Voice, participation & technology in India: communication technology for development in the mobile era

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VOICE AND PARTICIPATION & TECHNOLOGY IN INDIA:
COMMUNICATION FOR DEVELOPMENT IN THE MOBILE ERA

By

Charlotte Lapsansky

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

December 2012

Copyright 2012 Charlotte Lapsansky

ii

EPIGRAPH

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression and opinion: this right includes the
freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

—Article 19, Universal Declaration of Human Rights

iii

DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to Delhi, with love.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the unwavering support
and love of my family. My mother pushed and pulled me through the whole process, all
the while setting an example of how to embrace all of life’s opportunities. Her many
hours of editing and the countless pep talks helped me cross the finish line. Thanks mom,
for showing me how. My father’s conviction and sense of social justice has always been
an inspiration for my work, and his pride in the work always gave me the confidence to
take on the next hurdle. My brother and sister and the rest of the West Coast contingent
seemed to know just the right time to come through with a hot meal, a family get
together, or just a hug to keep me going. I am so thankful that working on this
dissertation gave me the opportunity to live near my siblings and to deepen those bonds.
Thanks to all of the family for forgiving me for taking work—and stress—on every
family holiday these past few years.
My exploration of the questions I tackle in this study began over ten years ago
when I was on staff at Breakthrough between 2002 and 2006. I am grateful to have joined
their journey in these formative years. I remain inspired by Breakthrough’s founder,
Mallika Dutt, for her courage to pursue her vision, and I am indebted to her for providing
a space where I could develop my own. I also owe thanks to present and former staff of
Breakthrough, especially Sonali Khan, Urvashi Gandhi, Sunita Menon, Bindu Madhavi
and Devaki Nambiar for their friendship over the years. I am lucky to know such an
impressive group of women. And of course, thanks goes to the organization for their

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more recent support to my intellectual growth: their participation as a site in this study.
One day during those first years at Breakthrough, Joyee Chatterjee, then a
Master’s student at Annenberg, called my office looking for materials for Michael
Cody’s entertainment-education class, putting me in touch with Cody and Arvind Singhal
in the process. Thanks are due to that serendipitous moment that led down the path to
Annenberg, as well as to Joyee, Arvind, and Michael for planting the seed.
When I started at Annenberg, I was full of ideas, curiosity, and—arguably—too
many interests to pursue meaningfully. I was blessed to have a committee that helped me
focus my intellectual inquiry. I met every one of them — Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Sarah
Banet-Weiser, Michael Cody and Doe Mayer —in my first week at Annenberg, and I
knew right away that these were people I wanted in my intellectual and personal life.
Each one was instrumental in my growth as a scholar. But more importantly, they had
faith in me, even at the times when I didn’t have it in myself, and they helped me stay
true to my vision for social change, my values, and my purpose in all my work. For that I
am eternally grateful.
There are many others at Annenberg who deserve thanks as well. First and
foremost Larry Gross, a constant source of encouragement and support. He is an amazing
advocate for graduate students, and he was always there with practical advice to help me
pursue the latest passion. I am also thankful for the opportunities to have worked with
professors such as Francois Bar, Sheila Murphy and Barbara Osborne, all whom gave
generously of their time in helping me define the character of my work. Francois,
especially, provided the opportunity to work with the Mobile Voices project that later

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became a major inspiration for the Chatpati Chat project featured in this study. Working
with him on Mobile Voices built my technological confidence, without which I never
would have taken on the Chatpati Chat initiative. Annenberg’s PhD students are also
lucky to have a wonderful team of administrators looking out for them. Thanks to Anne
Marie Campian, Christine Lloreda, Imre Meszaros, Carola Weil and Abby Kaun for all
their help over the years.
I would like to thank all my friends who put up with long absences during periods
of intense writing. In particular, I would like to express gratitude and love for two of my
closest friends who have had the most influence on my work: Melissa Brough Marshall,
my partner in crime and mischief, and a true soul mate, and Derek Mitchell, the best
‘saheli-bhai’ a girl could ask for. They were my most energetic brainstorming partners,
always ready to get creative with flip charts and markers in hand, or to talk through the
big ideas over a hike or a game of badminton. Their intellectual influence is visible on
nearly every page of this dissertation. They both have bottomless love, wonderful senses
of adventure, and the sturdiest shoulders to cry on, too.
I would also like to thank Diepiriye Kuku-Siemons and Holger Seimons for
providing a sense of family in Delhi and sharing the PhD student experience with me.
Diepiriye helped me work through some difficult parts of the puzzle and shared his own
intellectual process with me, for which I am grateful. Thanks to the LA crew, especially
the Mariposa gang and Maiana Noce for the cookie care-packages tied to my doorknob,
and John Cheney for the countless hours lost to 4100. An amazing creative and warm
circle of friends in Delhi also helped make it home while I conducted my research:

vii

Alistair Gretarsson, Anindita Ghose, Rosalyn D’Mello, Dharini Bhaskar, Eliza Hilton,
Lee Sanjit Das, Sunzanne Lee- Das, Badris Bahar, Oroon Das, and so many others.
Thanks for being there.
I owe thanks to those who helped me keep my health and balance through the
process, including yoga and dance teachers Gina Zimmerman, Jyotsna Uppal and Linda
Valentino for helping me find my physical and spiritual cores; Kuwarpal, for making sure
I didn’t forget to eat during those multi-day writing sprints; and my pets Chia and Loaf,
two of the gentlest souls I’ve ever come across, for their calming presence. In addition,
there are some special places that nurtured the spirit while I worked on this, including E-
block park in GK1, the hidden urban forests of Delhi, and the foothills of the Himalayas
on the outskirts of Dharamsala, where much of this manuscript was written.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the financial support from the American
Association of University Women Dissertation Fellowship and the Annenberg School
Graduate Fellowships without which this research would not have been possible.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Epigraph ii

Dedication iii

Acknowledgements iv

Abstract xi

Introduction 1
Communication Technologies and Voice 5
Development as Discourse 11
Development as a Media Dependency System 22
Shifting Development Paradigms and Evolving Conceptions
of Communication 25
Table 1: Modes of Participation 38
Development Discourse and Emerging Technologies in India 42
Methods 46
How this Study is Organized 49

Chapter One: Communication Rights, Voice and Development 53
Communication Rights 55
Access to Communication versus Communication Rights 58
Conceptualizing Voice 60
Communication Infrastructure Theory and Storytelling Identity 65
Enabling Strong Storytelling Networks: Role of the Communication
Action Context 67
Voice, ICTs and Digital Exclusion 71
Chapter One Conclusion 83

Chapter Two: Community Radio as a Media Dependency System
The Case of Community Radio in India 85
Why Community Media Matters 88
Community Media and Community Radio In India 92
A Brief Overview of the History of Community Radio In India 97
Community Radio as a Media Dependency System: MSD Relations
in the Community Radio Sector 103
Chapter Two Conclusion 116

Chapter Three: Community Radio
How Politics, Society and Culture Shape Participation 119
NGO-isation 120

ix

The Ban on News 132
Socio-economic Barriers to Access 142
Women and Radio 156
Chapter Three Conclusion 160

Chapter Four: The Meta-narrative of Social Media in India 162
Social Media, Democracy and Voice 163
Meta-narratives, Social Media and Development in India 166
The Mumbai Terrorist Attacks 170
The Pink Chaddi Campaign: Contesting Gender and Indian
Identity through Social Media 186
The Digital Elections of 2009 194
The Middle Class and Social Media in India 203
Chapter Four Conclusion 209

Chapter Five: Mobile Phones and Social Media
Converging to Create New Opportunities for Voice 213
Mobiles and Connectivity in India 217
Text, SMS and Voice-based Services 220
Mobile Social Media for Profit: Tapping into the Fortune at the
Bottom of the Pyramid 223
Social Media for Economic Inclusion 229
Social Media for Communication Rights 235
CGNet Swara: Caught Between Politics and Technology 237
Spoken Web: A Voice-Based Analog to the World Wide Web 251
Awaaz De 257
Chapter Five Conclusion 264

Chapter 6: Breakthrough’s Chatpati Chat 266
Breakthrough: The Organization 268
Domestic Violence in India: The Flawed Implementation of the 2005
Protection of Women From Domestic Violence 276
Advocating for PWDV Through Media and Communication 280
Bell Bajao and Communication Infrastructure Theory 286
Chatpati Chat: Audience and Objectives 287
Chatpati Chat: Key Tensions and Challenges 293
Implementation: Expressions of Voice on Chatpati Chat 306
Chatpati Chat’s Successes: Creating Community 311
Chapter 6 Conclusion 315

x

Conclusion 317
The Need to Strengthen Infrastructures for Storytelling and Voice 321
The Neoliberalization of Development 324
The Role of Communication in Development 327
New Technology and Old Social Relations 331

Bibliography 333

xi

ABSTRACT

This study is about communication power in the context of international
development. Despite increased attention to participatory approaches in the international
development field, the communities that are most affected by development programs still
have little influence over development policy or programming. This dissertation is
fundamentally a study about people’s right to ‘voice’ in development processes, and the
importance of voice in creating opportunities for actors at the community level to
influence development agendas from the bottom-up.
New networked technologies such as mobile phones and social media are creating
seemingly unprecedented opportunities for bottom-up content generation and the
expression of voice and participation in development processes, especially in India, the
site of this research. The author draws on interviews with experts in communication
technology and development program designers to investigate the uses of these
communication technologies in India. In addition, as part of this research, the author
partnered with the NGO Breakthrough to design and pilot Chatpati Chat, a mobile phone-
based social media platform to promote the expression of voice through audio content
production among women’s rights youth advocates in Northern India. The findings from
participant observation conducted during the Chatpati Chat project are used to explore
what it means to promote ‘voice’ and participation in a mobile, social media age.
This project is theoretically grounded in the notion of development as a discourse.
It argues that development is a concept that is continuously socially constructed through

xii

discursive action. The field is also marked by certain ‘dependency relationships’ that
reify hierarchies and grant certain actors greater influence and communication power
than others. The author examines communication technologies as sites of contest over
who has this communication power and who has authority to speak about development.
Specifically, the study highlights case studies and examples from India that demonstrate
three technological applications—community radio and the community media movement;
social media initiatives for civic engagement; and the use of mobile phones to bring
bottom-up content production to poor and marginalized users (including the Chatpati
Chat project). In so doing, the author explores these projects’ relationship to voice, and
the effects of development discourse on both the projects’ deployment and their
participatory outcomes.
The findings suggest that while new technologies often seem to destabilize
existing power hierarchies—thus offering possibilities for greater amplification of
previously marginalized voices—existing structures of communication power and the
dependency relationships that constitute the development field often limit the ability to
actualize these potentials.

1

INTRODUCTION

It is March 2011 in a small workshop room of the NGO Breakthrough’s top-floor
office and youth drop-in center, in Lucknow, India. The room itself is bare; worn stone
floors and white-washed walls that have lost their luster and dust and grime that has
accumulated give it a cheerless look. Yet the atmosphere is bright—full of laughter,
creativity and excitement. Forty kids are sitting on the floor playing with their mobile
phones, chattering to each other excitedly in Hindi. One is recording a favorite folk song
while another is sharing some information about HIV prevention, and in another corner, a
small group records a short audio play about domestic violence. The group, mostly
consisting of working class students from the local social work college, are members of
the Rights Advocates, a program comprising over 1,000 volunteer youth activists in the
state of Uttar Pradesh (more than 300 of them based in Lucknow, the capital of the state)
who Breakthrough has trained to advocate for human rights and oppose violence against
women in their communities.
Today is the launch of ‘Chatpati Chat’, a closed, phone-based social network
created by Breakthrough to strengthen the Rights Advocate community in Lucknow.
Although similar to Facebook, it is limited to those within the group and exclusively
accessible via mobile phone —a critical feature for a community with high mobile use
and limited Internet access. The flexibility of the phone-based platform means that Rights
Advocates can connect to Chatpati Chat from virtually anywhere—in rural areas, at
home, in the field—at anytime, from even the most basic mobile phones. It allowed them

2

to share stories, discuss women’s rights and other issues that matter to them, rapidly
spread news amongst themselves, and facilitate their community mobilization efforts. In
short, it aimed to provide a unique opportunity for participants to use their collective
voice to describe their needs and influence decisions about what issues would be
prioritized by the group and how they would be addressed.
Although my research became much broader in focus over the course of my
fieldwork, providing leadership to Breakthrough in the design and implementation of the
Chatpati Chat program served as both the starting point for my field research and the lens
through which my larger research activities were organized and analyzed. We used
Chatpati Chat as an attempt to promote women’s rights through the construction of a
communicative community in which the meaning of these rights and gender norms could
be debated by community members. The aim was to enable its community of users to
engage in dialogue with each other and set their own agenda for change—as well as to
socialize and have a little fun along the way. Although seemingly basic in its focus on
allowing the Rights Advocates to determine the terms of their debates, the centrality of
voice and its intention to allow them to both use their voices and have their voices heard
represents an innovation in efforts to use communication for development purposes. As
my project evolved, however, it became much bigger than Chatpati Chat. It became about
the possibilities of communication technology—including community radio, social media
and mobile phones—to promote voice and participation in development processes in
India. Chatpati Chat became one particular instance of a development communication

3

project that sought to experiment with these possibilities, but I found it was best
understood by exploring other applications of communication technology to promote
voice in India.
My interest in voice and how best to promote it in development communication
programming is the focus of this dissertation. I use interviews with development experts,
mobile phone technology developers, and community media practitioners, as well as
insights gleaned through my work as a participant-observer in designing and
implementing the Chatpati Chat program, to explore questions of voice, participation, and
power that emerging technologies (in particular, mobile phones and social media) raise
for development communication specialists.
Numerous possible entry points exist for the kind of exploration of
communication power in development that I undertake here. Many studies concerned
with similar issues of voice and participation, for example, take the ‘community’
1

(especially poor or marginalized communities) as their starting point (e.g., Skuse, Fildes,
Tachi, Martin & Baulch, 2007). It is, after all, these local voices that are most in need of
amplification. However, programs that are implemented in the name of increasing
community voice or participation in development processes, more often than not, are
designed and managed by institutions that are external to the community, and which are

1
Within the development field, the term ‘community’ varies in its meaning and scope. Often it is
externally defined by the project at hand or by exogenous political geographic units, rather than relying on
indigenous definitions of what it constitutes. For example, in the case of community radio in India (which
will be discussed in more detail in chapters two and three), the community is defined as everyone who falls
within the broadcast range of a community radio station (usually seven to ten kilometers), despite the fact
that this range may cover a number of different linguistic or cultural communities or parts thereof. As often
as not, however, especially in verbal communication in program meetings or conferences, the term
‘community’ is left undefined, but is understood to mean very local, grassroots level social groupings in a
shared geography such as a urban slum or rural village.

4

intricately embedded in a hierarchy of development institutions to which the community
has little or no access. These include international and national NGOs, government
agencies, and, increasingly, for-profit entities such as corporations and start-up
enterprises that engage in ‘social entrepreneurism’ or other market-based, profit-driven
approaches to development. These organizations must operate within (or, at least, in
reaction to) the particular political, economic and discursive realities of the international
development field that, in turn, shape the ways in which development actors define social
problems and the appropriate solutions. These solutions shape the programmatic goals
and activities of these organizations which, in turn, have very tangible implications for
the ground realities and experiences of communities, especially in regards to their ability
to participate in shaping the program. More importantly, perhaps, they have a significant
impact on the ability of the intended beneficiaries to participate in or have a say in
shaping the program trajectory and goals. Therefore, I have chosen to take the project
implementor (often an NGO, but also sometimes a technology development firm,
research project, or activist network) as my entry point, conducting interviews with
program planner and designers so as to examine the ways in which the features of the
development field (including its practices, relationships and constraints) ultimately shape
the program, and thus the experience of the communities and individuals involved.

Communication Technologies and Voice
I join those who argue that new technologies—specifically mobile phones and

5

social media—offer new spaces for voice and expression to shape communication
opportunities and practices in the development field. Recent years have seen a rapid
increase in the diffusion of mobile phones to lower-income individuals in the developing
world and telecommunication companies have recognized that “the next billion
subscribers” are likely to be from these populations (Nokia, 2011; Sahota, 2012: Tudor,
2011). Development practitioners have, in turn, recognized the potential of mobiles as
cheap and affordable networked devices that offer connectivity to these previously ‘hard
to reach’ populations. Indeed, Information Communication Technology for Development
(ICT4D) studies have shown that these users are likely to first access the Internet through
their mobile phones (Donner, 2008; Donner & Gitau, 2009). Hence, development
practitioners and funding agencies have come to see mobile phones as offering an
important means of improving access to services and information for the poor.
Although a proponent of the incorporation of technology in development
programming, in no way do I intend to embrace technological, deterministic, and utopian
visions of these technologies as catalysts that will usher in democratic equality. On the
contrary, this dissertation argues that the power/knowledge relationships that currently
constitute the discursive field of development ultimately conspire to limit the possibilities
of new technologies in constructing more democratic practices. This dissertation,
therefore, is a call to arms for development workers, especially ICT4D specialists, to
recognize that no new technologies can offer real and systemic change unless we first
acknowledge and, more fundamentally, challenge the power hierarchies that dominate the
development field. My discussion is thus grounded in an analysis of the historical

6

trajectory of thinking on development communication and the legacies these traditions
have left on discourse and practices that still shape development communication
programming today.
Traditionally, the field of ‘development communication’ has been an exercise in
vertical dissemination—messages about new, desirable behaviors or technologies
originated from the Western development expert and flowed down to the program
‘targets’. These targets had little say in defining the priorities for change and
development or the solutions. In recent decades, however, with the recognition that
information dissemination is only part of the solution, there has been a growing emphasis
on the application of horizontal and participatory communication initiatives (CFSC,
1999; Gumucio Dagron, 2001; Gumucio Dagron & Tufte, 2006). By providing spaces for
groups of community actors to articulate their own agendas for change, aid providers
have hoped to achieve greater engagement of local voices and increase local
participation. Some scholars have argued that mobile phones may be a new way to enable
the poor or marginalized to create and share local knowledge and ideas, as well as to
participate in the deliberative and agenda-setting processes of development (Kumar,
Rajput, Agarwal, Chakraborty & Nanavati, 2008; Patel, Chittamuru, Jain & Parikh,
2010).
When I commenced this dissertation and my fieldwork with Breakthrough, I was
chiefly concerned with whether, within the context of social and economic development
in India, it was possible to promote women’s rights through participatory, community-
based uses of mobile phones and other new communication technologies such as social

7

media or other web-based communities. While conducting this research, however, I made
two significant discoveries. First, there are very few examples in India of deploying
mobile phones to promote participatory communication or participatory development. Of
these, none active at the time of my field research had any substantive gender component.
Second, as the work evolved, Breakthrough and I had a number of conversations about
how communication could best shift the cultural norms that perpetuate violence against
women. Breakthrough and I agreed that development communication programs that aim
to promote behavior change through the use of vertical transmission models of
communication can be effective in promoting short-term public health goals such as
increasing knowledge about sexual health or the importance of vaccines, yet have proven
less appropriate in addressing long-term social change goals and shifting the underlying
norms that are root social determinants of many of these health issues (Inagaki, 2007).
Breakthrough and I therefore discussed a vision for promoting social change in which
communities take part in a discursive process of identifying, examining, debating and re-
envisioning collective values and norms. Using mobile phone technologies and social
media practices, Breakthrough sought to catalyze such processes around gender norms
and women’s rights.
Chatpati Chat drew its inspiration from these participatory communication and
community media traditions, while bringing a distinctly ‘2.0’ flavor with its use of new
technologies and interactive social networking practices. We launched Chatpati Chat with
the express intention of capitalizing on the growing penetration of mobile phones and
experimenting with their possibilities. While, in many ways, participatory communication

8

was the starting point, social media practices and their related network models
increasingly informed the design approach. The story of the Chatpati Chat program is not
only about participation and voice, but also about the potentials of new technologies—
particularly, mobile phones and social media—to strengthen the ability of communities to
voice their concerns in women’s rights advocacy and, more broadly, development work.
The questions that its approach provoked clearly have broader implications for the field
of development communication and the role of communities in shaping their own visions
of development, and as I explored these broader implications through my interviews, the
project expanded beyond Breakthrough to look at the question of technology and voice
more broadly, not only as part of the context that informed Chatpati Chat, but also as a
topic worthy of exploration in its own right.
The insights that this project offers, I feel, have broader implications for the field
of development communication and the role of technology in helping communities to
shape their own visions of development. Over the decade I have spent working in the
development field,
2
it has become increasingly clear to me that development agendas,
more often than not, reflect the goals, values, priorities, and interests of development
institutions, rather than those of the communities affected by the issues or programs in
question. Long-standing power structures continue to perpetuate an outdated discourse. It
is time for new voices to take on greater authority and communication power within this
discursive field, both at local levels, such as among the Rights Advocate community in

2
I have been active in the development field for over ten years, as a communication scholar and also as
a staff member, volunteer, and consultant at non-government organizations (NGOs) in India, South Africa,
and the US.

