning (CL) 12, 215, 221 – 222, 227 collective assemblages 244, 245; enunciation 244 – 245 collective identity 68, 69, 272 collective memory 234, 243, 245 commercial radio stations 37, 122, 280 commercial stations 94, 121, 122, 125 common values 208 – 210 communal archives 242 – 243 communalism 202 communication 27, 28, 35, 36, 67, 105, 112, 148, 149, 156, 207, 215 – 217,

272, 273, 276; crisis 276, 277; environment 207; feminist 156; mass 273; participatory 46 – 48, 184, 216; policies 216; rights 1, 5, 6, 8, 10, 21, 106; risk 276, 277, 281; systems 52, 180, 216; technologies 58, 85, 104, 138, 139, 150, 165, 173, 232, 272, 276; theorists 135 communication for development (C4D) 215 – 217 communities: access 50, 53 – 54, 58; affected 175, 179; broadcast 68; broadcasters 117, 125, 127; broadcasting 1, 2, 4, 21, 28 – 31, 34, 90, 124, 127, 128, 169; closeknit policy 35; communications 10; development 49, 72, 90; empowering 262 – 263; empowerment 10, 254; engagement 46, 57, 158, 185, 188, 189, 193, 194, 268; geographical 90; grassroots 45; learning programme 153; localised 23, 143; media 6, 13, 23, 24, 47, 70, 71, 90, 117 – 118, 125, 151, 188, 208, 268, 279; media centre 168, 169; minority 76, 202; oppressed 124; ownership 8, 10, 51, 58, 82 – 95, 103, 135, 184, 186, 188, 271; participation 8, 26, 47, 49, 50, 66, 103, 110, 127, 175, 184, 189, 193, 196, 223; particular 58, 206; village 254; vulnerable 53, 153, 268 community-based disaster response 178 Community Learning Program (CLP) 153, 154, 163 community media 277 – 280; in conflict 208; in India 202; South Asia and 61 – 64 Community Media Forum 223 community mobilisation 56 – 57 community of practice (CoP) 226 – 228 community-owned radio station 273 community ownership 55 community radio (CR) 3 – 6, 8, 16 – 17, 31 – 37, 45, 66, 87 – 89, 112, 124 – 125, 135, 143, 253, 275; acknowledged 178; activists 119; applications 119, 124; assessment 220; in Bangladesh 44 – 59; broadcasters 35, 46, 67, 85, 91, 126, 147, 155, 156, 166, 167, 180, 219; broadcasting 33, 46, 47, 58, 105, 168, 180; case

288

INDEX

studies, profiles 50 – 52; centres 270, 274; character of 103, 186; communication channels 268 – 282; community-owned 88; community voices 175 – 177; core philosophy of 185, 188; development and participation 10, 46 – 48, 184; domain 4, 106; emergence of 105 – 106; establishing/establishment 10, 45, 67, 95; evaluating 215 – 228; first 67; governance 67; grassroots democracy 253 – 264; improving 8; independent 30, 88; in India 12, 21 – 38, 201 – 211, 234, 236, 272, 279; legitimacy 169; licences 6, 35, 36, 89, 103, 185, 188, 190, 203, 232; local 73, 75, 76, 281; management committees 154; manifold participation 230 – 231; movement 5, 12, 30, 34, 36, 45, 47, 68, 82, 83, 133, 168, 169, 192, 201, 204, 205, 209, 211, 254, 275; of Nepal 65 – 77; NGOisation of 89 – 92; open source in 141 – 143; operations 4, 44, 187; operators 132; peace and reconciliation 210 – 211; policy 2, 33, 45, 46, 48, 58, 89, 90, 148, 192; policy conundrum, case in Nepal 80 – 81; positioning 89 – 92; practices of 108, 223; practitioners 133, 142, 187, 227, 282; principles of 195, 223; programmes 12, 13, 49, 54, 58, 82, 83, 89, 175 – 177, 253; promises 11, 133; public funding of 7, 112; redefine and refine policies 115 – 116; religion and politics 203 – 206; reporters 110; role of 76, 167; scope of 33, 178; sector 1, 4 – 8, 13, 34, 35, 66, 133 – 137, 140 – 141, 143, 144, 148, 158, 188, 192, 220, 226 – 228; social movement media 68 – 73; in South Asia 2 – 9, 117 – 128, 132 – 144, 147 – 158, 165 – 181, 184 – 196; space 24, 36; spectrum 119, 120, 123; spectrum for 91, 118, 119, 125; in Sri Lanka 82 – 95; staff 107; strengthen 95; sustainability of 7, 186; in times of disaster 165 – 181; women and 147 – 158; see also individual entries Community Radio Association 35, 120, 167, 223

