Sadly, it took another decade for the government to release community radio guidelines (on 16 November 2006), and today we have about 150 operational community radio stations in the country. This article attempts to identify some broad frameworks through which community radio can engage with the domain of knowledge.

Knowledge has been a contested domain for a long time, especially amongst philosophers. Presumably, what we know and what we think shapes what we do. What we do, then leads us to questions of right and wrong, justice, equality and numerous other questions. These are some of the ways in which community radio can engage with the knowledge question.

Community radio stations’ strong point is the participatory model of production, sharing and consumption of content. One of the ways to involve the communities is to have the local villagers speak out and express their thoughts and opinions about local cultures, memories, histories of their lives, cultures and spaces. Storytelling is a very powerful way to capture the diversity of community knowledge. There are community radio stations in India, which have embarked on collecting oral histories of senior citizens in an attempt to record eras bygone. When a community radio station broadcasts these collective memories, it brings this evocation to the surface, thereby creating a peer-to-peer conversation between different community members.

Different communities are grappling with different issues. The job of the community radio is not to assume the mantle of change-makers, but to provide a platform where the emphasis is on community learning about issues that are decided through participatory research. In models like the Community Learning Programme, wherein community radio stations can use tools like participatory baselines, capacity and quality assessments, programme and message matrix, etc., community radio stations can have specific programmes aimed at specific learners. The entire approach is aimed at identifying specific learners from within the larger community and then targeting relevant learning programmes. Another strong component of the learning programme approach is to adopt a multi-channel strategy where the radio is combined with the use of mobile telephony and other ubiquitous media available locally.

This is an area that speaks of the often unspoken desire of community radio stations to bring about some change. It is strange that community radio stations use the term ‘community’ in a positivist sense, but more often than not, the change spoken about is demonstrated through anecdotal data, where individual case studies or success stories are passed off as a change brought about in the system. However, there are emerging tools that can be used to bring about systemic change. The underlying assumption is to work with the state whose responsibility and mandate is to change the system on the ground.

Community radio stations, instead of attempting to change things themselves, can be more effective by partnering with government authorities. This can be done in a three-phased manner.

The first phase is to have effective research methodologies where community radios conduct public hearings or social audits where the most relevant government programmes are identified in terms of poor efficacies or lack of proper implementation. Then the community radio stations can have internal exercises wherein the scope and scale of interventions can be decided based on availability of bandwidth, resources at hand, capacity of the radio station to conduct a campaign, etc.

The second phase is to communicate the normative situation to the target audience by making a series of programmes assuming how an ideal government service would work – whether it is in the area of health, or education or labour, etc. Using these programmes, the listeners have an idea about the ideal situation in terms of access to welfare schemes of their state or the central government.

The third phase is where communities can report to the radio station on what exactly is the gap between the field realities and the normative situation. These gaps can be articulated in the form of daily or weekly reports from the field. This kind of bringing of concrete issues to the surface via broadcasting brings pressure on the state to implement their programmes in a better way.

It is also advisable for community radio stations to bring about a somewhat nuanced model of participation. This is the best way that community radio stations can contribute towards knowledge building within a community. Community media initiatives are not built to disseminate top-down models of knowledge, but rather, build upon what knowledge is locally available and how best to communicate that knowledge back to its listeners. Getting local knowledge out into the public domain is often the responsibility of the term ‘participation’. Community Radio stations often struggle for genuine community participation, primarily because of limited manpower, restricted financial and infrastructural resources, etc. However, various technological interventions do exist that can bypass conventional barriers to participation.

Often, participation is seen as the mere presence of communities in a particular phase of functionality, such as programming. However, this is not the true meaning of participation. Only if communities are deeply involved at every stage of the radio’s functioning can there be any genuine participation. This means that the community radio should involve people at the planning, design, programming, feedback and management levels. Each of these levels can be broken down to more specific and detailed activities where different kinds of people can be empowered to participate.

Another aspect of knowledge building through community participation is the barrier of class, caste and gender. Of course, there are other context-specific barriers but these three categories will be broadly applicable anywhere in the country, be it urban or rural, or even campus or community radio.

Therefore, it is important to analyse the kind of contributions that the community radio station is making on a weekly level, at the very least. One common problem amongst community radio stations is to be largely dependent on mobile phones to get participation from the communities. However, the reality is that even today women do not have access to mobile phones in the same way that men do. Women either do not have their own handsets, or do not know how to operate the handset apart from carrying out basic listening functions. At times, they do not have the financial resources needed to engage with the radio using a phone. Therefore, it is extremely important to have a programme design component which not only allows but also encourages participation from women in some other way. One example is to create listening groups in partnership with local NGOs who work with micro-credit Self Help Groups. Another option is to have women reporters or volunteers who have good networks with women who are not part of any organised efforts like SHGs. This way, women’s participation can be enhanced. It is also extremely important to analyse the kind of programming that is broadcast in terms of caste participation, class participation, etc. Only when there is a system for critical self-reflection will the kind of participation and, subsequently knowledge be all-inclusive and truly reflective of the community.

Ram Bhat is the co-founder of Maraa, a media and arts collective in Bengaluru. He is also currently serving as the Vice-President of the Community Radio Forum of India. His interests lie in community media, mobile telephony, internet, spectrum management, white space and digitisation of media. q