Challenges of Nepali community radios

With issuing of more than 200 licenses to operate community radios in Nepal in the past couple of years and more than 150 of them currently operational, it surely is a remarkable development as far as community media development in Nepal is concerned. However, there is no denial of the facts that the community radios in Nepal are not without its inherent challenges.

No one really knows why the succeeding governments in Nepal after the people’s movement of 2006 has been so liberal in issuing license for non-state radios, that is, both community and commercial. Though the conjectures are, recognizing the role the radios played in providing information to the people and mobilizing people for the democratic movement in toppling the autocratic regime of the erstwhile king, that the succeeding political party governments have acted so. There are however some other schools of thoughts also who claim that radio FM licenses were issued so rampantly in Nepal after 2006 as the government found it as a good source of revenue. If the succeeding governments were any serious about the development of non-state radios or media for democratization and development in Nepal, it would have definitely set up some funds for at least the sustained development of the community radios in Nepal.

Currently the community radios that operate in Nepal with transmission capacity ranging from 50 to 2000 watts in average broadcast for about 18 hours. And the operational cost for the community radios varies as low as NRs 30,000 (US$ 419) scaling up to NRs 400,000 (US$ 5600) a month. Most of these community radios are dependent on recovering its operational costs from sponsored programmes supported by NGOs, INGOs and some other governmental local line agencies like the District Development Committee, District Health Office and so on. In average 60-70 percent of the operational costs of the community radios are recovered from such sponsored radio programmes. Rests come from local advertisements, as well some contribution from the local communities. Though none of the community radios, small or big, operating in Nepal claim to profit beyond breaking even, the dependency of the community radios on the sponsored programnmes for operational cost recovery does not bode well for its long-term sustainability. It is in fact one of the biggest challenges for the community radios in the long run to sustain economically. It should be able to find an intrinsic financing mechanism which is self sustaining. And if the governments in Nepal are seriously looking at the development of community media sector for democratization and development of communities then they should also consider having a planned and budgeted development of community radios or any other community media in Nepal.

While long-term financial sustainability and the community radios being transparent in its income contradictorily sticks its neck out as one of the biggest challenges, the content that is being broadcast by the community radios are also not without any disputes and challenges. The pluralism of the content and thus upholding of the media pluralism in the sense that there are plural views on issues and news and other contents of the community radios fails to live up to the mark as their dependency on the sponsored programmes from the same sources fail to bring about pluralism in the contents no matter how big their number are. Most of the community radios in Nepal broadcast the news bulletins and other radio programmes produced and distributed by the same production units in Kathmandu like Association of Community Radio Broadcasters Nepal, Communication Corner, Equal Access, Antenna Foundation, BBC World Service Trust, BBC Nepali Service and so on. At some point when the community radios were not able to produce a quality content it was justifiable to broadcast contents produced by radio production units from the centre of Kathmandu. But the community radios should be independent enough to be community focused and give voice to community as its sole purpose is and make efforts on not being just a mere information or content and message carrier of NGOs, INGOs, and others channeled through the production units in Kathmandu. The most that can be observed in community radios that uphold media pluralism are qualified by the local news and some programmes which are being produced and broadcast in local dialects like the Tamang, Bhojpuri, Tharu, Magar, Gurung, Newari and so on. Having said that, the community radios definitely should be the community’s communications medium for providing access to information from the centre or the top, but its role should be more on raising the voice of the communities from the bottom to the top. In a scale of two way flow of information the community radios’ priority should be the bottom-up flow of information and raising voices of the communities.

Along with managing the costs for operating and the nature of the content, the other challenge of the community radios that sticks out is the ownership. The establishment of community radios in the rural communities in Nepal is something which is owned and demanded by the communities or it is something which has been imposed on the communities in rural settings in Nepal is debatable. Most of the community radios that we find in Nepal currently are either introduced in the communities by community service organizations or NGOs such as cooperatives and youth clubs. But did the communities themselves demanded community radios in their villages and they harbor ownership with the community radios in their villages are inherent challenges of its own dimension for the community radios in Nepal.

To conclude, the community radios in Nepal should introspect what are its challenges of truly being community radios and should keep in mind one of the best interpretations of community radios which states: “community radio is not about doing something for the community but about the community doing something for itself, that is owning and controlling its own means of communication.”

http://www.theasiamediaforum.org/node/3299