Community Radio Broadcasters Nepal 167 Community Radio-Continuous Improvement Toolkit (CR-CIT) 12, 215, 224 – 226 community radio council (CRC) 95 community radio establishment 67 – 68 Community Radio Forum 34, 36 Community Radio Forum and Community Radio Association of India 120 community radio initiatives 5, 33, 148, 152, 256; first civil society 88 Community Radio-Performance Assessment System 8, 220 community radio policy 9, 33, 90, 106, 113, 119, 120, 125, 136, 184, 185, 190, 279; explicit 124, 125; inclusive 105 community radio space 38; autonomous 4 community radio (CR) stations 53, 56 – 58, 68, 107, 121, 123 – 127, 132, 141, 152 – 154, 167 – 168, 179 – 180, 188 – 196, 204 – 205, 219, 220, 224, 226, 253, 254; assessment toolkit for 219 – 221; autonomous 1, 7; available local 77; in Bangladesh 46, 57, 154, 192, 196; best 106; and CR activists 208; dedicated 83; emergency 165; enabling Indian 38; establishing 188; faith-based 66; financial sustainability of 112, 193, 194; first 11, 153; first all-women 152, 155; first Bangladeshi 50; first local 87; five 122, 125; functional/functioning 167, 204; grassroots 168; hybrid 83; in India 153, 205; indigenous 66; individual 191; institutional character of 11, 185; licenced 237; local 178, 186, 190, 192; lower watt 191; in Nepal 148, 155; operating/ operational 184, 187, 215; practising 35; principles 192; publicised showcase 87; sample 50; single 122, 124; single operational 185; in South Asia 8, 158, 190; specialist 66; support 191; sustainability of 11, 185, 187; in Telangana 12; training 178; tribal 204; urban 223; work 220 Community Radio Support Centre 8, 220

289

INDEX

community radio supporters 45 Community Radio Support Scheme 7, 112 community radio volunteers 279 community radio votaries 274, 282 community reporters 107, 109, 111, 170, 176, 177, 254, 255, 257 – 262, 264 community voices 56, 167, 168, 175; importance of 169, 177 compassionate capitalism 49 competition 119, 121, 123, 125, 127, 143 computers 53, 142, 237, 239 – 242 conflicts 3, 12, 65, 68, 69, 71, 74, 120, 124, 176, 184, 201 – 211; community media in 208 Conlin, S. 217 consultation 27 – 29, 31, 33, 35, 57, 89, 169, 216, 223, 224, 269 Consultation on Community Radio and Media Policy 28 consultations, toolkit development team 223 – 224 content creation 195, 238 content development 158 contestation 21, 37, 38, 68, 207 continuous improvement (CI) 221 control room 237 Cornwall, Andrea 111 corruption 3, 92, 119, 120, 262, 263 costs 52, 70, 119, 125, 126, 132, 143, 165, 193 Couldry, Nick 157, 206 coverage area 49, 111, 121, 258 critical media policy studies: myth of neutrality 21 – 22; nation-state and 22 – 23 cross-country/cross-regional exchange 180 Cross, Mai’a 28, 29 CRux 227 – 228 cultural identities 10, 50, 73, 74, 157, 216, 236 cultural movement 65 – 77 cultural politics 38, 69 culture 7 – 10, 12, 25, 26, 74 – 76, 134, 157, 201, 209, 243; high 203; local 76, 103, 108, 218, 220; of selfregulation and peer review 7 – 9 Dagron, A.G. 84 Dagron, Gumucio 186