9

Lucknow, as well as at the higher levels of global development policy. By creating and
expanding spaces in which marginalized voices can genuinely and actively participate in
conceptualizing social change—a principal interest of my work since I began working in
the field as a practitioner before beginning academic study—I hope to create space for
new voices to emerge from the margins to challenge the mainstream.
This concern has been powerfully articulated by Arturo Escobar, the renowned
post-structuralist development theorist, who writes that development is “a discursive
practice that sets the rules of the game: who can speak, from what points of view, with
what authority, and according to what criteria of expertise” (Escobar, 1994, p. 41). My
concern has been by what processes can a shift in existing power relations emerge so that
new voices take on greater authority and communication power within this discursive
field, allowing dominant ideologies to be questioned and alternatives tabled—both at
local levels, such as among the Rights Advocate community in Lucknow, as well as at
the higher levels of global development policy.
There is precedent for a shift to occur—history demonstrates that development
discourse has not been monolithic, but ever-changing and evolving. Counter-discursive
elements can, and have, destabilized dominant practice. Alternative development and
participatory approaches, for example, drastically shifted discourse in the field, seriously
challenging (although not fully dislodging) the top-down modernization paradigm that
characterized the early days of international development. I hope that greater inclusion of
present-day ‘alternative’ voices could similarly find spaces to question, critique, and
challenge contemporary development discourse in an ongoing dialogue—a process of

10

social construction through which we articulate what we want the world to be and how
we will work together to get there. In moving towards this, I have, in my practical and
academic work, continued to touch back to Escobar, so as to ask, “who can speak, from
what points of view, [and] with what authority”. For this reason, at the core of this
dissertation are questions about communication power in the context of development—
who has it, who does not, and how it might be re-distributed. These questions have
always been negotiated and challenged through communication technology, so any
exploration of these questions must take into account emerging technologies, including,
in the present day at least, social media and mobile phones.
While a focus on communication, technology and power in development
discourse may seem removed from the questions of gender and violence against women
that were my starting point, I contend that a shift in the gender norms that perpetuate
violence requires that communities have opportunities to take the lead in defining their
collective identities, values, norms, goals, and priorities for change. If we can determine
how to put development communication in the service of strengthening and providing
space for them to engage in such discursive practices, the cause of women’s rights only
stands to benefit. While the data I collected in the field from active projects provided
little information about gender-related discourse, in my conclusion, I return to the
question of gender so as to describe the possibilities for promoting women’s rights and
shifting gender norms that the communication practices I explore provide. I also attempt,
whenever possible, to highlight the gendered implications of the issues discussed in the
more data-driven chapters.

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An understanding of the possibilities and limitations of promoting voice through
development communication programs must start from an understanding of development
discourse and the political and economic structures that influence program goals, design,
and implementation in the development field. I take time in this introductory chapter to
lay out the necessary context and definitions to theorize development as a discursive
field. I will then situate this understanding of discourse within the historical turns and
shifting paradigms in the development field and describe how these have led to differing
conceptions and practices of communication in development.

Development as Discourse
My methods as a researcher and my observations in the field are colored by an
approach strongly rooted in the notion of development as discourse. Drawing on
Foucauldian theory, I consider discourse to be a body of knowledge (and the systems of
language for representing that knowledge) of a particular topic at a given historical
moment (Foucault, 1970, 1972, 1977, 1979, 1980). As such, discourses are systems of
categorizing and containing; in Foucauldian terms, they “discipline” fields of knowledge
and what can be articulated and practiced within them (Foucault, 1970, 1972).
Discourse is an exclusionary force whereby certain kinds of problems that are not
described or categorized within the discourse are not given recognition, and where certain
solutions are not granted visibility. Thus, as will be shown in later chapters, in particular
chapters two and three on community radio in India, development discourse and its
related discursive practices also define what can be spoken about or encompassed within

12

the development agenda, and who has privilege and authority to speak.
Discourses are not just constricting, however, but are also productive (in the
generative sense of the word) in that they produce certain kinds of knowledge, power,
truth and authority. In the process, certain subject positions are produced that personify
the discourses and make certain relations of power legible. For example, in Harry
Truman’s inaugural address on January 20
th
, 1949 (often recognized as the kickoff of the
modern project of development), he posited that the benefits of scientific advances and
industrial progress should be made available to “underdeveloped” nations (Sachs, 1992).
As Esteva (1999) notes in his discussion of Truman’s speech, with one utterance, two
million people in the non-industrial world instantly became ‘underdeveloped’. “They
ceased being what they were, in all their diversity,” Esteva writes, “and were
transmogrified into an inverted mirror of others’ reality: a mirror that belittles them and
sends them off to the end of the queue, a mirror that defines their identity” (Esteva, 1999,
p. 7).
Truman’s creation of the new categorization of the underdeveloped produced a new
kind of subject, one that needed modernizing. It defined these “underdeveloped”
populations as “pre-modern” ones, held back by “traditional” (read: backward) cultural
values and attitudes. These “subcultures of peasantry” were viewed as impeding the
adoption of the key behaviors and technological innovations that would lead to the
speedy industrialization of Third World nations (Lerner, 1958; Rogers, 1969; Rostow,
1960) and movement toward the kind of society based on scientific rationalism,
technological advancement, and capitalist growth that would allow them to “catch up”

13

with the West (Lummis, 1992; Mies & Shiva, 1993).
3
Perhaps most significantly, the
official designation of this “backwards” group and the identification of what they lacked
necessitated (and, later, validated) the creation of powerful global development-oriented
organizations and the deployment of benevolent aid workers to facilitate the processes of
innovation and knowledge dissemination.
The practice of naming and othering that is evidenced in Truman’s speech
demonstrates discursive power through which the authority to speak and construct
knowledge about development leads to the definition of the subject positions of those
affected by development activities. To turn to a more contemporary example, the concept
of the so-called ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ (usually referred to as “The BoP” in
contemporary development speak), which has become prevalent in Indian development
discussions of the past few years, similarly represents an inverted mirror that serves to
define and construct a category of ‘other’ that must be acted upon by development
experts and, increasingly, ‘social entrepreneurs’. The Bottom of the Pyramid is a term
that has emerged in development discourse in recent years to refer to the 2.5 billion
people in the world who live on less than $2.50 a day. This population represents the
largest but also the most economically disadvantaged socio-economic group in the world.
Although individuals in this group live on just dollars a day, their cumulative buying

3
Modernization is rooted in social evolutionary views of the growth of civilizations as a linear path
from the traditional (i.e., non-Western societies) to the modern (i.e., Western civilization). For example,
Rostow, one of the key proponents of this unilinear view of development, proposed in The stages of
Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960) that the growth of societies could be understood
through a stage model that started with a traditional economy and progressed to a modern industrial
complex characterized by high mass consumption. Economic growth stimulated through industrialization
enabled by science and technology was seen as the primary route to modernization, with the assumption
that growth would trickle down to raise households out of poverty (Watts, 1993).

14

power as a demographic offers what noted economist C.K. Prahalad coined the ‘fortune
at the bottom of the pyramid’ (Prahalad, 2010; Prahalad & Hammond, 2002). Indeed,
large global corporations ranging from mobile phone providers to beverage companies
are increasingly focused on strategies to capture this market segment and to cultivate so-
called ‘BoP markets’ in the hope of tapping into this newly discovered potential fortune.
In keeping with the increasing turn towards neoliberal development models, Prahalad
argues that targeting the BoP not only makes good business sense, but that such market-
based activities constitute the best hope for economic and social development of these
communities. Profit-driven ventures (best led by ‘social entrepreneurs’ rather than the
outmoded development worker) tailored to the needs of BoP consumers will not only tap
the fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, but will also lead to technological and economic
innovations that will solve the problems of the poor. Certainly, neoliberalism’s almost
moralistic commitment to markets as the only legitimate force of social change (Brown,
2003; Harvey, 2005; Duggan, 2004) is clearly visible in the development sector’s
enthusiastic embrace of the ‘BoP’ term.
The increased attention to this constructed category of the BoP has given rise to a
new subjectivity. Just as Truman’s speech turned half the world into underdeveloped
overnight, so the BoP concept has cast a large section of the world’s population in a new
category of consumers on which development can be affected through market-based
activity. As corporations aim to tap this perceived fortune at the bottom of the pyramid
and development agencies pour money into reaching this population with health,
agricultural and financial information and services, a new subject position has been

15

constructed: the BoP consumer. While 20
th
century development discourse was
concerned with the ‘underdeveloped’, the ‘Third World’, the ‘vulnerable’, the ‘high risk
groups’ and so on, the current decade has ushered in an era of neoliberal categorizations
such as ‘the bottom of the pyramid’ and ‘consumer’.
4

Whether categories such as underdeveloped and Third World are employed or
their more contemporary descendants such as BoP, the application of such terms
demonstrate how power is exercised discursively through the construction of normative
categorizations and labels that serve to represent the “known” (i.e., the “subjects” of a
certain body of knowledge). In the words of Foucault, “the knowledge which a discourse
produces constitutes a kind of power exercised over those who are ‘known’” (Foucault,
1980, p. 201). Such categories and labels not only represent a way of knowing and
constructing these groups of people, but these very constructions highlight the ideologies
and assumptions about power, knowledge and social change that underlie them and both
implies and constructs a certain logic of how social change should be affected. For
example, Truman’s notion of the underdeveloped fueled a teleological modernization
argument (further elaborated below) that underdeveloped people and places needed to
catch up with the West, and aid workers must provide the innovations and knowledge
that will ensure this modernization process. The BoP terminology, on the other hand,
reflects the growing emphasis on neoliberal market-based approaches to development.
This neoliberal turn constructs people—especially the poor—as consumers, and

4
It is not insignificant to note that even among development practitioners, it is not uncommon to refer
to individuals in lower socio-economic categories as ‘consumers’, rather than as individuals, producers,
citizens, or other more active descriptions of this subject position.

16

privileges the logic that social change is best achieved through market-based ‘social
entrepreneur’ initiatives.
But why do Truman’s words, C.K. Prahalad’s arguments, and even the outdated
modernization paradigm have the power to become orthodoxy in the development sector?
Foucault points out that discourses also produce authority by defining who has legitimacy
to produce knowledge about certain topics (Foucault, 1972, 1977, 1980). His notion of
discourse is intricately tied to his formulation of knowledge and power, which describes
power as something that circulates and is maintained by a network of practices,
institutions, and technologies that reify positions of dominance and subordination in a
certain domain (Foucault, 1977, 1980). The formulation of discourse as a practice that
produces knowledge demonstrates the ways in which all claims to knowledge are a power
move. It is power, exercised through the production and disciplining of knowledge,
which makes something “true.” Or, in the context of development, power makes a social
problem “real” and worth addressing, or a proposed solution “valid.” In the development
field, therefore, what is at stake is the legitimacy to produce knowledge that defines
social problems, their solutions, and priorities for change.
The fact that this authority usually rests with political leaders, governments,
multilateral institutions, economists, NGOs and academics—those who generate
knowledge about their lesser developed counterparts—also raises important questions

about who is excluded from power, what kind of knowledge consequently falls to the
margins, and the significance of those exclusions.

17

Because marginalized groups are the subjects of this knowledge—and sometimes
even deemed to be the very problems in need of resolution—they are often denied the
opportunity to participate in the naming and categorizing of their own needs and
aspirations. Any new insights they might hold regarding their conditions and potential
resolutions to those problems remain largely invisible to authorities, leaving the
hegemonic discourse intact.

Counter-discourses
A Foucauldian or post-structuralist argument that development is a discourse can
look bleak in its relentless deconstruction, seemingly leaving us with no productive way
forward. Development as a grand project to alleviate poverty and inequality stands
completely rejected as a meaningful way to move towards social transformation, and
indeed a number of post-development theorists have advocated such an abandonment of
the term (Sachs, 1992; Watts, 1993). Sachs (1992), for example, equates development to
a lighthouse that is showing cracks in its foundations, “the idea of development,” he
writes, “stands like a ruin in the intellectual landscape,” which nonetheless still “stands
there and still dominates the scenery like a landmark.” Under this view, “it is time to
dismantle this mental structure” and abandon the idea that it has any use in improving the
human condition (p. 1).
However, the complete deconstruction and rejection of the development project is
not productive. As an increasingly, and seemingly irreversibly, global society,
frameworks for discussing the future directions of our social relations are increasingly

18

imperative. While development has been deeply and troublingly flawed, it might very
well represent our best hope for a productive global dialogue about who and what we
want to be as a global society. Discourses are ever changing and evolving, and it is
precisely this unfixed nature that offers us a way forward (Foucault, 1979, 1980;
Gramsci, 1971).
Foucault acknowledged that discourses are never pure, but always contain
counter-discursive elements. The existence of power always necessarily implies the
possibility of resistance (Foucault, 1980). Hence, rather than rejecting the development
endeavor, I would instead argue that certain processes could potentially re-claim the
word, re-defining development and the practices that constitute it by opening the
discursive field to new and previously marginalized voices. Thus, while discourse is
marked by exclusion, interesting and viable opportunities often exist outside of
mainstream discourse that can help to push it into different and new directions, ones in
which marginalized voices participate in mainstream discursive activities. A key question
explored in this study then becomes what are the modes through which discursive power
can be re-distributed, so that the production of knowledge about development is a more
inclusive process, and formulations existing outside dominant discourse can be heard and
debated? Identifying and creating such practices is not an easy task and this study does
not propose to have such answers. Rather, it explores a number of projects and efforts
that might point to promising directions. In so doing, I also explore certain relationships
of power and influence within development that pose a major barrier to such a re-
distribution of communicative power.

19

The Discursive Field of Development
The development field consists of a dizzying array of players from the
transnational to the hyper local, including multilateral organizations, international donor
agencies, national-level advocacy groups, NGOs and other implementing agencies,
grassroots organizations and social movements, and, increasingly, corporations and
profit-driven ‘social entrepreneurs’. These players are all acting in relation to each others’
actions and in response to global flows of funding and capital, as well as their
commitments to their own constituencies, investors and stakeholders. Raka Ray (1999)
describes such formulations as discursive ‘fields’ in which, she states, “organizations are
not autonomous or free agents, but rather they inherit a field and its accompanying social
relations, and when they act, they act in response to it and within it” (p. 6). Calling on
Bourdieu’s notion of the term (see Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), she defines fields as a
“structured, unequal, and socially constructed environment within which organizations
are embedded and to which organizations and activists constantly respond” (Ray, 1999,
p. 6). Bourdieu’s notion of the term introduces the concept of struggle, noting that a field
is shaped not only by the relationships within it, but also by the contestation of these
forces as actors struggle to maintain and transform the limits and boundaries of the field
and the distribution of power within in it. The power/knowledge relationships of
discourse do not act only on the “targets” of development programs, but also on the
actors within the field itself. Relationships of power exist between donor and grantee,
between NGO and the ‘client’, between social movements and NGOs, between

20

international donors and governments, and so on. Certainly, it is self-evident to anyone
who has worked at an NGO that program strategy decisions are not influenced solely by
the needs of the communities the organizations serve, but also by a wide variety of
pragmatic concerns related to donor agendas and government policies and the activities
of other civil society partners (or even competitors), all intertwined with the politics and
economics of the field. Among the most important of these forces is, of course, funding
and control over resources. As Kabeer (1994) notes, “control over resources enables
those in power to determine the parameters within which debates and controversies in
development can be conducted, which problems are to count within the development
agenda, and which subset of solutions will be considered” (p. 70).
Indeed, it has long been accepted that donor agendas often drive NGO
programming, often in problematic ways (INCITE, 2007; Lindenberg & Bryant, 2001;
Smillie, 1988, Smillie & Helmich, 1999). For example, in the social justice organization
INCITE’s influential book on funding politics, The Revolution Will Not be Funded
(2007), contributing authors including Ruthie Gilmore and Andrea Smith demonstrate the
ways in which accepting foundation grants makes an organization beholden to certain
priorities of these funders. These foundations often serve to concentrate wealth and
power in the service of ideologies of their capitalist benefactors, however, so their
influence over NGOs can act as a force that pulls social movements in more conservative
directions or otherwise dilutes the social justice efforts of their grantees. Furthermore, as
some of their case studies show, attaining the 501(c)(3) legal status needed to accept
foundation grants in the US can itself be a powerful force that shifts an organization’s

21

focus from community organizing to corporate management (de Almeida, 2007), thus
demonstrating how these financial and political relationships and formulations serve to
manage and control dissent by incorporating it into sanctioned legal and financial
apparatus. While their book is largely focused on what they call the “non-profit industrial
complex” in the US, many of the principles are applicable to any organization with strong
dependency ties to donors. The “insider” status that results from being tied to the donor
agencies makes it difficult for an organization to engage in any meaningful challenge or
to question the structures and discourses in which that donor agency is embedded. Thus,
struggles over resources and power that define the field are largely struggles of
discourse—who gets to define subjects of development or social change and its goals,
and the ‘truths’ that guide the practice.
Again to invoke Foucault, power/knowledge relationships exist between actors
within a field, and hence an organization’s actions are often defined by the options and
available choices that this architecture of power relations allows. For example, terms like
underdeveloped or BoP are also “imposed” on NGOs and other implementing agencies,
who may even adopt them willingly so as to appeal to donors who will provide more
funds. NGOs readily and willingly use the term BoP to appeal to donors or corporate
partners whose strategic plans focus on this category, or because the term creates a
common lingo or short hand that facilitates speaking to partners and other actors in the
development field who have similarly accepted the term’s meaning and connotations.
Thus, a particular form of development discourse becomes hegemonic. Yet, in my
interviews and fieldwork, while the term ‘BoP’ was amazingly ubiquitous, I also sensed a

22

sort of ambivalence. At times it was used with excitement and idealistic optimism, but in
other instances it was prefaced with the term “so-called” or accompanied by air quotes,
said with slight hesitations or other subtle cues of discomfort. On other occasions it was
questioned outright, such as at the recent conference on Mobiles for Development
organized by Sesame Workshop in New Delhi in 2011, where the participants agreed to
adopt the term “base of the pyramid” as a more empowering alternative to “bottom of the
pyramid”. As the conference report notes,

Base of the pyramid tele users are not merely consumers, or even merely
‘targets’ of mobile for development interventions waiting to receive one-
way, top-down information. On the contrary, tele users are and can be
actively involved in producing content, determining development agendas,
and shaping technology through their daily technology uses and practices
(Lapsansky, 2011).

These negotiations happen constantly in the field and also shape how NGOs frame and
pitch their programs.

Development as a Media Dependency System
The notion of fields helps us to understand the way in which power circulates
through a complex system of players in international development, thus influencing who
has the power to say what, to whom, and to what effect. These relationships are directly
related to the nexus of communication and power. Here it is useful to think of a multi-
level model suggested by Media Systems Dependency (MSD) theory (Ball-Rokeach,
1985, 1998, 2008; Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976; Ball-Rokeach & Loges, 1993). MSD

23

is a theory of power that describes the interdependent relationships between actors at
different levels in a media system (or, to broaden its application, a communication
system). It can help to understand the power relationships within a field while
recognizing and theorizing the importance of communication power, thus addressing
Escobar’s concern about who has power to speak and with what authority.
Rather than looking at media effects as arising from isolated interaction between a
medium and its audience, MSD theory advocates “the treatment of both the media and its
audiences as integral parts of a larger social system” (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur 1976). It
pays close attention to the interdependent relationships (or ‘dependency relationships’)
between different actors in these systems, not only including media audiences, but also
governments, media production houses, non-government organizations and other
institutions implicated in the political economy of the media system. MSD recognizes
that these dependency relations shape, and are shaped by, imbalances of media power,
which is defined as the control over information resources including the
creation/gathering, processing and dissemination of content (Ball-Rokeach, 2008).
Specifically, MSD considers media power to be “the power to control not only access to
knowledge construction, but also the rules of discourse that operate in the knowledge
construction process” (Ball-Rokeach & Loges 1996, p. 292). In this dissertation, I use the
term ‘communication power’ instead of ‘media power’ because, in the context of a
discursive field such as development, communicative power is not always exercised
through the media, but also through official documents, unofficial professional
conversations in the field, political speeches (e.g., Truman’s speech) and many other

24

locations outside of traditional mass media systems.
MSD takes into account the specific interests (i.e., goals) of each actor in the
media system and provides a framework for understanding how these goals affect the
dependency relationships between them. It thus recognizes the ways that dependency
relations can determine who has access to consume and create knowledge and
information in pursuit of their goals or interests, and under what conditions. While MSD
is chiefly concerned with systems surrounding mass media industries, the framework is
equally useful for understanding issues of communication power and control in any
pervasive, multi-level communication system that consists of diverse actors that
constitute a field (e.g., see Brough & Li, 2012).
The MSD multi-level system consists of macro level actors (e.g, international
donors and multilateral organizations), meso level actors (e.g., NGOs that implement
programs at the national or regional levels), and micro level players (grassroots or
community-based organizations and communities on the ground). Much of the translation
from discursive practices of development to ground realities happens during program
design at the level of the NGO that implements a project (meso level). As noted before,
my entry point for this study is the point of view of the organization, so as to understand
the ways in which organizations negotiate and translate trends in the field and political
and economic relationships with donor and partner agencies into programmatic decisions.
Ideally, to fully understand how discourses shape practice and affect ground realities, a
study should look at each level of actors. However, this was beyond the scope of this
study. My concern here will be the meso level at which implementing NGOs operate.

