Crafting a community radio 'friendly' broadcast policy in Nepal

The community radio stations also popularly known as “FM Radio” in Nepal have been instrumental in giving community the ‘voice’ and laying down a platform for practising and preserving local language and culture. Radio broadcast was not new for people in Nepal but what is ‘revolutionary’ with community radio is talking ‘people’s languages in their own parlances (Janaboli Ma Janata Ko Awaz)’. After operating for more than a decade without any policy, Nepali community radio stations are taking some strategic advances of ‘pseudo policy exercise’ to counter the government’s silence in the form of latent control over community broadcasting. This article looks into the repertoire of strategies and alliance taken up by civil society (an umbrella association of community radio stations in Nepal, ACORAB in this case) as a forum of citizens’ participation and access to lobby, influence and to craft a ‘community radio friendly’ broadcast policy in Nepal.