Concept and Worldwide Practice

Published in the Press Institute of India's quarterly magazine Vidura (Vol. 44, Issue 1, January - March 2007), this article explores community radio (CR) as defined by the following three aspects: not profit making; community owned and controlled; and supported by community participation. According to the author, community radio has historically been the medium for conveying the voice of oppressed people and a tool for development in the sense that it is "about the community doing something for itself, that is, owning and controlling its own means of communication."

The author, Kanchan K.Malik, details the history of CR from its beginnings in the 1970's and the way it differs in function - as a means of passive or active resistance in totalitarian countries, as a means of self-expression for those lacking access to mass media, and as a way to reach marginalised communities in developing countries. It is affordable in its production and management and reaches "the very end of the development road:" people without electricity or phones and people unable to read or write.


CR management may vary from one group to several groups combining efforts; however, it differs from commercial or public broadcasting in being a non-profit service. In short, by the definition of Carlos A. Arnaldo: "community radio... [is] a social process in which members of a community federate, design, and produce programmes, and air them."(UNESCO, 2001)
According to Malik, it has the following characteristics:

• public participation in production and decision-making, resulting in a cultural broadcast mechanism that adapts perfectly to reflect the interests and needs of the community it serves;
• management by listeners, making it pluralistic and participatory communication by challenging the traditional division between broadcasters on one side and listeners/consumers on the other;
• broad access, incorporating new languages, inventive formats, novel music, unheard voices and innovative ways of pressuring the authorities; and
• operations relying mainly on the community’s own resources.

It is the author's belief that because "It is increasingly being acknowledged throughout the world that communication resources... should not be appropriated by private parties or monopolised by governments, ... [c]ommunity radio may be seen as part of a broader 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."

Dr. Malik then gives an overview of CR worldwide:

• Beginning with Latin America, CR originated in 1949 with a miners' radio station in Tupiza, Bolivia. The activist strategy presently at work in Latin America is aggressive lobbying, in the midst of a regulatory vacuum, for the need to legislate for socially owned media, especially for small communities.
• In Africa, CR is a recognised and emergent force, having grown from 10 independent stations in 1985 to hundreds in the early 1990's, most notably in South Africa as the voice of post apartheid broadcasting.
• Europe's CR history began in the 1960's with university students and "pirate" stations, pushing liberalisation, which came in the 80's and 90's in Western Europe, with some of Eastern Europe, notably Hungary, following.
• North America and Australia have an entrenched CR 'third tier' after the commercial and public tiers, especially possible with the availability of low-power FM radio licencing.
• Asia has been slower to liberalise media access; though some countries allow CR through their existing legal frameworks, some are being fostered by development agencies. An FM station, run by the Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists (NEFEJ) in the capital city of Kathmandu since 1997, is the first of several CRs in Nepal. Sri Lankan CR has been used for socio-economic development of settlers, and now as an interface between the internet and rural communities. In some countries, CR faces challenges to its autonomy, and in others, there is need for regulatory licencing.
• As of November 2006, CR activists in India gained the right to broadcast as the result of more than 10 years of lobbying.

Click here to access the Virdura magazine website (select Jan-March 2007, and then click on the title of the piece.)