25

Shifting Development Paradigms and Evolving Conceptions of Communication
The development field has moved through a number of historical moments,
including the rise of modernization theory, the subsequent critique of this dominant
paradigm, and the rise of a plurality of alternative and participatory approaches that have
now become influential in the field. As development goals and practices and the
assumptions that guide them have shifted, so, too, have the meanings, values and
purposes ascribed to communication as a change agent in the development process.
The international development project originated in the wake of WWII, a time
marked by extensive Western foreign intervention in the name of postwar reconstruction
and Cold War struggles for influence over emerging economies. As the First and Second
Worlds battled for the hearts and minds of the so-called Third World, Western
development planners were concerned with catalyzing the transformation of pre-modern,
“backward” and “traditional” societies into modern societies following a Western model,
one based on scientific rationalism, technological advancement, and capitalist growth.
According to modernization theorists of the 1960s, “traditional” (read: backward) values
and attitudes of individuals in Third World cultures were impeding the adoption of key
behaviors and technological innovations that would lead to the speedy industrialization of
Third World nations (Lerner, 1958; Rogers, 1969; Rostow, 1960). Such perspectives
reflected the dominant paradigm in the development field, which understood the problem
of underdevelopment as primarily being the result of ‘subcultures of peasantry’ (Rogers,
1969) and other such characterizations of “backward” values that had to be transformed.

26

Development was thus conceived to provide support for underdeveloped nations to catch
up with the West (Lummis, 1992: Mies & Shiva, 1993).
Communication research in this era was dominated by assumptions that the mass
media had strong and direct effects on the attitudes and behaviors of the audience, who
were largely understood to be mere passive receivers of mass media messages. The mass
media’s perceived powerful role in creating and shaping public attitudes and opinions
made it an ideal vehicle to transmit information about technological advancement as well
as to transform the so-called traditional values and attitudes that, according to theorists,
hindered modernization. Schramm (1964) described this view of the mass media as a
“magic multiplier” that could rapidly spread information through a population so as to
“…speed and ease the long, slow social transformation required for economic
development” (p. 27). Communication under the modernization paradigm was to be used
in the service of promoting the ideas, technological innovations, and behaviors that would
lead to industrialization of traditional societies (Gumucio-Dagron & Tufte, 2006).
The favored models of communication employed in this paradigm prioritized top-
down and one-way message dissemination through which modern ideas and innovations
would flow from Western development experts to so-called “backward” societies
(Melkote, 2003; Wilkins & Mody, 2001). These transmission model approaches, often
called the “dominant paradigm” of development communication (Melkote, 2003), include

those models that are largely concerned with information transmission, diffusion and
persuasion.

27

Over the years, newly emergent multi-stage models of media effects such as
diffusion theory (Rogers, 1983) and two-step flow (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) that
recognized the role of interpersonal dialogue as a mediator of mass media effects began
to add more nuance and sophistication to the dominant paradigm of development
communication. Yet, even under these models the assumption is that information does,
and should, flow one way, from sender to receiver. Paternalistic assumptions that
innovations should be defined by Western development experts also remained firmly
intact when these models were applied to development.
Cultural theorists would later highlight the importance of an audience’s active
engagement in determining the meaning of texts (Bird, 2003; Hall, 1997; Livingstone,
2000; Morley, 1992) while media effects research such as uses and gratifications theory
recognized the audience’s active engagement in selecting among media choices to satisfy
certain needs (Blumler & Katz, 1974; DeFleur & Ball-Rokeach, 1989; Katz, Blumler &
Gurevitch, 1974). Scholars from social constructionist traditions also emphasized the role
of communication as shared meaning rather than information transmission or persuasion
(Carey, 1989). Despite such acknowledgements of an active audience, however, a
stimulus-response model echoing Shannon & Weaver (1949) is still assumed in many
development communications projects that aim to produce a certain effect with a given
message or campaign activity (Melkote & Steeves, 2001). While a plurality of
development communication approaches have emerged, the so-called “dominant
paradigm” remains prevalent in development communications and has strongly
influenced important subfields, including social marketing and entertainment education,

28

which are premised, at least in part, on the notion that media and interpersonal networks
can be utilized to transmit new information, innovations, attitudes and behaviors (Inagaki,
2007).

Dependency
Dependency theory was one of the most substantial early critiques of
modernization theory. Dependency theory, which has its roots in Latin American critical
social theory, argues that underdevelopment is not a ‘pre-modern’ condition that is
remedied by transforming ‘backward’ cultural values. On the contrary, the “development
of underdevelopment” in the Third World is actually a historical product of an
international political order in which the Third World is dominated and exploited by
advanced capitalist states in the First World (Amin, 1976; Gunder Frank, 1970).
Dependency theorists implicate the development project itself as being part of a larger
system that serves to maintain these hierarchies. For example, Escobar’s analysis of
health programs in Latin America demonstrates how these projects acted as an extension
of Cold War struggles for global power between Western capitalist countries and the
communist world (Escobar, 1994).
While modernization theorists understood the all-powerful mass media as a
benevolent tool for promoting ‘modern’ values and behaviors necessary to economic
growth, the dependency theorists held that mass media was largely a tool of cultural
imperialism. One-way flows of information and communication from the North to the
South, they argued, served to produce new markets for the First World and to export

29

information and cultural products that reinforced unequal structures of global power
(Schiller, 1964). These dependency critiques formed the theoretical foundations of the
New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) debates at UNESCO in the
1970s and 1980s (see Chapter Two for more).
Dependency theory, however, did not completely dismantle the modernization
approach’s assumptions about communication and social transformation; it merely turned
them on their head. Dependency theorists still held onto an evolutionary conception of
social development, though often with a Marxist view of cultural evolution towards
socialist societies, rather than a capitalist vision. They argued that the normal course of
development in Third World nations had been disrupted by economic ties to the West.
Yet, they shared the dominant paradigm’s conception of the mass media as a powerful
social force that in and of itself could transform cultural values. While modernization saw
this as a beneficial power, dependency theorists, as noted above, associated this power of
the media with cultural imperialism; yet both camps took media’s power as a vehicle of
one-way transmission to be self evident. Thus, in itself, dependency theory did not
provide a fundamental critique of how the dominant paradigm conceived of
communication and its role in social development.

Alternative Development
By the end of the first development decade in 1970 it became clear that

30

development was, in many ways, a failed project (Watts, 1993). Traditional approaches to
development were not producing the desired impact, and in fact, the gap between rich and
poor was growing (Escobar, 1994; Esteva, 1999; Thussu, 2000). In his now famous 1974
speech to the Board of Governors of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, then president
of the World Bank, had to admit to the failures of the first development decade,
acknowledging that “growth [was] not equitably reaching the poor” (as cited in Melkote
& Steeves, 2001, p. 61).
During this crisis in development, a number of ‘alternative’ development thinkers
from post-modern and post-structuralist traditions began to theorize development as a
discursive practice used to construct and maintain unequal power relations (e.g., Escobar,
1992, 1994; Esteva, 1999). Drawing on Foucault’s formulation of power and knowledge,
Escobar and others argued that development is a discursive system of power relations that
constructs people in the developing world as passive “targets” who are to be “developed”
through the beneficial intervention of Western knowledge and scientific practice. These
and myriad other terms created and defined as part of ‘development speak’ serve to
highlight difference and construct categories that establish a one-sided capacity to hold
and create legitimate knowledge about development. The result, they argue, is that local
knowledge, goals and social arrangements are devalued, such that local people are not
able to define their own problems and solutions. Thus, while dependency theorists
articulated the central struggle in development as one between the West and the rest, the
alternative development theorists instead framed the problem as an imbalance of power
between the development ‘expert’ (often, but not always, from the West) and the local

31

communities on which those experts act.
Development theorists from this tradition thus advocated expanding the authority
of who can speak about development to include local communities and marginalized
voices, who are otherwise largely unable to speak about the development agenda. They
acknowledge a need to involve local people in defining development agendas and
working with development practitioners to construct knowledge that does not privilege
scientific objectivity at the expense of local knowledge (Chambers, 1997; Fals-Borda &
Rahman, 1991; Friere, 1972). The emphasis in alternative development approaches is on
community-based and participatory communication processes, often drawing on the work
of Freire (1972), Boal (1979) and others from this Latin American tradition that privilege
local knowledge construction, horizontal communication, and ‘communication as
dialogue’, allowing for debating, constructing and re-envisioning local identities,
priorities and social change goals. The alternative development paradigm was at its
strongest in the 1970s when it was articulated as a radical critique. Since then, as I will
argue in the next section, many of its principles—especially its notions of local
participation—have been incorporated into mainstream development. This is in many
ways a success, as it represents an example of how counter-discursive elements can shift
mainstream discourse in more inclusive directions. It also demonstrates how, in entering
mainstream discourse, the radical aspects of the critique can be diluted.

The Participatory Turn and the Importance of Voice
While the radical critique that inspired participatory methods has softened in recent

32

decades, participation has now become an orthodox concept in the international
development field, so much so that no project plan is complete without provisions for
participation and no project funded if its proposal does not pay lip service to ‘community
involvement’ on some level (Huesca, 2003; Michener, 1998; White, 1996). Despite the
ubiquity of the term and laudable intentions of development planners, the rhetoric rarely
translates into meaningful practice. The term has become so loosely applied to such a
widely varying array of approaches that it is virtually devoid of meaning (Cornwall 2003;
Gardner & Lewis, 1996; Huesca, 2003).
Participation, as understood in the context of international development, has its
roots in the alternative development critiques of the 1970s and draws its intellectual
inspiration from the works of, among others, Freire (1972), Fals-Borda (1969; 1972) and
Rahman (1995; also see Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991), and was brought into mainstream
development debates through the work of scholars like Chambers (1983, 1994, 1997).
Ideologically, the participatory turn in development was a corrective for the top-down,
expert-driven approaches that characterize the modernization paradigm. It was an
inversion of power in regards to who has the right to create legitimate knowledge about
development and those who it acts upon. The traditional modernization approach was
premised on a rational scientific approach to knowledge that assumes an objective and
‘true’ reality that is discoverable through scientific inquiry, thus the diagnosis of social
problems and the identification of their solutions is best left to specially trained experts
(usually from the West). Participatory approaches, on the other hand, tended towards a
social constructivist epistemology that acknowledged the relativity of knowledge and the

33

right of individuals and communities to speak about their own conditions and goals (Fals-
Borda & Rahman, 1991). It presented an alternative understanding of who has the power
to produce valid knowledge about development, including its prescriptions, agendas and
goals. As Chambers (1997) writes, participation is where “the positivist, reductionist,
mechanistic, standardized-package, top-down models and development blueprints are
rejected, and in which multiple, local, and individual realities are recognized, accepted,
enhanced and celebrated” (p. 188).
These differing perspectives on the generation of knowledge and the authority to
define development agendas led to a corresponding shift in the way the role of
communication in development processes became understood. Under the dominant
paradigm, communication planners understand people from the Third World as passive
audiences (Beltran, 1979). Communication was thus a tool through which people were
persuaded to adopt technical innovations and to follow expert prescriptions for change.
As a corrective, alternative development advocated for bottom-up communication
processes that allow communities to debate and express their own agendas, and
horizontal communication systems that allow for networking between communities and
grassroots actors to create space for them to articulate counter-discursive notions
(Beltran, 1979; Escobar, 2000).
The very success that the participatory approach to development and development
communication has enjoyed has also contributed to the dilution of its political valence.
Since the 1990s, participation has been increasingly institutionalized by large donor
agencies, and in the process it has become a tool that is employed for instrumental

34

reasons to improve project outcomes. It has become a means to an end (i.e., greater
project efficiency), rather than an end in and of itself (Hickey & Mohan, 2004; Leal &
Opp, 2005). In fact, rather than being the corrective to top-down approaches,
participation can itself be imposed in top-down ways by implementing agencies
(Michener, 1998; White, 1996). For example, when describing the implementation of a
participatory education project, Michener (1998) points to the ways in which the program
called for the community to take responsibility for materials and teacher salaries, and to
otherwise engage in aspects of the project implementation, thus “implicating the
population and instilling in them a sense of responsibility” (Michener, 1998, p. 2110). In
this case, Michener argues, the requirement that community members participate in the
day-to-day functional implementation of a development project that they themselves had
no part in initiating negated any empowering potentials of participation and instead
amounted to little more than administrative task-sharing (Michener, 1998). As Cornwall
(2003) writes, “Salient here are the differences between rhetoric, which is replete with
grand-sounding promises of empowerment of the marginalized, and what mainstream
agencies actually do, which often takes the shape of enlisting people in pre-determined
ventures and securing their compliance with pre-shaped development agendas” (p. 1327).
This is not to say that agencies are purposely seeking to limit participation in these
projects. Facilitating meaningful participation is no easy endeavor and often a lack of
participation can be linked back to the agencies inability to facilitate the process well,
despite their best intentions. There are numerous challenges that an NGO or project must
overcome in order to enable meaningful participation, and not all agencies are equipped

35

with the knowledge and skills to address these challenges. For example, communities
often lack the skills, time or resources to participate in meaningful ways (Moser, 1993:
Michener, 1998), and project planners do not always take these constraints into account
so as to address them appropriately. For example, White (1996) describes the
predicament of Bangladeshi NGO workers asked to take part in a participatory project
meeting. If they attended, they would have had no guarantee that their participation
would lead to meaningful outcomes. Yet if they chose not to attend in favor of addressing
more immediate and pressing community or personal concerns, they would be told that
they were not contributing to the social development of their people. Clearly, the
expectation that they would participate despite the very real time constraints or
challenges they might face, can amount to emotional blackmail or other forms of subtle
coercion. Furthermore, participatory projects that defer to community preferences,
without facilitating an examination or critique of existing social structures, run the risk or
replicating longstanding social exclusions and discrimination. All too often, participation
effectively amounts to participation of only the most vocal or powerful. As many have
noted, for example, existing inequalities and marginalization mean that women are often
overlooked in supposedly ‘participatory’ processes (Cornwall, 2003; Gujit & Kaul Shah,
1998, Mayoux, 1995; Wilkins & Mody, 2000). Power imbalances among actors,
including differences in skills and knowledge, can also lead to the marginalization of
different stakeholder groups in the decision-making processes.
Nonetheless, these operational barriers to participation are not in and of themselves
reasons to completely disregard the participatory approach. Tackling such challenges is

36

merely the messy social reality of community-based organizing and part of any process
of social change. In fact, engaging with such issues directly through community
processes likely enhances the transformative power of participatory approaches. It is, I
argue, larger structural power relationships within the development sector and its
discursive practices that pose the greater challenge to transformations of our approaches
to communication and participation. Despite the current excitement and rhetoric about
participation and voice in the development process, the fundamental reality remains that
the development field is largely dominated by many of the same institutions that emerged
in the post WWII era and which remain governed by many of the same institutional
relationships that emerged under the modernization paradigm; these institutional
relationships serve to maintain certain modes of working. As Inagaki (2007) writes in her
review of evolving development communication paradigms, “newer models such as the
participatory approach… that advocate horizontal or bottom-up communication practices,
however ground breaking in many respects, are constricted in practice by the hierarchical
relationships between actors (for example, donor organizations, international aid
agencies, national and local counterparts and field staff)” (p. 8). These agencies are
beholden to funder demands, organizational guidelines and programmatic strategies that
guide their agenda setting. Hence, while project implementation may in fact become more
participatory (at least in the limited sense of ‘administrative task-sharing’), the
institutional nature of development initiatives means that the power to set the agenda and
determine project goals still largely rests with legitimated development institutions and,
hence, outside the affected communities.

37

While participatory development may have its roots in the more radical alternative
development paradigms, the co-opting, mainstreaming and instrumentalizing of
participation has been driven by liberal efforts to reform the development field, rather
than critique, question or re-define it. Unlike post-development theorists who advocate
rejection of the grand project of development, most contemporary participatory
development practitioners accept the overall dominant narrative, but aim to insert
participatory processes into conventional development practice (typically by engaging
people in consultation or project implementation), with the intention of ameliorating its
harsher features (Cohen & Uphodd, 1980; Cornwall, 2003). The effect of this is an
erosion of the transformative potential of participation. As Cornwall writes, “the rapid
spread of participatory approaches led to their use by powerful international institutions
to lend their prescriptions authenticity and legitimacy, submerging the more radical
dimensions of participatory practice (Cornwall, 2002; Tandon, 2002; Cornwall, 2003).
Cornwall provides a useful schematic that not only describes the different
motivations behind these modes of participation, but also identifies the different subject
positions constructed by these modes of participation. Cornwall’s (2003) table is
reproduced here (see Table 1).

38

Each of these modes of participation is associated with a different development
paradigm. For example, functional participation, a mode most closely associated with the
modernization approach to development, enlists participation so as to increase public
acceptance for a project, lend legitimacy and improve project outcomes. It represents
projects that attempt to ‘add’ participation into existing top-down models so as to
recuperate or legitimate the modernization project. These projects are motivated by the
assumption that if affected people are involved in designing a message or intervention, it
is likely to be more culturally relevant and to meet less resistance from affected people,
thereby increasing the project’s chances of meeting externally determined benchmarks.
Under this framework, participants are not understood as having agency within the
discursive processes that determine development agendas. Rather their labor and
‘participatory’ contributions are leveraged towards the achievement of pre-determined
development goals or indicators about which they have had little or no input. This form
of participation constructs the participant as mere objects of development that are acted
upon by experts. Clearly, such modes of participation do not engage the issues of power
and inequality, nor do they acknowledge the latent assumptions about legitimate

39

knowledge and authority that dictate who can take part in defining development goals
and how they will be reached (Melkote, 2000). This robs participation of its political
potency, and is unlikely to usher in meaningful social transformation (Escobar, 1995;
Fals-Borda & Rahman, 1991; Melkote & Steeves, 2001; Rahnema, 1992).
On the other end of Cornwall’s spectrum, transformative modes of participation
seek to empower participants to exercise their rights and increase political voice. This
mode of participation constructs participants as agents of their own development. It is
part of a broader call to emphasize participation as intertwined more broadly with issues
of citizenship, rights and governance (Gaventa, 2002), as well as to ensure people’s
participation in development as ‘makers and shapers’ rather than ‘users and choosers’ of
development programs (Cornwall & Gaventa, 2001). The aim is to put the focus of
participatory approaches back on issues of power, voice, agency and rights (Cornwall,
2003). This move away from constructing the participant as an object and towards
constructing the participant as an agent is a theme that will be repeated throughout my
study in various formulations—consumer to producer, subject to agent, consumer to
citizen. These are all important shifts in the way development planners speak about
participants and that are, in some cases, underway and in other cases being reversed. The
question of voice that is central to this study, however, is largely one about moving from
understanding the poor through passive subject positions marked by consumption to
active ones characterized by knowledge and message production and claiming the rights
of citizenship and expression.

