Radio Madanpokhara is an outstanding example of successful community initiative in Nepal’s effort for development in general and development communications in particular.

Many of us who grew up in the seventies in the last century, when we loved the western movies, are familiar with Clint Eastwood and his western classic ‘The Good, Bad and the Ugly’. The good guy Clint at the end of the movie was the winner. The moral of that classic was there are always good, bad and ugly in a society, whether it was the lawless western society, or the present day emerging ‘information society’, the combination of its all results always the good winning. In the context of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) also there are old, new and hybrid ICTs and it so seems that in so called developing countries, the hybrid emerges the winner.

Radio Madanpokhara (RM)
In Nepal, one of the so called least developed countries in Asia, which implies in terms of ICT also, a farmer in Madanpokhara village, located 8 hours drive from the capital city of Kathmandu, in the western part of Palpa-Tansen hill district of Nepal needed to sell his buffalo. He had to spread the word around in his village. Here it’s better to use the jargon ‘communicate’. And there was no other better means to market his buffalo then to make an announcement through a community radio, in his village by paying a very nominal fee. And he sold his buffalo.

The Nepali farmer made the announcement and sold his buffalo by the virtue of an ICT hybrid community radio, serving to give a voice to the community. Such an access to ICT, hybrid it may be of old and new media, has been possible for a farmer in a far-flung village in Nepal and the voice of the community is finding an outlet. Thanks goes to successful operation of the ICT hybrid community Radio Madanpokhara (RM) for the past four years in a rural setting in Nepal.

The humble beginning
After a long struggle for obtaining the license from the Nepali government, when RM went on air with a 100 watts transmitter in 2000, with initial technical support from UNESCO and Radio Sagarmatha, the first public radio in Nepal based in Kathmandu, the radio station’s studio was located in a small space adjoining the cowshed of the station manager. In addition to UNESCO’s support, RM was started with a trust fund of 65 members each paying annual membership fee of 1000 rupees. In few years, it collected about Rs 400,000 and by the summer last year, had constructed its own building and has a studio now which is as good as any other commercial FM radio station in the urban spreads of Nepal. It has also now 500 watts transmitting capacity.

Besides the annual membership fee, the running cost for Radio Madanpokhara is met by the annual contributions from their development budget by the Madanpokhara Village Development Committee (VDC), which officially owns it, and Palpa-Tansen District Development Committee. It also earns small revenue from selected advertisements and sponsorships. Only few station staff receives small remunerations, and others work as unpaid volunteers. Monthly income of RM is roughly Rs 30-50,000 and the expenditure is around Rs 25,000. The station does not carry commercials for Coca-cola, Fanta, Chow Chow (readymade noodles) and other such products. It entertains mainly births, marriages, deaths and community-based announcements, like the one of the farmer, that are aired as commercials, rather ‘community commercials’. “It is not only to select commercials, we are careful with what songs we play also”, says Gunakar Aryal, a local from Madanpokhara, and the station manager of RM. He adds how the