Community Radio as a shared infrastructure

This is a response to an email on the community radio forum, seeking reasons for slow take up of community radio among NGOs.

Excerpts from the original e-mail in response to which this posting has been written have been reproduced below.

>Since then, not even a single community/ NGO is on air with its community radio. Today, there are a mere 100 plus applications with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
>There are several reasons for this. First, we do need to strengthen the awareness factor regarding community radio across the country.
>Secondly, even if NGOs are aware of the policy, most organizations are apprehensive to take it forward because of the cost factor.
>Today, current patterns of thought appear to indicate that a community radio station will cost at least Rs 7-8 lakhs. This would eliminate most grassroots NGOs who would not know where to get this kind of support. But the larger question is: should they even be spending this much money?
>If community radio provides a voice to the voiceless, then whose voices are we talking about? Which communities are we talking about?

>It is an urgent need today to identify and isolate the main deterrents for people desirous of becoming CR practitioners. One of the main deterrents is the high cost of technology, which is fast proving to be an impediment to the community radio movement and therefore giving a voice to the poor

I think the 'utility factor' is as, if not more, important than the cost factor. And if we are speaking about the costs, for most grassroots NGOs cost in terms of HR and other opportunity costs is as great as that of technology. It is not only the technology decisions that are tough - and it is my opinion that the CR discourse in India is still mostly centred on these issues - organizational resources and focus issues may be more important and far tougher. How does CR activity impact other activities that an NGO may be doing? Can it not potentially cause a major 'mission creep' that may (or may not be) problematic vis a vis core objectives of the NGO? Does it then work best through a process of specialization where some existing or new NGOs become relatively specialized as CR NGOs? But what does it do to local power relationships - between the media NGO and other client NGOs (if they do become its clients) and between the media/ CR NGO and the community itself. We should remember that control over media processes is a very important lever of power, and in the absence of sufficient checks is almost always abused. This situation is worsened by the fact that there are considerable barriers to entry in the CR field in any local community - license related barriers, technology skills barriers, cost and operation-to-scale barriers, organizational focus related barriers etc.

When we consider plurality in media so important at all other levels, it is as important at the local community level. If one just looks at how some vernacular newspapers work, it is easy to see how such danger can even be worse at local levels. To avoid miscommunication, at this point I must assert that I am as excited about CR possibilities and am here only pointing to the issues that should attract our attention if we are to realize its real potential.

Once an NGO gets a radio license and puts up the necessary technology infrastructure, it sits over a tremendous amount of 'local resources' (14-18 hours a day is a lot of broadcast time). We need to ensure a fair allocation and use of these resources, and I am not so sure that we can take it for granted because it is really grassroots NGOs that we are talking about.

One thing that comes to my mind is to explore the concept of shared infrastructure in the CR area. This way we can separate the technical - that can be common and shared - from the social - that remains plural with a greater breadth of participation and ownership etc. A local CR can be managed with a thin ownership structure that represents elements of the community, including its organized groups, with full representation of marginalized sections. The CR management structure should be encouraged/obliged through license conditions and/ or otherwise (through soft self-regulation, for instance, by forums like this one) to share the 'common infrastructure' of a CR - its transmission facilities, as well as, if possible, some other levels of technology support (studio, field equipment etc) with local community based groups. This will enable a lot of local groups to use the CR infrastructure directly for their activities and - if we still have to use mainstream radio language - making their own programs, rather than responding to the reporters and editors of the CR owning organization. We know what influence these mediators can exercise on the content. This alone will truly democratize the radio technology - when all community based groups and sub-groups are able to directly use audio technology to both to represent themselves and to support their organizational activities, without the mediation of the 'local media organization'. Seeking a complete realization of this situation may be a bit idealistic, but it is important to know that this is what we need to tend towards so that the realized situation is closer to this than of a new local monopoly.

Coming back to the issue of cost and utility, which really triggered this email, such sharing of CR infrastructure also greatly increases its output and utility, and makes the cost-benefit equation much more favorable.

A common or shared infrastructure approach to community radio therefore appears a sensible thing both from the viewpoint of local plurality and of a viable cost-benefit equation. Such approaches, including the ones that go by the name of 'open access' approaches, are increasingly common in all ICTs, especially when the implicated infrastructure has huge barriers to entry. The dilemma that NGOs are facing today, which is described in the email to which I'm responding as 'most organizations are apprehensive to take it forward because of the cost factor' (along with 'awareness factor') in my view may have both a much larger than technology/ cost context, and, accordingly, probably a different direction of seeking the right solutions. (I do notice that the author of the e-mail has described technology issue only as one of the deterrent.)

I am not saying all CRs should compulsorily be shared. We can experiment with and promote both sole ownership and shared CRs. But the latter I think have much greater potential. In earlier times use of radio technology did need a lot of specialization and some amount of heavy, expensive and centralized equipment, which meant that the program making itself had to be centralized. Digital technologies today have democratized radio/ audio technologies, and radio programs (to use the traditional term, I would much prefer to just say contextual use of radio technology) can be made in the field by people with little amount of skill building. They need not depend on a specialized radio unit, which has the effect of centralizing the radio media, if only at a local level (in the same way as 'professional writers' in earlier times monopolized the 'written word' based media). This possibility should be used the transform the very nature of the CR format, as a common neutral technology infrastructure enabling a wide range of diversely owned/ directed activity of using radio technologies for local community and sub-community imperatives.

We need to investigate and discuss issues of participation, ownership and organizational/ partnership forms in CR as much as issues of technology for moving towards a full realization of the CR opportunity.