40

This dissertation is concerned with exploring what kinds of communication
processes can support this approach to participation, one that understands participants as
active agents and citizens. I explore this question in the context of new technologies such
as mobile phones and social media that are so quickly shifting the way communities
communicate with one another, with larger publics, and with development policy makers.
Critical to the process of shifting to more active subject positions is the question of voice.
Hence, in this dissertation, I start from the premise that voice matters. It is voice, or the
ability to speak and be heard about ourselves and the issues that matter to us, that
separates a media consumer from a producer of ideas and an actor in discursive
processes. It is voice that enables one to move from a consumer of services to a citizen
demanding rights. It is voice that turns development program ‘targets’ or ‘beneficiaries’
into advocates and actors who take part in defining the grand narratives of development
that affect them.
In Chapter One, I present a deeper theorization of voice and its definitions, building
on those who take voice to mean the “inclusion and participation in social, political and
economic processes, meaning making, autonomy and expression” (Tacchi & Kiran, 2008,
p. 41; See also Couldry, 2009, 2010, 2011; Lister, 2004), or in other words, the ability to
participate in deliberative decision-making processes that affect one’s life and
community. Voice so defined is clearly similar conceptually to participation as defined
by participatory development scholars. I find, however, that it additionally captures the
critical importance of dialogue and the human need to create, share, listen and participate
in the circulation of ideas within the public sphere. Access to means of communication

41

(i.e., communication technology) and content generation can be important avenues for
exercising one’s right to voice (Hearn, Tacchi, Foth & Lennie, 2009; Skuse et al, 2007;
Tacchi & Kiran, 2008). Voice is a fundamental part of human experience and, as
communication rights advocates have long argued, it is a fundamental human and
citizenship right (Lister, 2004). As such, it is an important development aim in its own
right, in that it empowers, it enables dialogue and debate, and raises awareness about
social issues. It can also be a channel for self-management towards self-development for
communities (Inagaki, 2007). This has been increasingly recognized in high-level
development discussions. For example, the Rome Consensus that emerged out of the
World Conference on Communication and Development in 2006 argued for the
importance of communication as a development objective in and of itself, and identified
it as one of its ‘strategic pillars’ for enabling people who are most affected by
development issues to be able to speak about these issues. Voice and participation are
also instrumentally important as a vehicle through which other social change outcomes
can be realized. It has been argued, for example, that participatory communication
approaches can be more inclusive and less driven by pre-determined goals, providing
opportunities to directly address structural problems—gender inequality, for instance—
that underlie social problems rather than focusing on immediate issues alone (e.g.,
unprotected sex) (Inagaki, 2007). It is also now generally accepted that participation can
lead to better program outcomes by giving rise to more appropriate solutions and
promoting local buy-in. As noted, however, despite the increasing rhetoric about the
benefits of participation, the general consensus among communication for development

42

practitioners (especially community media advocates) is that this rhetoric often fails to
translate into practice; meaningful participation in development communication programs
remains rare. In most cases, the outmoded vertical models of communication are still
strongly evident (Gumucio Dagron, 2006; Inagaki, 2007). Many of the challenges to
participation lie in the deeply entrenched institutional practices and inter-institutional
collaborative and financial relationships in the development sector. Furthermore, the
legacy of outmoded transmission models of development communication and the
assumptions about power and social change on which they are premised are still strong in
development discourse, limiting the ability to conceive and implement truly participatory
or horizontal approaches.

Development Discourse and Emerging Technologies in India
While the questions I explore are of relevance to global development practice, I
situate my arguments within case studies and debates as they are unfolding in India. In
many ways, India offers an ideal entry point into these questions, partially because of its
thriving civil society and the size of its development sector. For decades, Indian
development work has been at the forefront of the field, and has served as one of the
richest sites for innovations and case studies of effective development approaches. More
important, however, is this particular technological moment in India’s history. As a now
oft-cited UN report observed, there are currently more mobile phones in India than there
are toilets (United Nations University, 2010), a fact that underscores the massive reach of
mobile phones to even the poorest communities, as well as the great need for

43

development of basic services for these population. Furthermore, India’s
telecommunications sector has aggressively sought this market by introducing innovative
pricing schemes to make telecom services more accessible to the poor and keeping tariffs
quite low in comparison to other developing country markets. And of course, India’s
thriving IT sector continues to drive innovation to provide better and more useful services
to a range of users, including the poor. Experiences in India are likely then, to be
applicable to a growing number of emerging markets where mobile phone penetration is
similarly poised to explode. While the expansion of mobile phone usage has largely
happened under the capitalist logic that promotes consumption and the delivery of
information about services or consumer products, there are undeniable possibilities to use
the technology to increase voice and participation. Take, for example, Avaj Otalo, a
mobile-phone based participatory forum for farmers in Gujarat that is driven by bottom-
up content and local agricultural knowledge, or CGNet Swara, the mobile phone
community media system for marginalized tribal populations in Maoist areas of India.
Both of these examples will be considered in later chapters of this study.
But what does it mean to promote voice and participation in a mobile, social
media age, one marked by digital exclusions and divisions and structural realities that
create vast inequalities in peoples’ ability to participate in these new public spaces? To
return to Escobar (1994), “Development is a discursive practice that sets the rules of the
game” (p. 41). The rules of the game are not rigid, however; they are in fact fluid and
constantly negotiated, particularly during periods when new communication technologies
threaten to destabilize existing hierarchies of power that influence who has access to the

44

means of message creation and dissemination. The current excitement in the development
field globally about emerging technologies such as mobile phones and social media
indicates that these rules are drastically changing. Indeed, communication scholars have
demonstrated time and again the ways in which democratic hopes are hung on new
technologies, be it the telephone, the television, or, more recently, the Internet (Marvin,
1988; Sturken & Thomas, 2004).
The expectations surrounding mobile phones and Web 2.0 technologies in India
are no exception. Government departments, corporations and development agencies alike
hope that these technologies will enable broader reach and engagement among previously
marginalized individuals and communities, thus increasing the poor’s participation in and
access to democratic and social development activities, public services, and consumer
markets.
At the same time, social media use has been on the rise in India. High profile
news events such as the use of Twitter during the Mumbai attacks and the emphasis on
social media in the 2009 national general elections have brought attention to the potential
of social media to facilitate public dialogue, debate and civic engagement. Media scholars
have argued that social media has given rise to a “participatory culture” in which
consumers are now empowered to be producers of media content while increasing their
opportunities for civic engagement (Benkler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Leadbetter, 2008;
Shirky, 2010). In Chapter Four, I demonstrate that such utopian hopes are certainly alive
and well in India as well, where the new middle class has been increasingly finding and
asserting its political voice on social media platforms.

45

To date, disparities in access to Internet and communication technologies in India,
along with inequalities in digital literacy, have maintained social media as a playground
for the middle and upper classes. However, as I discuss in Chapter Five, communication
rights activists, some development communication professionals, and telecommunication
companies are now thinking about the potentials of increasing social media access for the
poor, chiefly through platforms that function on low-end mobile phones. This would, in
theory, make social media accessible to even very poor populations whose only means of
electronic or networked communication may be the mobile phone.
Mobile phones and social media are hence likely to converge in significant ways
in development programs in the next few years, offering greater sections of the
population new possibilities for participation in development processes. The
opportunities for new voices to participate in networked culture through their mobile
devices are significant and exciting. However, when we acknowledge that development is
a discursive practice that dictates who has power to define social priorities and agendas, it
becomes clear that power is always at stake when new voices gain meaningful access to
message creation and public debate, power which can potentially shift the locus of
control over development messaging. The emergence of new technology alone is not
likely to change these power hierarchies. Simply inserting a new technology into existing
structural realities is unlikely to shift entrenched power relations, for, as renowned Indian
feminist scholar Vandana Shiva (1998) has said, “new technologies travel on old social
relations”. This study examines both the potentials for increasing participation that may
be offered by these new technologies, but also attempts to bring to light some of the

46

discursive, political, and economic features of the development sector that will at best
influence, or at worst constrain the opportunities to realize these potentials.

Methods
I will close with a few words about the methodological approach I have taken to
fieldwork. This study draws on qualitative participant observation and interviews with
development agencies, technology firms and experts in the field of communication, social
media and/or mobile phones for development. In particular, I spent a considerable portion
of my fieldwork period leading Breakthrough’s
5
efforts to design and implement the
Chatpati Chat program. I use the organization’s experiences to demonstrate some of the
challenges and opportunities faced by institutions that strive to adapt these new
technologies to engage their stakeholders, with emphasis on the ways in which these
organizations’ positions in the development sector and their relationships with other
development actors influence, enable or constrain their programmatic decisions. Here the
emphasis is on understanding how organizations position themselves in relationship to
larger discourses in the field, how they both take part in constructing these and/or
challenging them, and how program design (and hence impact on the community) is
affected by this.
It should be noted that my ideological and methodological orientation as a
researcher is heavily influenced by action research traditions (e.g., Chambers, 1994,

5
Breakthrough is a human rights organization that uses media, pop culture and community mobilization
to enable people to defend human rights. Based in India and the United States, Breakthrough addresses
global issues including violence against women, sexuality and HIV/AIDS, and immigrant rights and racial
justice. See www.breakthrough.tv.

47

1995; Fals-Borda, 1969, 1972; Friere, 1972). Although this study is not an action
research study in the strictest sense, I was actively engaged with many of my research
participants in a number of professional ways: alternatively as consultant, colleague,
collaborator and project advocate. As a result, my data is a mixture of recorded opinions
from my participants as they shared during interviews, and co-constructed knowledge
that emerged through interaction, collaboration, or collegial exchange with them. As part
of the leadership of the Chatpati Chat team, I often found that research participants were
also potential Chatpati Chat partners or collaborators, as well as interviewees. Therefore,
while interviews were conducted following the conventions of formal academic research,
they often included or were followed by professional discussions about the Chatpati Chat
platform, resources and opportunities in the field relevant to it, and more general
professional trade conversations between colleagues. This perspective has both its
benefits and its drawbacks. The working relationships with many of these respondents
allowed me to ground my findings in a contextual knowledge of their everyday concerns
and practices. This is not, however, to discount the discomfort that could arise when
professional and academic conversations too closely overlap. Hence I was careful to
always separate the two, and to be very clear with respondents about my dual role,
clarifying which parts of our interactions would inform the research and which were
purely professional. As agreed with my respondents, I have not used or quoted any of the
professional conversations in this dissertation unless permission was explicitly granted.
However, the overall understanding of the field that they helped to provide for me does
influence the way I present ideas and arguments in this study.

48

Of particular importance is my relationship with Breakthrough. Not only did I
work closely with its team, spending nearly every day in their office for months, but I
also have a longstanding professional relationship with the organization that began ten
years earlier when I was a staff member in its US office between 2002 and 2004, very
shortly after the organization was founded. I have since also consulted and worked with
the organization at different times for periods of a few months to a year, in both the
organization’s US and India offices, before commencing this study. Because I have
known the organization so intimately, from its inception through its growth into the
successful international organization it is today, there were times in my research when I
realized that I was documenting history that I had been part of or analyzing present-day
values of the organization that had evolved from discussions I had participated in years
ago as staff. Thus, while I cannot claim detached objectivity, I could contextualize
observations and interview findings within a longer period of history of the organization,
thus adding a richness that might not otherwise have emerged.
Thematically, the discussion of emerging technologies in development must be in
conversation with the Information Communication Technology for Development
(ICT4D) literature of theory and practice. Theoretically, however, I have found this body
of literature to be unsatisfying in its lack of critical perspectives. All too often, it is
premised on techno-deterministic views of technology as engines of change and access to
information as the Holy Grail of development. I would argue that both of these views are
flawed. Hence, while I attempt to place my findings and arguments in conversation with
ICT4D literature throughout this study, I simultaneously take a social construction

49

approach to technology, which is less common in ICT4D. My analysis is grounded in
social construction frameworks that hold that technology is shaped by social processes
and practices (Krug, 2005; Hearn et al, 2009; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Winner,
1993).
Tracing and elucidating the discursive contests that dictate who has power to
speak in development may seem a largely academic project, yet the stakes are very
tangible. The attempt to gain control over prized communication resources and
communication power as well as attempts to redistribute that power are not merely
ideological, but have concrete effects on policy and funding allocation, which in turn
impact the daily realities of the individuals and communities who are considered the
‘targets’, ‘beneficiaries’, or, increasingly, the ‘customers’ or ‘clients’ of development
(Sen & Grown, 1987).

How This Study is Organized
This dissertation is fundamentally about voice, and its importance in creating
opportunities for counter-discursive elements to influence mainstream development. In
particular, I am concerned with the potential of communication technology in shifting the
way communication power circulates and how it might be re-distributed to previously
marginalized voices, as well as those factors that will stand in the way of achieving this.
While participatory development may be the logical place to begin such a discussion, I
instead begin with the concept of voice, which I see as capturing the critical
communicative aspects of participation. After all, challenging and expanding hegemonic

50

formulations regarding who has the ability to speak about development and with what
authority is largely a question of communication power and the right to communicate and
be heard.
Thus I begin in Chapter One by describing communication rights and then
looking at voice as one of those rights. I explore the importance of media content creation
at the local level and community dialogue as ways that voice is expressed, as well as the
importance of community media as a site for promoting voice, while also describing
some of the implications of new technologies as tools for local content production.
Chapters two, three, and four explore some of the technologies through which it has been
argued that voice can be exercised in India, starting first with one of the most traditional
technologies of international development: community radio (chapters two and three)
before turning to the latest hope: social media (Chapter Four). In the chapters on
community radio, I look at the ways in which community media can be understood as a
media dependency system so as to better understand the discursive practices and contests
that shape and constrain its potential as a participatory platform to promote community
voice.
In Chapter Four, I then turn to the emerging discourse on social media as a
democratizing force in India. I describe the way that emerging social media use in India
over the last three years has created a meta-narrative about social media as a site for
democratic empowerment. I then trouble this narrative by looking at the social exclusions
that are also associated with social media. In Chapter Five, I look at a trend that my
interviewees described as “bringing social media to the village” and the ways in which

51

the discussions about the use of technology to promote expressions of voice at the
community level are currently converging with the social media meta-narrative, and the
ways in which mobile phones are enabling this move towards ‘social media for the
village’. In the final chapter, I look closely at Breakthrough’s Chatpati Chat process as
one organization’s attempt to create a participatory community media platform using
mobile phone technologies. I examine the organization’s motivation, planning processes,
key decisions, challenges and success in regards to the program so as to underscore the
ways in which features of the development field and the dependency relations within it
impact actors at the NGO level and how this in turn shapes the participatory potentials of
a program. In the conclusion, I return to the question of gender and link the larger
explorations of voice, technology and communication power to women’s rights.
After nearly two years in India observing the effects of mobile phone adoption and
the increasing penetration of social media into everyday life, I am one of the first to admit
that the potentials of these technologies are extremely exciting. The access to
information, social interaction across space and the power to create content that they offer
to previously disenfranchised groups is astounding. However, I argue that the
introduction of new technologies, even those that promise to usher in greater democracy
in the form of ‘participatory culture’, are unlikely to lead to any substantive opening of
space for alternative voices in the development discourse as long as the power
relationships that define the international development field, and discursive practices that
maintain them, remain unchallenged and unexamined. It is this work—the deconstruction

52

and re-envisioning of old and outmoded discursive practices that serve to maintain power
in certain centers—that must be done if we are not to squander the opportunity that these
and future emerging technologies offer.

53

CHAPTER ONE

COMMUNICATION RIGHTS, VOICE AND DEVELOPMENT

In the introduction, I have shown that participation has become a key theme in the
development discourse. However, despite the trend towards greater involvement of
beneficiaries in development programs, the participation rhetoric often rings empty and
the status quo remains very much intact. Development discourse continues to be marked
by power relations and communication system dependencies that—returning to my
central question as articulated by Escobar—dictate “who can speak, from what points of
view, with what authority, and according to what criteria of expertise” (Escobar, 1994, p.
41). For this reason, this chapter focuses on the concept of voice because attention to this
right is critical to facilitating meaningful participation and shifting the balance of power
with regard to who can speak about development. I will explore the case for voice as a
fundamental human right by reviewing the concept as it has recently been articulated in
development, and the communication rights arguments on which the notion of voice is
predicated. Given that the concept of voice is under-theorized and often vaguely defined
in development theory and practice, I will draw from a broader literature including
sociology, cultural studies and ecological models of communication such as
Communication Infrastructure Theory (Ball-Rokeach, Kim & Matei, 2001; Kim & Ball-
Rokeach, 2006a, 2006b; Wilkin, Moran, Ball-Rokeach, Gonzales & Kim, 2010) to
elucidate how voice becomes part of a collective process of narrating and constructing
community identities and goals.

54

I argue that protecting and promoting voice requires that certain social conditions
be in place to create an enabling communication environment where people can express
themselves and have those expressions heard. Echoing Communication Infrastructure
Theory (CIT), I argue that a strong interconnected network consisting of media,
community institutions and engaged community residents is necessary to support the
right to voice and these networks are strongest when supported by an enabling
communication environment.
In recent years, thanks to high-profile public events such as the Arab Spring,
Iran’s ‘Twitter revolution’, and Wikileaks, among others, there has been increasing
attention on the role of new technologies such as mobile phones and social media in
enabling democratic expression and voice (Grossman, 2009; Hofheinz, 2011; Iskander,
2011; Shirky, 2009). CIT has long recognized the centrality of communication
technology as a potentially critical component of enabling communication environments
(Cheong & Wilkin, 2005; Hayden & Ball-Rokeach, 2007; Jung et al, 2007). In the
developing country context, rapid increase in mobile phone penetration in recent years
has increased access to networked technologies, especially for poor and marginalized
groups (Castells, Fernandez-Ardevol, Qiu & Sey, 2007; Donner, 2008; LIRNEasia, 2011;
UNICEF, 2010). This is especially true for India, the second largest mobile
telecommunication market in the world.
6
As a result, mobile phones and social media are
increasingly recognized as critical tools for development, and entire sub-disciplines with
names like M4D (Mobiles for Development) have emerged that are dedicated to

6
The size of India’s mobile market is currently second only to China (“China’s mobile subscribers”,
2011; Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2011).

55

exploring the possibilities of these technologies for development (UNICEF, 2010). But
do these technologies, or the newly emerging development programs that leverage them,
actually contribute to creating enabling environments where voice can be heard and
expressed? Do they create greater opportunities for voice and participation in
development? As the penetration of these technologies continues to deepen and new
audiences are connected to the networked world, this is an important time to investigate
the possibilities and limitations that mobile phones and social media offer for voice and
participation in development in India and similar developing country contexts. First,
however, it is necessary to situate the concept of ‘voice’ within the larger discussion of
communication rights of which it is a part.

Communication Rights
Communication rights is a broad term that encompasses a variety of interrelated
rights including freedom of opinion and expression, linguistic rights, the right to
information, the right to have one’s voice heard in policy decisions, and rights to
language and culture, among others (Calabrese, 2004; Ó Siochrú, 2005; Thomas, 2006).
Communication rights, which are acknowledged in a number of international human
rights instruments,
7
are at the heart of a number of movements and communication
advocacy efforts, including support for public media, advocacy against privatization and

7
Communication rights are enshrined in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights (1966), Article 16 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), and in the main regional
human rights instruments in Africa, the Americas, and Europe. The most fundamental basis for
communication rights is Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims
“everyone has the right to freedom of expression and opinion: this right includes the freedom to hold
opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers” (Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948).

56

consolidation of corporate media power, free press movements, community media
movements, and the free software movements (Thomas, 2006).
Communication rights became a central focus in UN discussions in the 1970s,
during the UNESCO New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)
debates (Thussu, 2000) through which governments from the Global South voiced
concerns about the dominance of Western media firms in shaping political and cultural
discourse. In particular, they wanted to address issues of cultural imperialism and media
concentration by challenging the one-way flow of information and ideas from the
developed world to the developing one; raising concerns about how the North portrayed
the South in the news; and correcting imbalances in communication technology and
infrastructure (Singh, 2011; Thussu, 2000). The report from the MacBride Commission,
which was established to analyze the issues raised in the NWICO debates, identified the
“right to communicate” as a central concern, which helped place the issue on the global
agenda (Calabrese, 2004; Singh, 2011). However, the collapse of NWICO in the wake of
the US withdrawal from UNESCO politicized questions about the right to communicate,
8

making it harder to incorporate it into policy in later years. Even so, NGOs and activists

8
Here it is important to distinguish between the “right to communicate” and “communication rights.”
The “right to communicate”, the term preferred in the NWICO era, acknowledged the need and right of
everyone to participate in the communicative processes of their societies. Although many other rights
associated with communication already existed (e.g., the right to freedom of speech), it was felt that an
explicit and formal declaration and recognition of a “right to communicate” was a necessary measure.
Because of its links to UNESCO’s “free flow” doctrine (which the US & the UK saw as a direct threat to
freedom of expression), the term became overly politicized (O Siochru, 2005). In recent years, the
discourse has shifted to “communication rights”, a plural form that acknowledges that there are a number of
previously existing, but often ignored, rights that support communication. The emphasis is now on
strengthening these existing rights, rather then promoting the creation of a new “right to communicate”.
Although many communication rights activists still see the legal recognition of a right to communicate as a
necessary long-term goal, they feel it strategic to advocate for the protection of existing rights —which are
often not enforced or guaranteed—as a more immediate step towards promoting fair and equitable
communication.

57

involved in community media, language rights, and open source movements in the 1980s
were able to manifest many of the MacBride Commission ideals (Calabrese, 2004;
Heinrich Böll Foundation, 2003; Thomas, 2006). As these groups coalesced under formal
umbrella organizations and platforms,
9
they formulated a wider communication rights
agenda that advocated for better rights enforcement and protection of communication
rights as articulated in existing human rights instruments (rather than advocating for a
separate ‘right to communicate’). The crystallization of these coalitions enabled them to
produce a civil society declaration for the 2003 World Summit on Information Society
(WSIS), the first UN summit to engage civil society on global media policy decisions and
one of the first gatherings of media reform activists under the UN banner (Calabrese,
2004; Pickard, 2008).
Although “the right to communicate” did not make it into the final documents
from WSIS, seemingly sidelined by political tensions surrounding the legacy of the
NWICO debates, it was a significant step forward to see communication rights addressed
at the forum and supported by a number of high-profile attendees. Kofi Annan, for
example, voiced his support, declaring, “millions of people in the poorest countries are
still excluded from the ‘right to communicate’, increasingly seen as a fundamental human
right” (United Nations, 2003). For its part, the European Commission noted, “the Summit
should reinforce the right to communicate and to access information and knowledge”
(European Commission, 2002). Activists have succeeded in keeping this important issue

9
E.g., The People’s Communication Charter, Platform for Democratisation of Communication, and the
Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign.

