Abstract
Following up their magnum opus Other Voices: The Struggle for Community radio in India (Pavarala & Malik, 2007), Kanchan K. Malik and Vinod Pavarala have brought us a new edited volume. This collection of articles significantly enhances our understandings of community radio in South Asia. Their first book was a rich anthology of the history of struggle for community radio in India which systematically captured the community radio movement in India. This new collection explores the status and expansion of community radio, an important independent, grassroots, local media movement in South Asia.
This collection provides rich sociological and historical contexts to understand the evolution, functioning and current status of community radio across South Asia, in a context where the media environment has been increasingly globalized in the last two to three decades. The volume offers what the editors call a ‘ring-side view’ of how South Asian countries have developed legal regulations and policies that have led to the emergence of a 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 contributions in this volume come from a range of figures: academics, activists, practitioners and advocates of community radio, who write on issues related to local community radio policies, spectrum management, that is, process of regulating the use of radio frequencies to encourage effective use and gain a net social good, democratizing technology, the significant use of community radio in responding to disasters and emergencies, issues of gender inequality, sustainability and conflict. Some authors are established scholars, while others are emerging voices. The book is divided into three sections: first addressing the policy terrain, then issues in practice and then, finally, ending with some well-chosen and illuminating case studies.
Malik and Pavarala’s intriguing introduction argue that community radio is a crucial arena in which media democracy is advanced in South Asia. They begin with a historical account of community radio sector in the region and how it has emerged as an independent grassroots media movement. They emphasize that community radio can be catalytic tool to ensure communication rights, strengthening of democracy, fostering development and promoting empowerment. As the authors state, countries in the region 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’ (p. 3). It is in this context that community radio acquires its significance—as an independent, grassroots, hyperlocal media form that is owned, produced and operated by the people—so as to amplify marginalized voices. To deepen their theorization of community radio, the authors draw on concepts from the broader field of communication and media studies, such as voice poverty (Tacchi, 2009), citizens’ media (Rodriguez, 2011) and alternative media (Atton, 2002).
Contributors in the first section discuss the complexities and histories of community radio policymaking in India, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The contributions go beyond the traditional ways of studying community radio policy and try to offer a critical assessment of community radio policymaking and practice in the South Asian region. Using a critical policy ethnographic approach, Preeti Raghunath tries to reflect on qualitative data to offer a realistic ground level and bottom-up view of policies that are often analysed from the top. She also argues for a deliberative policy ecology approach to understand the complexities involved in community radio policymaking. Mohammed Sahild Ullah offers a rich historical account of community radio in Bangladesh and discusses the context in which Bangladesh adopted its community radio policy. His chapter also discusses how community radio as a grassroots media emerged in Bangladesh despite the social, economic, political and cultural development issues that are often common in developing countries and how these issues influence community radio policymaking. Sudhamshu Dahal writes about Nepal, as one of the pioneering spaces for community radio in South Asia and how its new political dispensation particularly after 2015 acknowledges and promotes alternative voices that create favourable ground for the development of community radio in the country. He further argues that the political transition in the idea of nationhood in Nepal has offered new possibilities for openness and democracy, which are crucial contexts in which community radio can thrive. By contrast, M. C. Rasmin and W. A. D. P. Wanigasundera examine the not-so-promising context of community radio in Sri Lanka despite a few encouraging experiments such as the Mahaweli and Kothmale community radio projects. While advocating for legal recognition of the community radio section and freeing of airwaves, they also argue about the inhibitions before community ownership of media in Sri Lanka that hinder the prospects of community radio.
The second section, on issues in practice, starts with Vinod Pavarala’s chapter on the role of civil society organizations in the development of community radio in India. Reflecting on his and others’ research on community radio in India, he critiques the NGOization of community radio in India. Next, Ram Bhat tries to demystify the use of technology in community radio sector and the larger political and economic scenes that are associated with it. He focuses on how frequencies are allocated in India and the overall social, political, economic and cultural implications of it. He also examines the politics involved in frequency allocations for community radio and how it influences larger policy and programming issues in the sector. Hemant Babu is interested in understanding the communicative disparities involved in community radio philosophy and practice. He further engages with community radio technology and stresses on the importance of prerequisites such as independent media and technology that help community radio thrive. Kanchan K. Malik’s important chapter addresses gender and participatory development in the context of community radio in South Asia. She focuses on the participation of women in community radio, questioning the extent to which their participation results in the genuine empowerment of women and in building gender-egalitarian democratic spaces. Ashish Sen’s chapter considers anecdotal evidence and document-based data to describe the role of community radio in disaster management in India. In the last chapter in this section, N. Ramakrishnan and Venu Arora deliberate on the sustainability of community radio in South Asia. The two major learnings that they are focusing on include the impact of community radio policies on the sustainability of community radio and the characterization of community radio as institutions in the South Asia region.
The final section of the volume explores community radio realities through a series of cases studies. In his study of multiple community radio stations such as the Vanya Radio and Azad Hind in Madhya Pradesh, Pradip Ninan Thomas is interested in understanding how community radio as a grassroots media can be used as a tool to address conflicts and assure strengthening local value and livelihoods. Vasuki Belavadi explores the development of the community radio continuous improvement toolkit (CR-CIT) to help community radio stations to evaluate and self-assess their work. In her study of Deccan Development Society’s (DDS) Sangam Radio in India, Madhavi Manchi draws an understanding from material media ecology, affect theories and ethno-ecology to look at community radio. Her approach goes beyond the anthropocentric understanding of community media technologies and offers a more holistic avenue to study community radio. In his case study of Lalit Lokavani, Bidu Bhusan Dash develops a more inclusive understanding of the idea of participation in community radio. In the final chapter on remote rural Himalayan community radio, Priya Kapoor returns to the earlier claim surrounding the indispensability of community media initiatives in mitigating disasters. Throughout this final section of the book, each chapter is followed by community radio stories, presented in boxes, offering immersive accounts of the real-world practice of community radio.
With its confluence of critical theoretical moorings with rich reflections and empirical narratives, this volume is an important addition to the alternative and community media studies literature in South Asia and beyond.