Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves

The South Asian edition of the book titled, “Community Radio in South Asia: Reclaiming the Airwaves” is now out. The book is edited by Prof. Kanchan K Malik and Prof. Vinod Pavarala, faculty in the Department of Communication at the SN School of Arts and Communication at the University of Hyderabad has been published by Routledge India.

This book endeavours to integrate content that creatively captures the hubbub around community radio for a holistic understanding of the sector in the South Asian region. It explores the state of community radio, a significant independent media movement that began about two decades ago, in different parts of South Asia.

The volume outlines the socioeconomic and historical contexts for understanding the evolution and functioning of community radio in an increasingly globalised media environment. It provides a ring-side view of how various countries in South Asia have formulated policies that enabled the emergence of this 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 chapters in the volume, interspersed by practitioner perspectives, discuss a range of key issues related to community radio: radio policies, NGOisation of community radio, spectrum management and democratisation of technology, disasters/emergencies, gender issues, sustainability, and conflicts.

Structurally, the book is distributed into three parts. The first section walks the readers through an analytical policy terrain of community radio in South Asia through chapters that closely assess the policy ecology in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The second part comprises articles that contend with the macro-level, techno-social, and politico-economic concerns faced in the implementation and practice aspects of community radio by the sector in the region. The third and final segment of the book deals with ground-level experiences, and the chapters foreground subjectivities and lived realities faced by grassroots stakeholders of specific community radio stations.

One of the first of its kind, this volume will appeal to scholars and researchers of community media and independent media studies, cultural studies, as well as sociology and social anthropology, and South Asian studies.

For more details about the book: https://www.routledge.com/Community-Radio-in-South-Asia-Reclaiming-the-Airwaves/Malik-Pavarala/p/book/9781138558533

About the editors:

Kanchan K Malik is Professor, Department of Communication and Faculty Fellow, UNESCO Chair on Community Media at the University of Hyderabad.

Vinod Pavarala is Senior Professor of Communication and holds the UNESCO Chair on Community Media at University of Hyderabad.

They have previously authored Other Voices: The Struggle for Community Radio in India (2007) and several joint articles and research reports on community radio in leading publications.