58

on the agenda at subsequent WSIS Forums, even if its translation into political action
remains weak.

Access to Information versus Communication Rights
Despite the best efforts of activists and the plurality and variety of communication
rights, development discourse and practice, particularly in the Information
Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) sub-field, has
disproportionately favored the right to information over those communication rights that
relate to expression, voice and being heard. This focus on information has resulted in an
emphasis on interventions that aim to ensure access to information and the technologies
that deliver it, often perpetuating a one-way flow of information from development
experts to “beneficiaries” (Heeks, 2008; Skuse et al, 2007; Tacchi, 2006). Access to
information is certainly a critical right in the larger family of communication rights, and a
necessary pre-requisite for participation in the global information society. Nonetheless,
access to information, is, in essence, about consumption by passive audiences, and is not
in and of itself sufficient to ensure the right to participate in communicative processes. As
Gumucio Dagron (2006) reminds us, the right to information refers to access, while the
right to communication refers to participation in communication processes and content
creation.
In recent years, there has been some growing recognition of this in the public
agenda. For example, the World Congress on Communication for Development in Rome
in October, 2006, put the issue of community participation and ownership front-and-

59

center by calling for access to tools that allow communities to communicate amongst
themselves and with decision makers (World Congress on Communication for
Development, 2007; Tacchi & Kiran, 2008). Several of the UN bodies and donor
agencies, recognizing the link between participation, freedom of expression and good
governance, support community and participatory communication processes as part of a
rights-based approach to development (Greenberg, 2005; Marker, McNamara & Wallace,
2002; UNDP, 2011; UNICEF/UNAIDS, 2002). A number of international treaties and
conferences have also recognized the importance of community voices, including the
Rome Consensus, which understands communications to be a “major pillar” of
development. Nonetheless, as with the issue of participation, rhetoric does not necessarily
translate into action. As Gumucio Dagron (2006) points out, despite dialogue at the
policy level, many discussions find themselves sliding back into old assumptions about
sender and receiver and, at the program level, vertical models of top-down information
delivery still dominate. For example, while WSIS Tunis in 2003 attempted to propose a
people-centered, inclusive, development-oriented information society, the functional
focus of the conference was on access to technologies and information, leaving aside
issues of enabling two-way flows and knowledge creation from new centers of power.
There is a need for greater emphasis at the level of implementation, not just at
high-level roundtable policy discussions, on the two-way aspects of communication
rights as well as aspects that encourage people to be producers of, and participants in, the
creation of content that is relevant to local concerns. In the ICT4D field in particular,
there have been comparatively few interventions that have utilized technology to help

60

program beneficiaries to speak for themselves. This oversight is unfortunate because it is
increasingly clear that the poor are acutely aware of what Oxfam has termed “voice
poverty,” or the inability of people to influence the decisions that affect their lives
(Tacchi, 2006). For example, the groundbreaking World Bank Voices of the Poor study
(Narayan, 2000; Narayan & Petesch, 2002) made this clear. Although this study has met
criticism that its methodology was not sufficiently participatory, it nonetheless clearly
indicated that not only do the poor lack voice, information, and access to the means of
articulating their views in development decision making, but that they are also highly
aware of these limitations. Moreover, they have an acute understanding of how much this
disempowers them with regard to shaping the policies of agencies, NGOs, government,
employers, and other institutions that affect their lives (Narayan, 2000; Narayan &
Petesch, 2002). For these reasons, voice is a central theme I use in this study to unpack
the question of who has power to speak in development. In the next section, I outline the
theory of voice as one aspect of communication rights, before turning to the role of ICTs
and discussing their potential role as part of communicative environments that can enable
voice.

Conceptualizing Voice
Voice, as a concept, is useful in helping shift our attention from the focus on
information access towards a focus on those other aspects of communication rights which
are more dialogic, including speaking, producing, and being heard. As Tacchi, Watkins &
Keerthirathne (2009) write, the term ‘voice’ “prevents an easy slide into a discourse that

61

equates information with communication” (p. 575). Defining voice, however, is another
matter entirely. Most people have an intuitive understanding of the meaning and
importance of voice, given that it is such a basic human experience and a fundamental
democratic principle. It is therefore often taken as a given in development literature, and
is rarely defined or theorized. Nonetheless, it is usually understood in development to
refer to the ability to express one’s views and having these recognized by others,
especially in the context of decision making processes (Lister, 2004; Price-Davies &
Tacchi, 2009; Tacchi & Kiran, 2008; Tacchi et al, 2009). For example, Jo Tacchi, one of
the most prolific academic writers on the issue of voice and development, and her
colleagues define voice as “inclusion and participation in social, political and economic
processes of meaning making, autonomy and expression” (Tacchi et al, 2009. See also
Buckley, Duer, Mendel, Ó Siochrú, Price & Raboy, 2008; Deane, 2004; Lister, 2004).
Although access to information is still considered essential, voice is also about being able
to consult, respond and engage with decision makers. Hence, this kind of engagement of
the voices of the poor would entail finding ways to assist them in using their power of
expression to participate in and influence social and political processes that affect their
lives (Lister, 2004).
However, for there to be more consistency in including the voices of the poor in
development and greater responsiveness to their needs, the concept of voice must be
further elaborated to embrace the linked concepts of speaking, listening and being heard,
as well as their relationship to the construction of individual and collective values.
Although situated largely outside of development discourse, sociologist Nick Couldry’s

62

(2009, 2010) writings on voice are particularly helpful in expanding the depth and scope
of the concept of voice as it relates to development. Couldry (2010) links voice to the
narrative practices that are fundamental to the human experience, defining it as “the
capacity to make, and be recognized as making, narratives about one’s life” (p. 7). Yet he
also recognizes that these narratives take on their real meaning only when there are
listeners (Couldry, 2009). Both Couldry (2009, 2010) and others have argued, for
example, that listening and being heard are as critical to the concept of “voice” as the
concept of “speaking” is (see also Bickford, 1996; Crawford, 2003; Dreher, 2009;
O’Donnell, 2009) because, as he writes, “a mere claim by particular individuals or groups
to ‘voice’, without any practice of listening, is contradictory, or, at best, incomplete”
(Couldry, 2009, p. 580).
10

Relying on an analysis of Amartya Sen’s (1999) work on freedoms and
capabilities, Couldry (2010) makes the critical link between voice and development. Sen
argues that freedom is essential to development, both because certain freedoms (e.g.,
political freedom or freedom of economic exchange) are understood to be part of the
development agenda, but also because such freedoms enable people to articulate their
needs and identify their own priorities for change. Sen emphasizes the need for
‘substantive’ freedoms that ensure “the capability to choose a life one has reason to
value” (Sen, 1999, p. 67), and to express these needs and values to decision makers.

10
Here it is important to note that practical considerations regarding the scope of this dissertation has
necessitated an emphasis on the possibilities of ICT to support the ‘voicing and speaking’ aspects of voice.
However it is critical not to lose sight of the ways in which these practices are connected to ‘listening and
being heard’ and I have made every effort to identify these connections wherever possible in subsequent
chapters. However, future studies that focus specifically on the ‘listening’ practices of development
institutions , the ways in which they hear and respond to voices from their stakeholders, and how new
technologies might affect this, would be a great contribution to the field.

63

Couldry (2010) argues that identifying what one values, however is a self-reflective
process of narrating one’s identity, concerns and priorities. “The narrative act of giving
reasons about our life (our actual life, our possible lives) is therefore a critical part of
what gives substance to Sen’s understanding of freedom,” and thus, “the value of voice
underlies Sen’s approach to development” (p. 105).
Although Couldry’s work is important in linking a more robust definition of
‘voice’ to development and expanding the notion to include listening, his application of
those ideas to Sen’s (1999) work on freedoms and capabilities exposes a weakness: an
excessive focus on the individual, and the individual’s processes of narrating their
identities and what they have ‘reason to value’. Development, however, is a societal-level
process that has significant collective-level elements. If development practice is to
answer the calls of participatory development theorists to become more responsive to
community-level needs, it must be more cognizant of the processes through which
communities narrate themselves, defining their identities and articulating what they, as a
community, have reason to value.
11

Indeed, the trend towards participatory development has led to growing
acceptance that empowering people and communities to voice their own agendas and
priorities for change (i.e., what they have reason to value) is critical to the development
process (Chambers, 1995; de Haan, 1999; Gardner & Lewis, 1996; Parks, 2005). As
Parks (2005) writes, development and social change “can be defined as: a positive change

11
Here I would like to note that the process of narrating community identity can take place on many
levels, ranging from the hyper-local community processes captured by CIT and described by the work of
the Metamorphosis Project or the national-level processes of ‘imagining community’ as described by
Benedict Anderson (2006).

64

in people’s lives—as they themselves define such change” (p.3). At the community level,
the act of “defining such change” is dependent on both individual and collective abilities
to narrate identities, values, priorities and visions of the future—in other words, voice.
12

This narration can take place through a variety of forms, be it gossip in the
neighborhood square; news coverage by or about the community; folk traditions, art and
pop culture; or public deliberation processes (in the next section, I will expand on this
narration process through the concept of ‘storytelling’). But whatever form the narrative
activity takes, it is this process of defining what a community has reason to value that
contributes to the identification and recognition of certain things as development
“problems” and certain solutions as valid. Hence, if certain people are excluded from
these dialogues, their view of the problems and their solutions may likewise be rendered
invisible. The task, then, is to ensure that the communities most affected by development
have the resources necessary for this discursive activity to take place in ways that are
inclusive of the diversity of its members, and for their views to be heard in subsequent
planning.

12
It should be noted that I am in no way suggesting that a community is a homogenized entity with one
set of agreed upon values. Indeed, community-based development work proves time and again that the
‘community’ is made up of diverse interests and needs that are often in competition with each other. Power
hierarchies in the community, likewise, can lead to situations in which the ‘community’ view is actually
that of the most powerful or influential in the community, rather than a collective consensus. Instead, I am
arguing that certain cultural norms, inclusive of notions about what constitutes desirable development or
change, are constructed through, and constantly evolving through, ongoing processes of cultural
contestation between diverse views in any community. This point builds on a view of communication as a
symbolic meaning-making process through which collective cultural values, ideas and identities are
continuously constructed, challenged, and re-constructed and through which the contours and boundaries of
communities are defined (Anderson, 2006; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a; Carey, 1989; Friedland, 2001;
Williams, 1958). Such a view holds that culture, and the prevailing ideas of what is valued, are not static,
but constantly negotiated through the discursive communication practices and power struggles between
hegemonic and counter-hegemonic views (Gramsci, 1971).

65

Communication Infrastructure Theory and Storytelling Identity
The collective discursive activity described above is captured well by
Communication Infrastructure Theory’s (CIT) construct of “storytelling” as a community
process. CIT is premised on the recognition that communities are in fact discursive
creations, constructed through the meaning-making processes of storytelling
13
about the
community (Ball-Rokeach et al, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a, 2006b).
“Community,” according to CIT, “is built on shared discourses about who the community
members are—their identities, desires, and shared lived experiences” (Kim & Ball-
Rokeach, 2006a, p. 177. See also Anderson, 2006; Friedland, 2001).
Communication Infrastructure Theory postulates that these stories through which
the community is discursively constructed and understood are created and circulated in a
storytelling network, consisting of a multi-level network of actors who create and
distribute stories about the community. The storytelling network includes community
members (micro level actors), community-based organizations and geo-ethnic media
(meso level actors), and national or international media and organizations (macro level
actors). When this “trinity” of storytellers is highly integrated with each other, people are
better informed about what is happening in their communities and better able to engage in

13
Storytelling of this sort goes beyond folk tales or other such traditional narrative structures to include
a variety of communicative activities. Storytelling can in fact “take any communicative mode while being
limited only by its referent. That is, it can be oral or written, electronic or non-electronic, synchronous or
asynchronous, positive or negative, or prearranged or emergent narrative,” as long as the story’s referent is
the community (Ball-Rokeach et al, 2001). Storytelling can thus include news, public dialogues, debates, or
even neighborhood gossip in addition to more traditional narrative stories. It can take place via sources as
diverse as the mass media, local media, interpersonal conversations, or in the form of creative expressions
such as public art or performance.

66

the storytelling process (Ball-Rokeach et al, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a). The
Metamorphosis project has shown many of the ways in which storytelling is central to the
process of civic engagement and it is a crucial mechanism through which communities
engage in debating and defining their values and mobilizing for social change. In fact, the
more engaged and connected an individual is to storytelling agents, the more likely he or
she is to evidence high levels of civic engagement (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a).
14

To illustrate the connection back to the concept of voice, the more connected one
is to the storytelling network and the storytelling agents within it (especially when this
network is a strong and integrated one), the more likely that one will have the capacity to
express oneself, be heard, as well as to listen and respond to others. Voice, then, in CIT
terms, is about the right to tell stories and have them heard in the storytelling network.
While many CIT studies do not clearly distinguish whether these connections between
actors are mobilized for consumption (i.e., receiving, or listening to stories about the
community) or for production (i.e., speaking, or telling the stories), the theory does
nonetheless give importance to the kinds of interactions and spaces where both voicing
and listening can take place. It also captures the importance of storytelling (the ‘voicing
and speaking’ aspect of voice) in its own right, while being alert to the conditions that

14
CIT scholars have also become increasingly engaged in action research projects guided by CIT
theory that purposefully create opportunities for storytelling interactions between different actors in the
storytelling network to promote civic engagement. For example, the Alhambra Source project used CIT to
guide the creation of a citizen journalism portal where local journalists, community members, local
businesses and organizations can share information, news and stories about Alhambra, an ethnically diverse
suburb of Los Angeles with low levels of civic engagement, with the aim of increasing a sense of
community belonging, collective efficacy and civic engagement (Chen, Ball-Rokeach, Parks & Huang,
2011; Chen, Dong, & Ball-Rokeach, Parks & Huang, in press).

67

affect circulation of that story (the ‘listening and being heard’ aspects of voice) among
actors in the network.

Enabling Strong Storytelling Networks: Role of the Communication Action Context
But if, as I have argued above, voice is understood as participation in the
storytelling network, what are the conditions under which voice can be expressed and
heard? CIT holds that participation in the storytelling network is best enabled by an open
Communication Action Context (CAC). Storytelling networks are, as CIT postulates,
embedded in a CAC that consists of those features of an environment—be they physical,
socioeconomic, technical or cultural—that facilitate or constrain open communication
among actors in the storytelling network. The CAC can thus strengthen or weaken the
vitality and durability of the network of storytellers (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006b). On
the individual level, the CAC impacts the degree of ease with which an individual can
participate in the storytelling network and, thus, their potential to express their right to
voice.
For example, in the context of urban environments such as Los Angeles (the
major site of study for much CIT research), contextual environmental factors such as
street safety and the availability and/or quality of parks and public spaces likely affect
residents’ abilities to congregate and take part in public gatherings or informal social
interactions where storytelling might take place. Similarly, features such as the quality of
schools, vitality of the local media, availability of social services and the policy
environment affect the strength and quality of connections between actors in the network

68

and, consequently, the degree of communicative openness in that environment (Ball-
Rokeach, et al, 2001).
In developing country contexts, the strength of the storytelling network and the
capacity for open communication (through which voice is most easily expressed) will
similarly be shaped by the CAC, but the specific features of the CAC that will have the
most impact will differ greatly than those identified in the Metamorphosis Project’s Los
Angeles-based studies. The lack of a steady supply of electricity, for instance, may limit
the utility of computers, televisions, or other devices in developing countries. Wells or
water sources may be more prominent features of the CAC because they double as
critical sites for socializing and sharing information. Similarly, weekly markets can serve
as important sites for people from neighboring villages to exchange information.
However, other factors including social exclusion and marginalization often
constitute factors that constrict communication opportunities, and can lead to more
“closed” features of a CAC. For example, the village wells, while serving as an important
site for information exchange as mentioned above, are often placed in areas of the village
dominated by high-caste residents, excluding lower-caste members of the community
from accessing them or taking part in the information exchanges that may happen there.
Similarly, weekly markets can connect distant members of the community in a given
district only if there are serviceable roads and affordable transit that allow people to
access the markets. Social exclusion in the school systems can also lead to higher levels
of illiteracy among marginalized groups, decreasing their access to print media, for
example. Such features constitute ‘closed’ characteristics of a CAC, and clearly, limit

69

people’s possibilities for participation in the storytelling network, and their opportunities
for voice.
Returning to gender as one of the central themes of this study, it is important to
recognize that gender inequality is one of the most significant social exclusions that
contribute to ‘closed’ CAC characteristics. Gender norms that limit women’s access to
public space or discourage socializing between the sexes, for example, limit the ability of
men and women to engage in dialogue together. Women in such societies often enjoy a
number of women-only spaces for information sharing and socializing and the
importance of these should not be ignored. Nonetheless, men’s greater access to and
control over communication technologies can leave women living in a much more limited
communication environment than their male counterparts.
For example, Huyer & Sikoska (2003) describe the ways in which gender norms
lead to lower levels of literacy and less access to financial resources for women, which in
turn affect their ability to make use of or purchase communication technologies. In
addition, the burden of triple roles, including the management of domestic, economic,
and community responsibilities, mean that women typically have longer work days than
male counterparts, and thus less “down time” with which to engage with communication
technologies. Finally, Huyer & Sikoska conclude, gender norms also affect migration
patterns, such that women are more likely than men to live in rural areas where electricity
and connectivity for the use of communication technologies are likely to be less reliable.
Men, on the other hand, tend to have greater access to public space, technology, and

70

employment outside the home, and these opportunities greatly increase the
communication resources to which they can potentially connect.
Skuse et al (2007) discuss the communication ecologies of men and women in
Jhuwanl, Nepal demonstrating the ways in which communication infrastructure can
interact with gender norms to create vastly different communication ecologies for men
and women.
15
Using Ethnographic Action Research mapping methodologies (Hearn et al,
2009; Tacchi et al, 2007; Tacchi, Slater & Hearn, 2008), these researchers created visual
representations of the communication ecologies of men and women in the Jhuwani
community of Nepal. Analysis of these maps demonstrated significant differences
between the communication ecologies of men and women such that the communication
ecologies of men were much richer, providing much greater choice of communication
channels, especially new media. The Skuse et al data showed that men were able to spend
more of the family income on new media tools of their choice, while women typically did
not have access to family income to make such purchases. Furthermore, communication
ecologies were affected by occupation. Men tended to have outdoor responsibilities that
offered the opportunity to be involved in public activities and collect and share
information from sources such as newspapers. Men also had more leisure time to watch
television, listen to radio or attend public meetings and gatherings. Women on the other

15
The notion of communication ecology that Skuse et al use in their study is quite similar to that used
by Communication Infrastructure Theory. For instance, they describe communication ecologies as inclusive
of “not just press, broadcasting or telecommunications but also infrastructure such as roads, buses and
trains that facilitate communication, as well as social communication practices such as visits to neighbours,
gossip in public and private places where people meet to socialize” (Skuse et al, 2007), thus describing
elements of both the storytelling network and the communication action context. Hence while they do not
use the terms ‘storytelling network’ or ‘communication action context’, their methodology is particularly
applicable for demonstrating the dynamic interactions between individuals and both storytelling networks
and the communication action context in which they are embedded.

71

hand tended to work inside the house, had very little leisure time for media consumption,
and were often not invited to public meetings. Thus, gender norms and the public nature
of access points for communication collude to limit the available storytelling resources
for women in Jhuwani, which has serious implications not only for their access to
information, but also for their ability to express their voices. Communication ecology
mapping studies like these are extremely valuable in illuminating the role of inclusion
and exclusion in shaping the variations in individuals’ communication environments and
opportunities to speak and be heard.
The storytelling networks in which voice is articulated, in short, do not exist in
isolation from the larger communication context. Rather, the strength of the networks and
the degree to which they are open to participation are both shaped by, and in response to,
the CAC. Further, while not yet heavily theorized in CIT research, gender norms are a
critical component of the CAC, especially in countries like India where gender inequality
shapes daily reality.