Dalits 12, 68, 108, 155, 205 – 207, 255, 256, 259, 262, 263 Dambana 10, 82, 83 David, M.J.R. 84 – 86, 91 Deccan Development Society (DDS) 2, 30, 31, 152, 232 – 247; nonrepresentational approach 234 – 236; Sangam radio 236 – 242 Dekker, S. 278, 280 democracy 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 65, 66, 68, 71, 73, 74, 202, 203, 246, 253; dividend 4 democratic processes 45, 134, 135, 186, 271 development: communication 5, 104, 113, 156, 272; communication projects 217; information 104, 186; organisations 3, 148; projects 187; schemes 7, 84; sector 50, 111, 190, 191; social 71; space 185, 191; sustainable 38, 48, 147; team 221, 223, 224 development communication 104 – 105 development programmes 54, 82; funded 186 development radio 46, 58 development trap 103 – 113 DHAN Foundation 168, 169, 180 dialects 30, 56, 195; local 53, 56, 58 dialogue 10, 23, 48, 73, 95, 98 – 100, 128, 158, 188, 207, 227 digital cultures 243 digitalisation 117, 126 – 128 digital technologies 142, 243 – 244 disaster and crisis radio 276 – 277 disaster management: catalyst 166 – 167; criticality of community voice 167 – 168 disaster prone region 274 – 275 disasters 13, 165 – 167, 169, 170, 172, 175 – 179, 275, 276, 280 – 281; context of 166, 167; management 5, 166, 167, 178 – 180, 276, 279, 282; preparedness 11, 139, 165, 167, 168, 179 – 180, 268, 269, 281, 282; times of 165, 178, 180, 269, 272, 277, 279 discourses 2, 21, 23, 31, 32, 127, 133, 156, 186, 187, 221, 282 distress 280 – 281 domains, public 209, 223, 224 dramaturgy 37 – 38 DRRM 176, 177

290

INDEX

earthquakes 165, 167, 177, 178, 180, 185, 268, 269, 275 – 276 Ebbesen, Knud 83, 87 ecology 275 – 276 education 49 – 51, 55, 56, 84, 85, 88, 104, 107, 150, 155, 254 – 256; women 153, 154 educational institutions 3, 4, 31 – 34, 119, 124, 185, 190, 220 egalitarian 4 emergencies 104, 261, 268, 280, 281 emergency community radio licences 180 emergency radio 165, 179 emergency radio stations 166; community-based 179 empowering, community 262 – 263 empowerment 47, 73 – 75, 107, 111, 151, 154, 156, 157, 236, 246, 254, 255, 264; and development 47, 255 engagement 23, 31, 36, 47 – 49, 66, 148, 184, 187, 189, 193, 194, 275, 281 enunciations 244, 245 environment, proactive community radio 11 episodes 26, 170, 202, 238, 257 – 259, 261, 264 episodic programme 256 – 258, 263, 264 epistemes 31 – 33 epistemic community 27 – 29 Escobar, Oliver 37 Estrada, S.R. 46 ethic, CR 208 – 210 ethnicities 2, 150, 201 ethnography 23 – 24 evaluation 47, 51, 135, 215, 217 – 220, 226, 257; community radio impact 219 Ewart, J. 278, 280 experimental licence 138 – 139 experts 13, 28, 83, 104, 127, 132, 135 – 136, 156, 224, 225, 238 explanation 92 – 93, 223, 226 expression 1, 2, 4, 5, 46, 48, 92, 93, 157, 185 – 187, 242 – 244 extinction 75, 76 Fairbairn, J. 47 female pradhans 260, 261 “fill-in-the-gap” mechanism 143 financial sustainability 7, 8, 107, 109, 110, 113, 127, 187, 196, 221, 223