Voice, ICTs and Digital Exclusion
In the first half of this chapter, I argued that promoting and protecting the right to
voice (including speaking, listening and being heard) requires an enabling environment in
which the CAC is both rich and open, and contains resources to support a storytelling
network that allows for both men and women to access, create and circulate stories about
“what one has reason to value” at both the individual and collective levels. It is this
ability that is critical to participatory development. In this section, I turn to information

72

communication technologies (ICTs) as potential assets that contribute to a rich CAC,
thereby facilitating the processes of voice that are fundamental to participatory
development. I will make the case that, while ICTs are important, their existence alone
does not guarantee increased participation or voice, and that we must be prepared to deal
with the host of exclusionary factors that dictate who can or cannot access these
technologies, how and if they can participate, how far their voices are likely to carry, and
how much weight their voices will have.

Breaking Out of the Modernization Mold: ICT4D and Content Production
In many ways, ICT4D has enshrined and supported the traditional modernization
paradigm of development over the years by seeking to provide the technological channels
through which expert information could flow to the ‘underdeveloped’. Emphasizing
information delivery in their work, policy makers and practitioners did not look to ICT to
broaden the range of voices involved in public dialogue (Feek, 2003; Mansell, 2002;
Tacchi, 2006). Instead, they focused on provision and development of technological
infrastructure over serving the culturally specific information and communication needs
of communities or encouraging the use of ICTs for deliberative social functions.
Exemplifying this were the multilateral agencies’ big investments in the creation of tele-
centers to increase the digital readiness of developing countries in the 1990s and early
2000s (Fuchs, 1998; Menou, Delgadillo, & Stoll, 2004; Whyte, 2000; World Bank,
2005). Although beneficiaries received access to computers, Internet, and other
telecommunication services, these services were often underused (Colle, Roman & Yang,

73

2000; James, 2004; Roman & Colle, 2002; United Nations Development Program
[UNDP], 2001). Rural, poor, and marginalized communities, in particular, were
disappointed to find that the content available on the World Wide Web was not in a
language they understood or relevant to their needs regarding localized agricultural
information, educational and health services in their area, or employment opportunities.
Ultimately, “plugging a peasant farmer or slum-dweller into Google offered limited
value,” summarized Heeks (2008, p. 28; also see Hamelink, 2004). A number of efforts
to address this problem have been suggested and/or implemented, including the
involvement of local universities in content creation and the use of grassroots
participatory needs assessments in identifying content needs (Roman & Colle, 2002), but
remedying this problem calls for a more radical approach that puts the power of content
creation in the hands of the community itself. Community media practitioners and
participatory communications scholars have long recognized the clear potential of the use
of locally-produced content to both increase access to culturally relevant information as
well as enable greater voice. Nonetheless, there is still relatively little attention paid in the
ICT4D field to strengthening the role of ICTs in the communication of ideas, the creation
of content, or its ability to support deliberative social functions and storytelling (Feek,
2003; Hamelink, 2004). Recently, however, a small but growing number of scholars have
pointed to a need to shift the ways in which technology is understood and deployed in
development communications (Heeks, 2008; Tacchi et al, 2009). What is necessary is a
shift from viewing ICTs as merely an infrastructure for information delivery to
recognizing them as tools for creating and distributing local content (Feek, 2003; Tacchi,

74

2006; Slater & Tacchi, 2004). This nascent shift is partially driven by the rise of Web 2.0
and participatory culture in the West, particularly its principles of peer-to-peer networks
and user-generated content, which is pushing ICT4D into new directions. In fact, Heeks
(2008) argues that ICT4D is currently transitioning from ‘ICT4D 1.0’ to ‘ICT4D 2.0’,
and that this calls for an imperative for greater emphasis on interactivity, networking and
local content creation over mere information access.
This shift cannot come too soon. ICT4D 1.0 was characterized by the proliferation
of (mostly failed) pilot projects designed by external experts on behalf of the poor, and
emphasized delivery of services or information deemed important by development
planners. Under this approach, ICT was deployed, with varying success, as a tool for
development, something that helped individuals and communities access the resources
and information to improve their education levels or economic status. ICT4D 2.0, on the
other hand, Heeks claims, emphasizes ICTs as a platform that supports development
through responsiveness to the needs of the poor, bottom-up design and support for
creation of locally-relevant content. Where ICT4D 1.0—“fortified by the ‘bottom of the
pyramid’ concept—characterized the poor largely as passive consumers, ICT4D 2.0 sees
them as active producers and innovators” (Heeks, 2008, p. 33).
This new attention to online interactivity and participation is creating space for
conversations about the concepts of participation and voice and their various meanings
within the context of development, but the change is likely to be slow. While Heeks
rightfully acknowledged that we are more likely to experience the transition from ICT4D
1.0 to 2.0 as an evolutionary process rather than a clean-cut break between one and the

75

other, he still implies that the eventual ending point is a 2.0 approach. Yet the history of
communication for development discourse has shown us that opposing paradigms can
live side by side indefinitely. One only need look at the modernist paradigm—despite the
many critiques and the rise of numerous alternative approaches, it is still with us and
showing no signs of demise.
Similarly, any honest look at the field indicates that the ICT4D 1.0 approaches are
still greatly dominant over 2.0 approaches and there is no guarantee that the power of
production promised by 2.0 technologies will flow equitably to all members of society.
Even if a 2.0 approach to ICT project design were to sweep the sector, it will not be
unproblematic as issues of exclusion and structural inequality (which I will discuss in the
following section) will not be solved by the introduction of 2.0 technologies alone.
Indeed, they may even be replicated on these new platforms. Nonetheless, Heeks’s
distinction between ICT4D 1.0 and 2.0 approaches is useful as an aspirational distinction,
one that gives planners an idea of what kinds of technology innovations are more likely
to support participation and voice. It is incomplete, however, without a solid
understanding of the structural and social factors that influence inclusion and exclusion
and an honest critique of what kind of productive practices actually lead to meaningful
expressions of voice. It is this to which I turn in the next section.

From Digital Divides to Digital Inclusion
In the development sector, concerns about the digital divide—or the “differential
access to and use of the Internet according to gender, income, race and location” (Rice,

76

2002, p. 106; see also Gandy, 2002; Norris, 2001)—have received very visible
consideration, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1999, for example, the World
Bank raised the issue in their Development Report, arguing there was a need to address
information problems that hurt the poor so as to increase their access to markets, and the
formation of the UN ICT Task Force in 2001 helped highlight the multitude of efforts to
bridge the global digital divide (Carpentier, 2003). The digital divide was also defined as
a central theme for the 2002 World Summit on Information Society. Since then,
numerous studies on the divide have illustrated the depth of the problem, describing the
economic advantage that Internet connectivity bestows on individuals, communities, and
nations, while also making clear the extent to which benefits are disproportionately
unavailable to low-income developing countries and minorities in both developed and
developing nations (Chinn & Fairlie, 2006; Fuchs & Horak, 2008; Parayil, 2005; Shukla
& Rogers, 2001). Women are often the hardest hit by these exclusions, as many gender
and ICT scholars have demonstrated (Gurumurthy, 2004; Gurumurthy, Singh & Kovacs,
2008; Hafkin, 2002). For example, women are the minority of Internet users in many
developed and developing nations (Gurumurthy et al, 2008). Education, economic
inequality, and cultural attitudes towards women and technology collude to maintain the
gender divide (Elnaggar, 2007; Huyer & Sikoska, 2003; Kuga Thas, 2008). Recognizing
this, the United Nations Commission for Science and Technology for Development
argued that the information revolution was leaving women behind, and pushed for the
recognition of a ‘gender digital divide’ (Primo, 2003).

77

Certainly, inadequate access to technology is a factor that decreases the richness
of the CAC, and is likely to restrict it even further for women. Indeed, much of the ICT
literature of the mid-90s and early 2000s was concerned with equal access to the Internet
and other networked ICT tools that scholars felt would link marginalized individuals—
including rural populations, the poor, and women—with the information society. Many of
the numerous initiatives from this period have aimed to address these gaps in physical
access for women as well as other excluded groups (Leahy & Yermish, 2003; Nair-
Reichert, 2007; Schaefer Davis, 2007; Teltscher, 2002). More recently, the concern has
shifted from Internet access to mobile phone access (which, of course, increasingly also
means Internet access). The mWomen initiative, for example, launched by United States
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and former British first lady Cherie Blair, is working to
increase mobile phone ownership among women in developing countries. Their reports
and policy briefs
16
draw attention to the barriers to mobile access and ownership that
women face and advocate policy recommendations for closing the ‘mobile phone gender
gap’.
Until recently, the focus of research and policy has been physical access to the
Internet (i.e., computer access, broadband connectivity, etc.), and its impact on economic
opportunities for individuals, communities or nations. Bridging the gender digital divide
thus meant promoting access to ICTs—be it PCs, the Internet or mobiles—to facilitate
the successful integration of the excluded into the world economy (Al-Rababah & Abu-
Shanab, 2010; Huyer & Sikoska, 2003; Khan & Ghadially, 2010). In recent years,

16
See http://www.mwomen.org/Research/mwomen-policy-recommendation-to-address-the-mobile-
phone-gender-gap and http://www.mwomen.org/wiki/Women_-amp-_Mobile_Report.

78

however, it has become widely accepted that physical access to ICTs is not the same
thing as meaningful access and use. Meaningful universal access requires more than just
availability, but also ability to use the services effectively. Even full penetration of a
technology will not ensure usage or other aspects of meaningful access (Gandy, 2002;
Hadden, 1991; Warschauer, 2004) because, as Vandana Shiva (1998) noted, “new
technologies travel on old social relations.” In other words, any communication tool will
exist in a social context and will be shaped by existing social conditions (Krug, 2005;
Hearn et al, 2009; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Winner, 1993). Therefore, the social
context in which the technology is introduced, structural factors in the CAC that affect
use and access, and (often gendered) social practices will all continue to limit use and
social relevance, even if the hardware and software are available.
Despite the growing recognition that access alone is not sufficient, the ICT4D
field has been fairly criticized for continuing to place too much emphasis on providing
hardware and software and for lacking sensitivity to the human and social dimensions
that will both change and be changed by a new technologies (Warschauer, 2004).
Acknowledging this, a few ICT4D scholars have pointed to the importance of
understanding access as a multifaceted concept which is not only about physical access,
but also contextual factors such as language, content, social interactions, literacy,
community structure, the broader communication ecology and the features of the political
economy which influence technology and its potential uses (Jung et al, 2007;
Livingstone, 2004; Tacchi et al, 2009; Warchauer, 2004).

79

Meaningful use of these tools also requires a set of technical and cultural
competencies that help one leverage these tools to their full benefit (Jenkins, 2009; Jung
et al, 2007; Livingstone, 2004). These skills may be particularly difficult for the poor or
marginalized, or others living in under-resourced areas, to obtain. Sitting at a computer
and being able to download information is not enough; to effectively use the Internet to
find employment, for example, one must master a number of technical skills such as how
to set up an email account and password, search engine navigation, the use of word
processing software to create resumes and the ability to attach the document to an email,
as well as a number of cultural competencies ranging from knowledge of the conventions
for drafting professional emails and letters and understanding of the strategic use of
digital self-presentation. Indeed, studies have demonstrated a relationship between these
Internet skills and social indicators such as income and education, indicating that those
who are able to develop high-level Internet skills tend to be the well off and better
educated (Bonfadelli, 2002; Jung et al, 2007). Clearly, a certain baseline skill set is
required to make use of the Internet for job opportunities or information seeking. This is
equally true when we consider the skills needed to not just consume content and
information, but also to create it and to take part in online public dialogues. The ‘skill
divide,’ then, may be more meaningful than the ‘digital divide’ (Jenkins, 2009; Jung et al,
2007; Livingstone, 2004, 2008). Moreover, while often described in the context of the
Internet, this phenomenon is equally applicable to other technologies, including radio and
mobile phones, as we will see in subsequent chapters.

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Specifically in the context of voice, a certain set of digital literacy skills are
necessary to use ICTs effectively for self-expression and to participate meaningfully in
the discourse that the Internet and ICTs give access to. Despite their potential for
interactivity, new media are not automatically interactive. To utilize them for civic
participation, for example, requires a level of digital literacy that includes the ability to
produce, as well as consume, content (Livingstone, 2004, 2008, 2010; Hearn et al, 2009).
Without empowering people to use technology to express their own views, “the provision
of an Internet connection to an underserved community potentially opens a door to a one-
way stream of information and messaging over which the receiver can have little control”
(Watkins & Tacchi, 2008, p. 20). If the audience lacks the skills necessary to engage in
two-way interaction with the content, then these potentially interactive devices become
yet another avenue for top-down message dissemination. Thus, for the Internet and other
new media to provide the full benefits of ICT4D 2.0, ICT programs that emphasize skill
development will be required.
A number of scholars concerned with ‘new media literacies’ or ‘digital literacies’
have begun the work of identifying and theorizing the contours of these cultural
competencies and social skills that are required for participation and self-expression in
the new media landscape (Jenkins, 2009; Livingstone, 2004, 2009, 2010). Livingstone
(2004), for example, argues that new media literacy consists of four components: access,
analysis, evaluation and content creation. Of these, she argued, the final two—evaluation
and content creation—are the most critical to advancing a democratic agenda. “Only if
these are firmly fore-grounded in a definition of media literacy will people be positioned

81

not merely as selective, receptive, and accepting but also as participating, critical; in
short, not merely as consumers but also as citizens” (Livingstone, 2004, p. 11).
Development theorists concerned with participatory media have similarly echoed the
importance of digital literacies in enabling the move from consumer to producer and
citizen. Watkins and Nair (2008), for example, describe digital literacies as including
socio-technical elements that are needed for interaction with content via ICTs. They
describe it as “an individual or organizational skill set, as well as a set of accessible
digital tools and techniques” (p. 76). For them, digital literacy is about gaining the skills
necessary to move from being a consumer to a producer and citizen.
In sum, it must be recognized that ICTs alone do not guarantee increased
participation and voice in digital public spheres, largely because a host of exclusionary
forces dictate who can or cannot access these technologies; how and if they can
participate; and how far their voices are likely to carry. The construction of enabling
environments—including the facilities for skill development and digital literacy
training—is essential to creating the necessary opportunities for voice to flourish.

Creative Engagement and New Media Literacy
How are the necessary literacies built? Traditionally, ICT4D has focused on
training for ICT skills associated with employability and job seeking (e.g., searching for
trade related information, emails, creating documents, etc). Voice, content production,
and creative expression have not typically been an emphasis in programming (Gumucio
Dagron, 2006; Heeks, 2008; Watkins & Tacchi, 2008). Increasingly, however, new media

82

scholars are emphasizing the importance of play, creative expression and recreational
uses as important gateways into digital or new media literacies. Jenkins (2009) for
example, argues that it is through play and other forms of participation in convergence
culture that people learn skills that they will later apply for civic engagement or political
action. Although scholars have raised doubts about whether fans of Lost or Survivor in
Western countries really will make the leap from blogging about their favorite shows to
debating the political or social issues of the day (Couldry, 2011; Verstraete, 2011), in the
developing country context, the notion of play and creative engagement does seem to be
an important factor. For instance, Donner & Gitau’s (2009) ethnographic studies of low-
income women using their mobiles to access the Internet for the first time found that in
addition to the job seeking activities that were the initial purpose of the program, women
engaged in online social networking, downloaded favorite songs, and took part in other
forms of creativity and play on their mobiles. This engagement is thought to have led to
increased sense of efficacy with the ICTs and greater facility with basic Internet skills
such as downloading, browsing, uploading and setting up user names and passwords that
were later used for more so-called ‘productive’ activities.
Similarly, the ethnographic insights gained from the Finding a Voice
17
project, an
action research project that explores creative engagement with ICTs as a way to empower
marginalized communities in South Asia, showed that even if their original intention was
to gain job search skills, people gained more skills while using ICTs for creative
expression than when taking part in more conventional ICT job skills training. Creative

17
www.findingavoice.org

83

engagement, as opposed to office skills training, also helped lead to community dialogue
and debate that enabled their voices to be heard (Slater & Tacchi, 2004; Tacchi, 2006).
Hence, it does seem that ICT initiatives that demystify digital production and
consumption through participatory content creation prepare communities to engage in
civic opportunities and public discourse through new media. They are therefore important
to enabling participation in deliberative development processes.
Other scholars have similarly argued for the importance of creative engagement
as a potential development goal in and of itself. Watkins and Nair (2009), for example,
identified it as “...an important element in poverty reduction strategies, leading to the
construction of a digitally inclusive knowledge society” (p. 81). Creative engagement,
then, may in and of itself be an appropriate goal for ICT4D projects as a way to
strengthen broad based new media literacies, while encouraging and enabling voice.
Indeed, as we move beyond issues of access and consumption, we need to look for ways
to create communication resources and enabling environments that encourage production
of information, storytelling and debate as elements of active citizenship. It is this
expression of individual and collective voice and storytelling that enables individuals and
communities to narrate what they ‘have reason to value’ and their vision of how
development should progress.

Chapter One Conculsion
In the final chapters of this dissertation, I will look at the potential of mobile
phones as platforms for this kind of expression of voice through local content creation.

84

First, however, I will turn to two other technologies that have been deployed with
promises to provide voice and democratic participation—community radio and social
media—so as to examine some of the key factors that have influenced their ability to
support meaningful participation and voice, and what they have to teach us for current
mobile-phone based efforts. In particular, I will identify some of the dependency
relationships in the development field and other larger cultural contexts that influence the
possibilities and limitations of these platforms for voice and community storytelling. In
the next two chapters, I discuss the community radio movement, one of India’s most
vibrant expressions of advocacy for communication rights. Following that, I look at the
rise of social media in India and its implications for democratic participation and voice.
Finally, in the last two chapters, I will look at the ways in which the themes and debates
that characterize the community radio movement and the rise of social media in India are
currently converging to shape future directions for mobile phones as development tools.

85

CHAPTER TWO
COMMUNITY RADIO AS A MEDIA DEPENDENCY SYSTEM: THE CASE OF
COMMUNITY RADIO IN INDIA

In the previous chapter, I discussed the importance of voice as a fundamental right
and further proposed that voice allows discursive storytelling activities that are critical for
participatory development. The right to voice, I argued, requires proactive measures to
ensure that communities can participate in the storytelling processes that shape collective
identities, values and goals about development—in other words, that they have the
necessary communication tools, opportunities and capacities to not only access relevant
information, but also to create, respond to, and influence content. In the next two
chapters, I focus on one particularly promising approach to strengthening an enabling
communication environment: community media and, specifically, community radio.
Today, new media such as mobile phones and social media are creating new
opportunities for community media by lowering the barriers to entry for content creation,
and potentially offering new sites for community storytelling, thus strengthening the
CAC. In Chapter Five of this dissertation, I investigate some of these opportunities by
discussing current uses of mobiles and social media in India to increase voice and
participation of the poor and marginalized. In Chapter Six, I look at Breakthrough’s
Chatpati Chat community media and social networking platform and the forms of
participation and community storytelling that it enabled.
Such initiatives are extremely promising, and they contribute to the current
excitement about the potential for mobile phones and social media to usher in democratic

86

social transformation. However, a historical perspective shows us that while hopes of
democratic transformation are often pinned on new technologies, their form, use and
applications are greatly shaped by social, economic and political context that ultimately
determine who can and cannot access these technologies and to what end (Krug, 2005;
Hearn et al, 2009; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985; Marvin, 1988; Nye, 2004; Sturken &
Thomas, 2004; Winner, 1993). Similarly, while mobile phones and social media will
certainly offer new opportunities for development, their use and application will be
shaped by the characteristics of the development field, especially the discursive regimes
that govern it and the contests over communication power that take place within these
regimes. It is therefore helpful to ground the analysis of the participatory potentials of
social media and mobile phones that I will provide in later chapters in the lessons from
previous deployments of communication technology for community media, and an
understanding of how larger social forces shaped or constrained those possibilities.
In particular, in the following two chapters, I will examine the use of radio as a
community media in India.
18
The community radio movement in India is one of the most

18
In these chapters, I draw on formal and informal interviews I conducted with leaders in the
community radio movement and experts in the field of development communication, including individuals
who were either directly involved in community media advocacy more broadly or in the design and
implementation of technological systems to support community radio and community media processes. I
also make use of policy documents and reports, many of which are authored by either the Community
Radio Forum (the major lobbying and advocacy organization for community radio) and its affiliates, or by
funding agencies and researchers. In addition to interviews, I was also a participant observer in national
community radio policy discussions that took place at the National Consultation on Community Radio in
New Delhi, December, 2010. This two-day conference was a critical first step in the process that is now
underway at the Ministry of Information Broadcast of reviewing, revising and updating the community
radio guidelines. During these sessions, key leaders in the community radio movement— including
advocates, NGOs, academics, policy makers and technology designers – gathered to share their reflections,
observations and concerns about the state of the sector with the Ministry of Information Broadcast and
other concerned ministries. This forum was preceded and followed by smaller sideline discussions among
many of the key players in community radio at a number of smaller conferences that I attended as

87

vibrant participatory media movements in the sub-continent. Although community radio
was legalized in India as recently as 2006, the movement began to gain strength in the
1990s and has won a number of important victories in the past decade, including official
government recognition of community radio as a third sector of broadcasting, and the
institution of government guidelines that allow for licensure of community-run stations
which were previously illegal under Indian law. Nonetheless, the current legal
frameworks, funding mechanisms, and practices under which community radio stations in
India operate define certain parameters within which participation must take place. In this
chapter and the next, I will use Media System Dependency Theory (MSD) to demonstrate
some ways that these policies and practices have been shaped by dependency
relationships between various actors in the community radio sector and the resulting
contests over communication power, thus ultimately shaping the ways that community
radio is deployed, and the forms of participation it enables.
In this chapter, I demonstrate the ways in which community media can be
understood as a media dependency system and describe the actors and relationships in the
community radio sector in India. In the following chapter, I will discuss how these
relationships have influenced the form and shape of community radio policy in India,
with particular reference to how some specific policy features limit the forms of
participation possible.

participant observer throughout the year of my fieldwork. Since extensive field study of station practices
was not feasible for my study, I particularly rely on the few existing ethnographic case studies of such
efforts in India, as well as the accounts from the field that my interviewees were able to share.

88

However, before turning to community radio as an MSD system, I will provide
some of the broader context of why community media more broadly matters to voice and
participatory development.

Why Community Media Matters
As Pettit, Salazar & Gumucio-Dagron (2009) argued, community media
19

initiatives worldwide “are gaining recognition for their role in processes of social and
political change, and in challenging the structural causes of poverty and exclusion, by
giving voice to those affected by inequalities” (p. 443). Community media allows for
communities to drive the direction of content and address issues of local concern,
enabling discussion and expression of community priorities for development. Indeed, a
number of studies have supported what participatory communication theorists and
practitioners have long postulated: that community media amplifies local voices and
enables a re-examination of how marginalized people and social inequalities are framed
in mainstream discourse (Downing, 2001; Fraser & Restrepo-Estrada, 1998; Gumucio
Dagron, 2001; Kidd & Barker-Blummer, 2009; Rodriguez, 2001, 2006; Singhal, 2001).
By providing a space for storytelling among community actors, community media
can constitute a crucial communication resource that strengthens the storytelling
networks of local communities and increases the potential for community participation in

19
Although used to describe a variety of different approaches, community media (also “alternative
media” or “citizens’” media) here refers to communication initiatives such as a newspaper, radio, local
television, oral history archives, etc., that are controlled and operated by a community, whether
geographically or otherwise defined. Community media operates largely outside of— and sometimes in
direct opposition to—commercial media and typically aims to promote dialogue and civic engagement
among ordinary citizens (Rodriguez, 2001, 2006).

89

those storytelling processes that are, as I argued in the previous chapter, critical to
participatory development. By putting the power to speak in the hands of communities, it
inverts the traditional flow of information. To return to the discussion of the previous
chapter, community media thus creates the discursive space necessary for communities to
co-construct what they have ‘reason to value’ in development, and provides a platform to
express this. It can thus be a key part of a communication infrastructure that contributes
to strengthening an open CAC and creating an enabling environment for the articulation
of new strategies and visions for development, thus broadening the scope of who has
power to speak about development.
Given the recent emphasis in the development field on the right of citizens to have
a say in development agendas and the distribution of project resources, platforms that
enable community dialogue and participation are all the more relevant. Despite this, as
Pettit et al (2009) argued, mainstream development work largely overlooks the relevance
of community media as a medium of dialogue and self-expression. Community media is,
in fact, more often utilized because of its perceived role in increasing the efficacy of
message delivery and behavior change initiatives, and thus funding is usually derived
from some portion of project grants pertaining to specific development goals such as
health promotion or advocating new farm practices, for example (Pavarala, Stalin K &
Veniyoor, 2010). Indeed, studies have found that the use of community media or other
forms of participatory practices are more effective in delivering key development
messages and can enhance the impact of development programs for health, gender
equality, education, or agriculture (Singhal, 2001). In the case of Sangam Radio India, a

90

community radio station managed by a group of Dalit women, for example, the airing of
programs on traditional agricultural systems helped promote new behaviors to enhance
food security in a drought-prone area of India (Sen, n.d.). While such development
outcomes are important, the use of community radio to promote donor-driven messages
on specific development outcomes reflects mainstream development agencies’ continued
preoccupation with communication as a process of transmitting information from more
powerful knowledge experts to less powerful and less knowledgeable “targets”
(Communication for Social Change Consortium, 1999) to advance certain behavior
changes or raise awareness about issues of concern identified by outside experts (e.g.,
Farm Radio International, 2010; Metcalf, Harford & Myers, 2007). Few donors, however,
are willing to support community media as a development end in and of itself (Pettit et al,
2009), one that advances the creation of an enabling environment for participation.
This is a missed opportunity because, as argued earlier, creating an enabling
environment for communication builds the capacity for voice and information flow at the
community level, which is itself an issue of communication rights and contributes to the
participatory development goals which are now so celebrated.
20

Hence there is a dichotomy of views regarding the benefits of community radio,
and radio more generally in development. On the one hand, community radio can be
viewed as an instrument of development, to transmit more effective and sustainable

20
In fact, investing in strengthening local storytelling networks is also likely to improve program
outcomes for development agencies in the long run because a community that has strong communication
infrastructure is easier to reach with key messages and to mobilize communities for change. Cheong,
Wilkin & Ball Rokeach (2004), for example, have shown that in communities with a strong, integrated
network embedded in a conducive CAC, messages that reach one or a few actors are more likely to be
amplified throughout the network, thus increasing their reach and impact.

91

behavior change messages related to donor-driven development agendas. While it is no
doubt an important tool in this sense, such a view does not contribute to necessary
critiques of the fundamental question of who has a say in determining these priorities. On
the other hand, community radio can be seen as a support to communication rights more
broadly. Under this view, it is not about changing behaviors to achieve specific pre-set
development goals, but it is rather associated with the aim of increasing communities’
rights to expression and voice in shaping, challenging and re-defining the development
agenda.
The two views are of course not mutually exclusive. In fact, many community
radio programs both advance specific development goals while also empowering
communities to speak about the larger development agenda. Nonetheless, the divide is
significant and goes to the heart of discursive struggles over communication power and
who has the right to speak about development. Steve Buckley, President of the World
Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) summarized the divide best by
asking attendees at a Community Radio National Consultation Meeting in Delhi in 2010,
“Does the development agenda change community radio, or does community radio
change the development agenda?” (Buckly, personal communication, December 10,
2010). Echoing the views of the many other community radio practitioners present, he
argued that international development priorities and donor agendas should not change or
dictate the structure of community radio, but rather community radio should be used to
interrogate and redefine development priorities.

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Clearly, the stakes are high, because understanding community radio as an issue
of communication rights—rather than simply or primarily as an instrument of
development—requires agencies to relinquish control over the message, which they may
be reluctant to do when they have pre-existing commitments to deliver very specified
results. As Pettit et al (2009) reminded us, “for powerful development agencies, even if
participatory communication would ensure sustainability of their progamme investments,
it threatens to undermine their vertical ways of working in developing countries” (p.
447).
As I will show in the next chapter, the question of whether radio is a best used as
a development tool or as a support to communication rights has greatly shaped the
development of community radio in India specifically influencing the shape of the policy
for community radio, which in turn shaped the way that people are or are not able to
participate. In this chapter, however, I look first at those key contestations and how they
constitute struggles over communication power. But first it is necessary to situate
community radio within the larger community media efforts in India.

Community Media and Community Radio in India
Over the past decades, India has been host to a number of interesting initiatives in
community media and local content creation, including experiments in participatory
video (Gandhi, Veeraraghavan, Toyama & Ramprasad, 2007; White & Patel, 1994),
photo-voice (Ewald, 1996; Singhal, Harter, Chitnis & Devendra, 2007), digital
storytelling (Tacchi & Kiran, 2008) and community TV (Mody, 2000). Many such

93

programs have been driven by lone champions, often media-makers who devoted their
time for a short period to work with a community to teach media skills. Although most
programs typically stop when their champions left, a few efforts have successfully been
formalized by organizations and sustained for many years. Most notably, Video
Volunteers’
21
and the Self-Employed Women’s Association’s (SEWA) Women’s Video
Unit
22
have been successfully supporting local content production for years.
23
In addition,
there continues to be a wide variety of creative uses of traditional folk forms of
community media in India, ranging from street theater and puppetry to community-
produced wall newspapers (Harter, Sharma, Pant, Singhal & Sharma, 2007; McKee,
Aghi, Carnegle & Shahzadi, 2004; Singhal, 2004).
Community radio, however, is by far the most successful, organized, and vibrant
community media movement in India. Still, its history—and indeed the history of radio in
development more generally—is in many ways shaped by the question of whether it is
best deployed as a tool for development messaging, or a platform for participation and
communication rights.
In India as in many parts of the world, radio, in its early days, was first most
strongly appreciated for its ability to communicate a shared national identity and its

21
Video Volunteers is widely respected for its Community Video Units that train community members
to create short video documentaries which are then screened at community meetings to spark dialogue
about development issues of concern to the area. They also recently launched the promising new India
Unheard initiative that seeks to put locally created news content on mainstream cable news. For more, see
http://www.videovolunteers.org/

22
http://www.videosewa.org/ourwork.htm

23
SEWA founded Video Sewa in 1984, and Video Volunteers is approaching its tenth year of
operation.

94

perceived role in nation building (Anderson, 1996; Hilmes, 1997; Singhal & Rogers,
2001; Thussu, 2000). For example, Hilmes (1997) showed how radio in the US served to
create a system of shared meaning and transmitted cultural values while mediating
cultural tensions. The “shared simultaneity” that radio offered (Anderson, 1996) helped
to create a unified national character. However, as it unified, it also homogenized,
helping to define the boundaries of the national identity. Hilmes goes on to demonstrate
the ways in which radio programming was used to assimilate immigrants, minorities, or
others who were deemed to be outside of the mainstream American culture. For post-
colonial nations, this role of assimilating diverse populations into an emerging cohesive
national identity was particularly important, and radio was seen to have a significant role
in crafting a newly emerging nationhood. As in many countries, in India the perceived
nationalizing power of the medium led to centralized government control over the
medium by All India Radio (AIR), India’s slow moving and notoriously top-down state
broadcaster.
Although in its early days, AIR briefly experimented with participatory radio,
24

AIRs emphasis has been on transmitting ‘high brow’ Indian culture (read: Hindu culture)
in the form of news, current affairs, drama and Indian classical music (Mukhopadhyay,
2000; Pavarala & Malik, 2007; Thussu, 2000). Great pains were taken to ensure that this
content was broadcast to even the most remote tribal areas so as to assimilate these ethnic

24
In the 1950s and 60s, AIR experimented with the use of radio for participatory communication as part
of its agricultural extension efforts. This Radio Farm Forum project eventually reached over 7500 listening
groups of rural farmers throughout India via thirty radio stations. It was considered a great success in both
communicating agricultural knowledge and encouraging participation in decision-making (Page &
Crawley, 2001; Singhal & Rogers, 2001). Despite its success, however, this project was discontinued and
AIR has not undertaken anything of this nature again.

95

and cultural minorities into mainstream, Sanskritized Indian culture and imparting an
Indian national identity to those who were considered in need of integration and
modernization.
Indeed, closely tied to the mission of nation building was the goal of development
through modernization. Because of its ability to reach otherwise hard-to-reach
populations, its high penetration rate, the relatively low cost of access, and its
accessibility to illiterate audiences,
25
radio has been one of the mainstays of this
modernization development work and has been used globally to promote everything from
new agricultural practices (Singhal & Rogers, 1999; 2002) to adult literacy education
(Sabido, 2004).
Under this model, radio was understood as a mouthpiece to promote new
innovations or behaviors, a vehicle for a one-way flow of information from centralized
government powers and/or development experts that aimed to modernize rural
communities and assimilate them into an emerging national identity. Indeed, the
development work that AIR has done outside of its cultural transmission activities has
largely focused on information transmission (often through entertainment education) and
has been very top-down in format (Singhal & Rogers, 2001).
The legacy of this top-down information dissemination model is still evident in
many community radio programs today. As noted before, thanks to funding which is
largely issue-based, many programs still view participation as a way to enhance
predetermined program outcomes. While addressing specific goals such as health

25
For more on the value of radio for development, see Coyer, 2007; Gumucio Dagron, 2007; Huesca,
1995; Maslog, 1997; Singhal & Rogers, 2001.

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promotion or education is of course critical, community radio practices that privilege
them over community-driven goals or concerns merely bolsters existing development
agendas, but does not raise the critical questions about who has the power to set these
agendas.
When community radio is seen mainly as a channel for development messaging,
its true potential as a platform for subverting the status quo of who can speak about
development is overlooked. On the other hand, participatory development practitioners
and communication for social change scholars have highlighted the importance of radio
as a way to rectify power imbalances and to support the capacity of ‘voice’ that is so
critical to participatory development (Gumucio Dagron, 2001). Such a view of
community radio moves away from arguments about the importance of community radio
for promoting development effectiveness. Instead, this view argues the importance of
community radio as a third sector alternative to commercial and state-run media (Atton,
2002; Carpentier, Lie & Servaes, 2007) that strengthens civil society, supports greater
grassroots influence in the development process, and offers counter-discourses that
challenge mainstream assumptions (Horchheimer, 1999; Kidd & Barker-Plummer, 2009;
Kivikuru, 2006; O’Connor, 2006; White, 1999). These arguments largely emphasize
community radio’s role in the expansion of the public sphere and in engaging
marginalized voices that are typically denied access to mainstream media or development
policy-making.
The question of whether radio should advance the development agenda or be used
to change it is not merely an academic one. Findings from my interviews with

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community radio practitioners in India suggests that the clash of these two ideological
poles has greatly shaped the movement’s tactics, the stances of government and donor
agencies, and the resulting policies and practices. What little literature there is on the
sector in India supports this assertion (Ali & Bailur, 2007; Bailur, 2007; Gilberds, 2009;
Pavarala & Malik, 2007). Specifically, current community radio policy guidelines,
licensing practices, and funding mechanisms that constrain on-the-ground practices of
community radio stations have been heavily influenced by negotiation about critical
questions of power and ownership in communication. The policies, in turn, have been
instrumental in determining the nature of the content that stations can produce and,
hence, the ways in which community members can and do participate. I propose that it is
useful to use Media System Dependency Theory to understand these negotiations and
contestations between players in the community radio sector, but before turning to the
specific relationships and actors of the system, a bit of history is needed for context.

A Brief Overview of the History of Community Radio in India
In 2006, the government of India approved and released community radio
guidelines, which, for the first time, permitted established NGOs and community-based
groups with a history of development work to receive licenses to run community radio
stations. This success marked a culmination of nearly ten years of advocacy work by
community radio advocates. Although the movement had begun earlier in the 1990s, the
Supreme Court of India did not establish the radio airwaves as public property and a
public good until 1995 (although there were still no provisions for community radio

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under this ruling). Then, between 1999 and 2005, the Indian government’s Ministry of
Information and Broadcasting (MIB) phased in private FM radio licensing, making
access to the airwaves much simpler for commercial entities. The explosion of private
FM stations that followed led to a revival of sorts in the radio sector, partially breaking
the monopoly held by AIR. FM stations were still heavily restricted, however, and AIR is
still the only entity allowed to broadcast news on the radio. Furthermore, the failure to
include provisions for the creation of a third sector of independent, non-profit radio
stations meant that FM proliferated as a commercial offering while independent,
community-oriented radio remained non-existent. Steps forward had been made, but they
had fallen short of enabling true public ownership and usage.
While AIR does have a network of local radio stations tasked with serving local
communities, the content of these programs tends to lack relevance because of
insufficient community participation in content themes and production (Mukhopadhyay,
2000). Many community radio advocates believe that AIR’s top-down bureaucratic
structure—still largely governed by its old conventions and practices meant to serve a
nation-building agenda—cannot serve local needs adequately (Pavarala & Malik, 2007).
Furthermore, say some, AIR’s legacy of broadcasting in India has affected the ways in
which community radio is understood. Sajan Veniyoor, for example, a staff member with
AIR for many years before joining the leadership of the Community Radio Forum (an
umbrella advocacy organization that represents, advises and trains community radio
stations and lobbies the government for improved community radio policy), feels that
AIR’s ideas of nation-building and development-as-modernization has meant that it

99

largely views radio’s role as “to educate and inform,” and this position has constrained
community radio policy. “There [is] no such sense of media for expression or free
speech,” he stated. Instead, media is understood “as a tool for development” that
transmits information, but does not allow for participation in the development process (S.
Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23, 2010).
The need for a vehicle for stronger participation and debate of local voices in
development agenda-setting motivated the Indian NGO sector and community media
activists to push for legalization of community radio. Many felt that since television and
AIR’s radio stations had failed in this capacity—and the commercial interests of the
emerging FM stations hindered their ability to fulfill this role—there was thus a strong
need for a community broadcasting sector.
Because the activists hoped eventually to gain the support of the government to
legalize community radio, they were reluctant to break the law by illegally broadcasting
on the radio. Thus these early experiments were greatly inhibited by the need to work
within policy frameworks and to pursue small-scale alternatives or legal work-arounds.
Some activists, for example, began experimenting with community broadcast through
different forms of ‘narrowcasting’ that did not require access to radio frequencies, such as
the distribution of recorded audio tapes, the use of village-wide loudspeaker systems, or
transmitting audio content by tapping into local cable television wires.
26
When reflecting

26
For example, two Bangalore based NGOs VOICES and MYARDA, started an audio production
center called Namma Dhwani (Our Voices) in 2001 in Budhikote village in the Kolar district of Karnataka.
Our Voices cable-casted audio programs made by rural men and women through television cable links
(Bailur, 2007; Community Radio Forum, 2010; Paravala & Malik, 2007). They are now seeking a license
to take their programming on the radio airwaves. Similarly, in 1998, with assistance from UNESCO, the
Deccan Development Society set up a community radio station for rural Dalit women in the Medak district

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on this period in community radio movement history, Stalin K.,
27
a long-standing
member of the CRF leadership and a pioneer of community media in India, lamented that
community media practitioners had elected to work within the legal structures by using
narrowcasting techniques rather than pushing the boundaries by forging ahead with
broadcast on the airwaves:

Even in our alternative world [of community media activists], we were not
doing radical things like pirate radio—the radical thing that we were doing
was that the community was producing content. From a point of view of
production, this was radical, it was subverting who produces content. But
from the point of view of the community radio movement, it was the
opposite of radical; it is actually going in the status quo by following the
legal restriction of the time against radio broadcast (Stalin K., personal
communication, December 28, 2010).

Motivated by these early narrowcasting experiments and the belief in the need for
a community broadcasting sector, the Bangalore group VOICES convened NGOs,
broadcasters, policy makers, and media professionals to discuss how community radio
could be operationalized in India. The resulting 1996 Bangalore Declaration calling for
the establishment of community broadcasting and granting of licenses to NGOs was, in
many ways, a watershed moment, marking the birth of the community radio movement in
India, yet there was still no legal mechanism for community-run stations put in place.
28

of Andhra Pradesh. Programs produced by members of the community were narrowcast using tapes played
in the women’s sangams (women’s collective). After the release of the guidelines, Sangam Radio was able
to hit the radio airwaves in October 2008.

27
Stalin K. chooses to use only his first name and last initial as his professional identification.

28
The 1996 Bangalore Declaration was followed, in 2000, by the Pastapur Initiative, which urged the
government to create a three-tier broadcast structure that included non-profit community radio in addition

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When the government later permitted ‘well-established’ educational institutions to
set up and run campus stations in 2003, they further opened the airwaves to a greater
diversity of players, although clearly not enough to satisfy everyone. “This decision
diluted somewhat the hegemony of the state and market over radio,” the Community
Radio Forum acknowledged. But the opening of the sector to “an urban, educated, elite
coterie in areas that [we]re already well-served by media,” they charged, “violates the
fundamental philosophy behind community radio” (Community Radio Forum, 2010; also
see Paravala & Malik, 2007).
Finally, in 2006, after ten years of advocacy by community media activists,
community radio guidelines were released by the government, legalizing community
radio broadcasting. However, the government was reluctant to relinquish all control over
who was allowed to speak on community radio. Thus, in addition to the already legal
campus radio stations, licenses could be granted to registered civil society and voluntary
organizations (NGOs) and to state-run agricultural research and information centers (or
Krishi Vigyan Kendras), but the policy—still in effect today—excludes less formally
recognized community groups or people’s movements.
Nevertheless, five years later, there are more than 100 community radio stations
registered in India. While up to date lists of registered stations are difficult to obtain, it is
understood among community radio advocates and the MIB that most of these stations
are campus radio stations or agricultural extension centers rather than NGO or
community groups. The exact number of NGO-run stations is not known, but is thought

to government and private radio. The Pastapur Initiative was the outcome of a UNESCO sponsored
workshop hosted by the Deccan Development Society in Hyderabad, July 17-20, 2000.