first emergency radio 285 – 286 floods 13, 165, 167, 169, 177 – 180, 268, 280 FM band 119, 122, 125, 136 FM programmes: agriculture 170 – 171; conserving the environment 174; coping with stress 171; disaster risk reduction 172 – 173; infrastructure interventions after tsunami 174 – 175; innovation and rebuilding tradition 171 – 172; livelihood 173 – 174; overcoming losses 171; rebuilding lives 171 FM radio, commercial 273, 275 FM radio feature 127 FMYY community radio station 166 folk culture 241 – 242 folklore 238, 242, 243 footprint 121, 127 forests 51, 270, 271 Fraser, C. 46 Fraser, Nancy 152 Freedman, Des 21 freedom 1, 5, 65, 86, 92, 93, 141, 158, 185 – 187, 190, 202, 206, 246; of expression 92 – 94 Free Media Movement (FMM) 93 Freire, Paulo 105 frequencies 37, 89 – 91, 93, 118, 120 – 125, 136, 165, 166 frequency management 121 – 123, 125, 126 funding 36, 46, 57, 87, 88, 109, 111, 112, 187, 191, 196, 217, 220, 269, 279; agencies 108, 217, 218; sources 193, 194, 196 Gaon ki Chaupal 254 – 264; challenges for 263 – 264; community radio programme 254; episodes of 258, 259, 261; women in 260, 263 Garnett, J.L. 277 Gee, Quintin 241 Gemidiriya Community Development 88 gender and development (GAD) philosophy 150 gender equality 147, 151, 256 gender policy 195 Gender Policy for Community Radio 147 Genilo, Jude William 6 Genosko, Gary 245

291

INDEX

institutional sustainability 186 – 187, 195 inter-faith relations 202 – 203 Iosifidis, Petros 22 IREX 91, 93 Ito, Mizuko 243

girl child 242, 243 Gitlin, T. 152 global social mobilisations 270 – 272 goalposts 225, 226 Goddard, Michael 244 governance 73, 74, 138, 220 government 6, 32 – 38, 45, 55, 67, 87, 90, 105, 112, 119, 122, 125, 204; agencies 119, 123 – 125; control 7, 26; departments 7, 22, 204, 205, 270; local 29, 53, 55, 257; officials 23, 33, 55, 56, 111, 124, 274; organisations 277, 278; programmes 107 Government of Bangladesh 45, 51 Government of India report 261 grassroots radio stations 272 groups 28 – 31, 34, 35, 45, 46, 136, 157, 158, 236, 237, 262, 263; tribal 262 – 264; women 30, 271 Grunnet, Henrik 91 Guattari’s free radio 244 – 245 Gudavarthy, Ajay 34 Gunatillake, G. 93 Gunawardene, N. 86, 91

Jain, Mayank 204 Jayaratne, T. 87, 89, 93, 95 Jayawardena, K. 93 Jayaweera, W. 95 Jeffrey, Robin 25 Kalanjiam Vanoli community radio 168 – 170, 177 Kamat, Sangeeta 111 Kamruzzaman, M. 48, 49 Karaganis, Joe 233, 243, 244 Kothmale Community Radio (KCR) 84 – 86 Kouzmin, A. 277 Krishi Radio 51 Kuhn, Thomas 29

Haas, Peter 29 Habermas, J. 72 Hajer, M. 30 Hamelink, C.J. 206 Hannah, Knox 235 Harshini, Weerasinghe 89, 95 Harvey 86 Harvey, B. 269 Harvey, Penny 235 health 55, 56, 58, 69, 85, 104, 132, 220, 232, 234, 238, 254, 256, 259 health risk 280 – 281 hegemonies 69, 71, 76, 240, 245 Henvalvani Samudayak Radio 269, 270 Henvalvani’s community radio volunteers 275 hierarchies 110, 113, 279 Holzner, Buckhard 29 Howley, K. 46, 151 Hughes, Stella 86 Hulme, M. 269 humiliation 206 – 207 identity reclamation 73 – 76 indigenous identity 74 information exchange 180 infrastructure 179 – 180

Laclau, Ernesto 73 Lalit Lokvani 254 – 257 Larkin, Brian 242 legal recognition 82 – 95 Leiserowitz, A. 269 Lennie, J. 218 Lerner, D. 273 Librero, F. 46 Likhi, A. 46 Linda, B. 86 listenership 53 – 54 Livesey, Graham 244 MacBride Commission report 47 Mahaweli Community Radio (MCR) 83 – 84 Mainali, Raghu 7 Making Merry with Millets 234 Malik, Kanchan K. 29, 235, 237 management participation 56 Manyozo, L. 25, 46 material media practices: mapping 232 – 247 Mawdsley, Emma 271, 274 Media & conflict: Escalating evil 207 media and culture industry 243 – 244 media democracy 1 – 14 media models and networks 180 – 181

292

INDEX

Rasheed, A.A. 51 Reality Construction in Society 29 resilience 2 – 9, 282 restrictive legislation 178 – 179 Riano, Pilar 156 Rincon, Omar 208 Rodriguez, Clemencia 6, 73, 151, 208

media policy: historical drivers 272 – 274 Mefalopulos, P. 47 Melucci, Alberto 68 MMC-sponsored evaluation study 51 monitoring and evaluation (M&E) 215 – 217; changing approaches to 218; changing contours of 217 – 218 Mouffe, Chantal 69, 73, 76 Müller, Catherine 151 multilateral organisation 106 Myers, M. 47, 57 narrow development perspective 4 – 5 National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) 281 Nazarea, Virginia D. 234 Neighbours from Hell 210 NGOisation 89 – 92, 111 NSMR 91 Other Voices 236 ownership 86 – 88 Paris Agreement 269 participatory evaluation methods 218 – 219 participatory planning and development 262 Pastapur Declaration 133 Pavarala, Vinod 29, 235, 237 peer review 7 – 9 People’s War 75 pirate archives 242 pirate media 242 policies and codes 223 policy ethnography 21 – 38 policy manoeuvres 30 – 31 Postman, Niel 134 Preston, Paschal 71 Priestman, Chris 85 Pringle, I. 85 – 86 programme production 259 – 260 Puddephat, A. 219 radio spectrum management 117 – 128; allocation design 119 – 121; channel spacing 122 – 123; community radio footprint 121 – 122; digitalisation 126 – 127; overall frequency management 125 – 126; saturation of spectrum 123 – 125 radio web browsing 85 Rahman, G.R. 46, 49

Samanmalee, S. 89 Sangam radio 232 – 247; balancing work and family life 252; women’s issues and participation 252 SARU community radio 88 – 89 Schramm, W. 273 Scoones, Ian 111 secularism 203 self-assessment (SA) 222; toolkit 215 – 228 self-regulation 7 – 9 Sen, Amartya 158 Servaes, J. 217 Shah, Nishant 245 Shenk, Timothy 246 SLBC Act No. 37 of 1966 91 Snow, David A. 69 social holism 71 social movement media 68 – 73 Social Movement Organisations (SMOs) 70 social sustainability 186, 194 – 195 spectrum: price, value & meaning 129 – 131 Spence, P.R. 277, 279, 281 Stirrat, R. 217 Sundaram, Ravi 237, 243 sustainability 7, 57, 184 – 198, 275 – 276; challenges for 187 – 188; diversifying funding 189 – 190; guidelines for operational CR stations 194 – 196; institutional design 188; participation and community engagement 189; strategic design, challenges 186 – 187; strategic pointers 190 – 194 sustainable development 147 – 149 Tacchi, J. 157, 218, 241 technological passage, CR 145 – 146 technology: access and control 138 – 139; gender and 139 – 141; paradoxes of 132 – 144; society and 134 – 137; Thamusian skepticism 137 – 138

293

INDEX

Technology: Surrender of culture to technology 134 Thomas, P.N. 47, 49, 215 Thorn, Hakan 72 transnational actors 27 – 30

Verghese, B.G. 25, 26 Victor Ivan v. Sarath N. Silva case 92 Visuvalingam v. Liyanage case 92 voices: for peace & change 213 – 214; theorising 206 volunteerism 54 – 55

Wajcman, Judy 140 Weerasinghe 91 White, S.A. 47 Wiedemann, Caroline 246 Wijesinghe 87 Wijeysinghe, Sunil 84 Williams, P. 37 women: capacities 152 – 156; community radio and 147 – 158; empowerment 149 – 152; voice capability 157 – 158 Wood, Geoffrey 5 World Association of Christian Communicators 5 World Radio Day 2016 182 – 183

Wabwire, J. 46, 47 Wagenaar, H. 30

Zehle, Soenke 246 Zivin, J. 25

Ullah, M.S. 48, 49 UNESCO 86

294