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to be fewer than twenty at the time of writing—a tiny number for a nation of more than a
billion people. Both the MIB and the Community Radio Forum are interested in
increasing these numbers. To that end, the MIB has supported 10-12 workshops a year
for the past few years throughout India, often facilitated by members of the CRF, to raise
awareness among NGOs about the existence of community radio, its potential, and the
licensing procedures.
The 2006 guidelines and the capacity-building efforts of the MIB and CRF
clearly constitute significant progress, yet many in the community radio movement view
the current policy as having some serious shortcomings, namely, the ban on news on
private and community-run radio stations and the NGO-based licensure process (the
specific implications and impacts of these policy features will be discussed in the next
chapter). The 2006 guidelines were the product of negotiation, collaboration and
confrontation between community radio activists, NGOs, donor agencies (such as
UNESCO and Ford Foundation), and the Government of India (largely represented by the
MIB). While some of the actors (in particular, the government) envision community radio
as a support for achieving development goals as laid out in the mainstream development
agenda or nation building, others see community radio as a communication right which
pushes the development agenda to be more inclusive of alternative voices and visions.
Each of these actors was motivated by ideological or practical positions vis-à-vis the
development field as well as by their own goals regarding what community radio can and
should achieve.

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Community Radio as a Media Dependency System: MSD Relations in the
Community Radio Sector
Media Systems Dependency Theory (MSD) (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1998, 2008;
Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976; Ball-Rokeach & Loges, 1993) is useful as a theoretical
framework to understand how the relationships between these actors lay the groundwork
for the debate over radio as a tool for development or as a tool for communication
rights.
29
The dependency relationships among these actors shape, and are shaped by, the
discursive practices in the field and the contests over communication power, specifically
who can control community radio stations and content. As discussed in the introduction,
MSD recognizes the ways that dependency relations can determine who has access to
consume and create knowledge and information in pursuit of their goals or interests, and
under what conditions. It pays particular attention to dependency relations across macro
(nation states, governments, international organizations), meso (NGOs) and micro
(individual) levels, and recognizes that social reality (and, I would add, the visions of

29
The reality of the community radio sector in India and the way it has been shaped by political and
economic relationships between the players echo the arguments of theorists who have demonstrated the
ways in which structural concerns such as media regulation and ownership can define the shape of a media
system and the ways in which audiences are (or are not) able to consume and influence media content
(McChesney, 1999; Schiller, 1976). Much of this body of literature has emphasized the connections
between media ownership, regulation, and content within the context of mass media, or more recently, new
media (Mansell, 2002). Fewer studies have examined the role of such forces in shaping community media
systems. Work in this area will require in-depth ethnographic and multi-level studies of community radio
systems, inclusive of the community participants (and non-participants), implementing NGOs and CBOs,
community radio advocacy and lobbying groups, donor agencies, and government ministries. This is
beyond the scope of my present study, but is one future area of further research for which this study can
serve as a foundation. In this chapter and the next, I aim to at least demonstrate that these dependency
relationships and contests over communication power have impact on the participatory potential of
community radio, even if I am not able to expand upon all of the dynamics in full detail. My intention is to
demonstrate some of the potential barriers to participation that are likely to influence the development of
participatory mobile phone platforms, something I will then take up in later chapters.

104

development these social realities suggest) are products of the ever-changing dynamics of
these relationships.
My research suggests that it is appropriate to consider the major actors in the
community radio sector in India within a multi-level ecology using the levels as defined
by MSD theory as follows:
Macro level:
o Government, specifically the Ministry of Information & Broadcasting
(MIB) as the agency chiefly responsible for regulating community radio
and, by far, the agency most deeply imbricated in this MSD system.
Others include the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology
and other bodies involved in the regulation of community radio.
o International donor agencies that are involved in supporting the
community radio movement. In India, this includes UNESCO, UNDP,
UNICEF and the Ford Foundation, each of which has supported
community radio to varying degrees, both financially and symbolically.
o The Community Radio Forum (CRF), a national advocacy network
founded by many of the NGOs and media activists involved in the
movement prior to the approval of the 2006 guidelines. The CRF is an
independent body that supports existing stations, promotes the initiation of
new stations, and lobbies for policy changes that “amplify the progressive
nature of the community radio policy and further simplify and democratize
the licensing procedures” (Community Radio Forum, 2010). The CRF has

105

gained status as the official voice of the community radio movement.
Meso level:
o NGOs that operate community radio stations or that may be in the process
of applying for licenses to operate one in the near future.
o Community media capacity builders including individual consultants and
researchers, as well as media activism NGOs and technology development
teams who provide consulting, training, capacity building, or
technological support for NGOs that operate (or seek to operate) stations.
These actors are often engaged with multiple stations at the same time
across India, and hence have a meso-level vantage point.
Micro level:
o Community members who participate in station activities such as content
generation (e.g., community reporters).
o Individuals within the broadcast range of the station, including the
audience of the station as well as non-listeners within the geographic
range.
I will briefly describe some (although by no means all) of the key dependency
relationships between these players that influence the shape of community radio. While
dependency relationships between macro-level actors and micro-level actors exist, these
dependencies are typically mediated by the relationships with meso-level actors. For
example, while ministry-level goals and decisions undoubtedly affect the participation
and experiences of individual community radio participants, they are first filtered through

106

the meso-level of NGOs that operate stations and whose programming practices must be
in compliance with government regulations. It is the NGO practices, in turn, that affect
the extent to which participants are either invited or discouraged to participate in
community radio station programs. Therefore, here I describe only direct relationships,
while attempting to highlight the role indirect relationships might play in influencing the
direct ones. In the next chapter, I will turn to the impact of these relationships on policy
and what that means for participation.

Macro-Macro Dependency Relationships between the Government and the Community
Radio Forum
The complicated relationship between the Community Radio Forum and the
government is simultaneously collegial, adversarial, and mutually dependent. Without the
MIB and the government, there would be no legal community radio sector, and hence no
CRF. Yet without inputs from the CRF, the MIB would struggle to effectively legislate.
Nonetheless, despite their mutual dependencies, there are ideological differences about
who should control content. As noted above, the government is still influenced by the
legacy of centralized broadcasting (and the modernization paradigm of which that is a
part) and is therefore wary of giving community groups direct control over airwaves,
instead opting to use government-certified NGOs as intermediaries. The community radio
activists, meanwhile, would rather do away with such intermediaries, allowing for direct
control by loosely organized community groups or people’s movements in addition to the
NGOs and educational instutions that currently enjoy the right.

107

The existence and expansion of the community radio movement that the CRF
promotes and represents relies upon the sanction of the government. Thus, the CRF’s
existence (and that of the movement more generally)—and its ability to pursue its
mission—are heavily dependent upon the MIB. This dependency influenced the tactics
that the CRF chose to advocate for community radio. For example, during the 2010
Consultation on Community Radio, members of the CRF and others identified certain
policy challenges that slowed the growth of the community radio sector or limited its
potential as a participatory platform (see next chapter). Specifically, some in the
community radio movement critiqued their own tactical errors in advocating for
community radio as part of a development agenda rather than as an issue of
communication rights. “It was really natural for us to design something that came under
the same [development] paradigm that the government was used to,” said Stalin,
admitting, “We were not shaking up the paradigm because we knew that using that frame
was a sure-fire way of getting policy through.” Although “it was a conscious decision,”
he noted, “it was not a very happy decision” for all involved (Stalin K., personal
communication, December 29, 2010). In maximizing the likelihood of government
support by catering to the government’s goals, the activists had to downplay their
ideological commitment to community radio as an issue of communication rights. The
result was that features of the community radio guidelines encourage, both directly and
indirectly, stations to privilege certain kinds of development-oriented content. This will
be discussed further in the next chapter.

108

The government, on the other hand, has depended (and continues to depend) upon
the expertise of the CRF in the process of drafting guidelines and policy. The MIB has
welcomed the CRF into policy formulation discussions, as evidenced by the close
collaboration between them in the organization of the 2010 National Consultation on
Community Radio, as well as the CRF’s deep involvement in the ongoing revisions of the
Community Radio guidelines. The MIB also looks to the CRF to do a lot of the heavy
lifting in supporting crucial functions the MIB otherwise may not have the capacity to
perform. These functions include providing on-the-ground information and observation
about program experiences, connecting to the grassroots actors involved, reviewing new
license applications, coordinating trainings for new and potential NGO stations with
support of the government, and leveraging funding from donor agencies.
However, the fundamental disagreement about whether radio is a tool for
development or a communication right that should re-shape development leads to
tensions within these collaborative dynamics For example, the CRF was asked by the
MIB to formulate policy arguments that could be used by MIB in gaining greater
government support for community radio. Stalin recounted his frustration over one such
request from MIB ministers for CRF to frame policy arguments for them:

You heard what [the MIB minister] was saying [at the National Consultation
Meeting]: ‘Give us a strong logic.’ You know, [the ministry officials] know the
government is doing stupid things with their policy, but they need arguments that
they can then lobby with. Not rights-based arguments, [but] arguments which are
government-based and based on development agendas. Unfortunately they are
looking for these arguments from us [the CRF]. So my point to them is: ‘it is
unfair for you to expect that argument to come from us. It is your job, yours, to

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place that bureaucratic argument. It is my job to place the rights-based argument
(Stalin K., personal communication, December 28, 2010).

Stalin's comments suggest that there is a cost to the CRF in that it must balance
the tension between its communication rights-based goals with the government’s
development-based goal orientation. But Stalin’s observations also speak to the ways in
which advocates within the MIB look to the CRF as a resource and as a collaborator.
Stalin notes, “the government looks up to the Forum” (Stalin K., personal
communication, December 28, 2010) because of its greater knowledge of the ground
realities and its insights into policy directions. The relationship, in short, is strongly co-
dependent, yet marked by tensions over conflicting goal-orientations and ideological
views about the purpose and function of radio, and this has colored policy outcomes, and
the need for compromises, at least on the CRF’s part.

Dependency Relationships between Funding Insitutions and the Community Radio Forum
The CRF has strong dependency relationships with international funding agencies
such as UNESCO, UNICEF and Ford Foundation. UNESCO is its strongest supporter by
far, in terms of consistent partnership, if not in actual funds.
30
All of the major watershed
conferences that have advanced the movement have been fully or partially funded and
organized by UNESCO, and UNESCO has provided many key resources, including

30
At the time of writing, I was unable to obtain exact figures of the amount of support given over the
years by the various donors.

110

experimental broadcast equipment,
31
workshop resources, and research studies on best
practices in the field.
UNICEF and Ford Foundation have also been major funders. However, UNICEF
funding is primarily channeled through its NGO implementing partners for the set up and
maintenance of radio stations, often with the aim of promoting UNICEF-related
development goals such as maternal and child health (Singhal, 2001), again creating the
potential for pressure on programs to relay messages related to pre-determined
development agendas.
The CRF, and the sector as a whole, rely on the continued engagement and
support of these important funders. Funding from organizations like UNESCO and Ford,
which fund the sector for its contributions to free speech, expression and communication
rights, however, remain in the minority. Most individual radio stations still rely on
support from smaller funding agencies, and that support is tied to specific development
agendas (Pavarala et al, 2010). Funders, in turn, rely on the CRF to inform their funding
plans and for their contribution to policy discussions. Without the CRF and the individual
community radio stations that serve as implementers for donor agendas, donors would
not be able to meet their funding priorities. In particular, CRF’s coordination of the
various actors and radio stations likely helps enable funders to develop more strategic,
sector-wide funding strategies and pursue funding goals of supporting participatory
approaches.

31
For example, in late 90s, UNESCO provided VOICES with a portable production and transmission
‘briefcase radio station’ kit for experimental broadcasts. Such early experiments were crucial to the growth
of the sector (Pavarala & Malik, 2007).

111

Dependency Relationships between NGOs and Donors
Although NGOs that run the community radio stations may have a true
commitment to community empowerment and believe that community radio can be part
of this process, the realities of funding are such that they may not be able to pursue those
goals exactly as they hoped. Budgets for stations are usually determined by whatever
funds can be reallocated from other program grants. These funds are typically attached to
specific development programs on specific issues such as HIV-awareness, maternal and
child health, or agriculture (Pavarala et al, 2010), meaning that NGOs are accountable to
these donors for showing impacts that fit these specific project goals. An NGO may
therefore see the radio station as another channel for their awareness-raising activities and
direct content towards meeting those specific goals, pushing aside larger goals of
providing communities the opportunities to directly control content.
As a result of this deep dependency on donor funding, NGOs can often be hesitant
to let communities drive content, fearing that this may lead to uncharted or off-message
topics. Ram Bhatt, a community media advocate and consultant who has trained and
advised many groups as they set up radio stations, described community radio
programming as “very formal” and “very awareness-oriented” in its tendency to push
specific educational or development messaging (R. Bhatt, personal communication,
September 12, 2010). Savita Bailur (2007), in her informative case study of the
community radio station Our Voices in Karnataka, was more critical, pointing to the
ways in which the station pushes a development agenda on the community. She quotes a
station manager who states that regardless of what the community identifies as its

112

preferences for community radio, “there has to be a development angle” in station
programming in order to justify expenditure of grant money on the technical equipment.
“So you kind of need to keep pushing programming in a certain direction” (Bailur, 2007,
p. 9).
Not only are NGOs dependent on the funders for financial support, but they are
also dependent on the government for continuation of their legal non-profit status which
allows them to receive these funds. Because of this dependency, NGOs may often feel
pressured to maintain a certain level of credibility that can be undermined if radio content
is perceived to be inaccurate, frivolous, or too controversial. The NGOs’ need to make
and demonstrate impact in line with development indicators and secure a stable funding
stream, tends to encourage them to be reluctant to relinquish control over the nature and
style of community-driven content to the communities themselves.
As members of the CRF shared with me, this dependency on funds can lead
NGOs who operate stations to view funders in instrumental ways, rather than as partners,
and NGOs often attempt to garner favor with those agencies that are perceived as having
more money. This quest to survive in a competitive arena means they may lose sight of
their original missions and mandates. Indeed, a large body of literature has shown
funding pressures can shift the priorities of NGOs as they try to meet donor agendas in
the search of increased support (Gilmore, 2007; Lindenberg & Bryant, 2001; Smillie,
1988; Smillie & Helmich, 1999; Smith, 2007).

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Dependency Relationships between the Community Radio Forum and NGOs
The CRF and NGOs work closely together, and the CRF is in many ways the
greatest advocate for the needs of the NGO community radio operators. Both entities are
dependent on each other. Without training and support provided by the CRF, many
NGOs would lack the capacity to set up or manage their stations; without the NGOs,
there would be no community radio, hence no CRF. The CRF has a mandate to advance
the “progressive nature of the community radio policy,” (Community Radio Forum,
2010) including working towards greater opportunities for expression and voice, even if
those expressions may depart from mainstream development messages. The NGOs, on
the other hand, often balance the vision of community voice against specific
development-oriented activities in accordance with their organizational mission and
donors’ expectations. Being at cross-purposes often sparks debate or disagreement
between NGOs and the CRF leadership, even though the two parties are usually allies in
promoting greater access to community radio station licensing. When, for example, some
within the CRF expressed discomfort about the adoption of a development framework for
the movement, a number of NGO representatives were upset. Some representatives from
grassroots NGOs, according to Stalin, even asked, “Why are you saying that? Isn’t
development a good thing? What is wrong with development?'” The reason for the
disconnect between the NGOs and the CRF, he felt, was that the survival of these “NGO-
ites”, as he called them, “depends on development paradigms” (Stalin K., personal
communication, December 29, 2010). His observations reiterate the ways in which the
NGOs who run stations are dependent on certain development institutions and a

114

mainstream development paradigm. Their funding—and hence individual job security—
is tied to achieving impact on specific development outcomes. This disparity in goals also
underlies the tensions within the movement between actors over the particular form and
role community radio should have.
It is important to note that there is significant overlap between the NGOs and the
CRF. Many NGO leaders are heavily involved in the Forum, and some Forum members
also bring an NGO-sector background to the work or are currently involved as staff or
leaders at NGOs. Although both actors work very closely together and are ultimately
advocating for the expansion of the community radio sector, these two allies still hold
some evident contrasting goals.
In addition to these consultants and trainers, there are also community media
action researchers and radio technology developers who need access to community-level
field sites for data or product testing. The researchers are typically funded by donor
institutions, and are motivated by sincere goals of building the capacity of radio stations
through participatory research. Similarly, the developers seek to bring down the cost of
setting up stations in order to increase community access to affordable, durable, and easy-
to-use technology and to facilitate greater participation of community members in content
creation. Both of these actors require access to the station as well as the community for
data and technology testing. This access is typically only possible through NGOs, hence
these actors are dependent on NGOs for access to their research and testing participants,
in addition to funders who contract them to conduct this work.

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Dependency Relationships between the NGO and the Community
The community radio guidelines require that a community radio stations serve
those covered by their broadcast range. The local NGO or community-based organization
that holds a license has a mandate to serve a particular community, which usually
coincides with one that the NGO has already been serving in some other capacity. The
NGO, therefore, has a dependency relationship with that community in order to validate
the license of their station. In an ideal world, community radio stations should provide
locally relevant content and information to a community. As such resources often do not
already exist in some of these communities, the community would be expected to have a
dependency relationship with the station (and the NGO that runs it) because of the
community’s need for this valued content. Given the newness of the sector and the
struggles with implementation that haunt it (see next chapter), however, stations are
currently still struggling to create high-quality content that draws audiences. In fact, as I
will discuss later, community members often find the content unappealing and, instead,
seek out other forms of entertainment or information. Thus, the strength of the
community’s dependency relationship with the NGO-run station may not be strong at all.
Unfortunately, with the exception of a very few ethnographies (Ali & Bailur, 2007;
Bailur, 2007; Tacchi & Kiran, 2008), audience studies do not exist to provide information
about the strength of the audience’s dependencies on the stations.
However, it is important to note that, since the NGOs that run community radio
also run other programs in the community, sometimes the radio station activities become
intertwined with other programs from which certain members of the community may

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benefit. IT for Change (a Bangalore-based NGO concerned with building an inclusive
information society), for example, partnered with Mahila Samakya (a well-respected
women’s group that has been operating in Southern India for nearly 25 years) to run
community radio and participatory video to support Mahila Samakya’s development
initiatives.
32
Mahila Samakya has long been organizing and facilitating sangam groups
(women’s collectives), and it is these women to whom the radio programming is targeted.
In my discussions with them, the IT for Change facilitators indicated that the
Mahila Samakya radio project did indeed have a positive impact on the women sangam
members, but it is important to recognize that the radio project built upon and
complements the pre-existing sangam programs. Hence, many of the sangam women
who were the radio’s audience may already have had significant dependency
relationships with the NGO that was running the station and which has provided critical
capacity building and empowerment opportunities to these women over many years. Such
pre-existing dependency relationships between the NGO and the audience members are
likely to influence the dependency relationships (or lack thereof) between the station and
the audience.

Chapter Two Conclusion
Community radio policy and the question of who should have power to control
this communication resource has become an ideologically contested site where social

32
At the time of writing, the Mahila Samakya radio project relied on thirty minutes of purchased
airtime per week that they use for their community programming as opposed to running their own licensed
station.

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change goals, development agendas and positions about “who can speak about
development and with what authority” are hotly contested among a system of inter-
related actors. These goals, in turn, are influenced by the agendas and visions of social
development held by these actors, especially with regards to who should own and control
media systems and whose voices should be represented in media content.
Specifically, these dynamics have been most clearly manifested by the key
tension between two differing ideological views regarding the role of radio in
development. On one hand, the legacy of the modernization paradigm and nation-
building agendas still live in the view that community radio is best used to increase
effectiveness of development messaging, thus supporting (rather than critiquing), top-
down mainstream development agendas. On the other hand, there is the view that
community radio is fundamentally about communication rights, and creating a discursive
space for communities to participate in examining, challenging and re-defining the
development agenda. Although the relationships between the MIB, the CRF and the
NGOs that operate community radio stations are often collaborative and mutually
beneficial, they are also marked by tensions over this very question. In this chapter, I
have demonstrated that the communication power hierarchies in the community radio
sector dependency system served to pressure community radio activists to strategically
adopt the framing most in line with the government’s goals, thus compromising their goal
of creating a platform for the promotion of voice that was not constrained by pre-set
development agendas. This decision then affected the shape of the policy passed in 2006.

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In the next chapter, I will discuss some of the specific policy features that resulted
from this contest, as well as other social and cultural factors that influence the
opportunities for participation in community radio content. In the chapters that follow, I
will then turn to an investigation of the deployment of the latest emerging technologies
(social media and mobile phones) for participation to demonstrate how some of the same
forces are similarly constraining their potentials.

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CHAPTER THREE
COMMUNITY RADIO: HOW POLITICS, SOCIETY AND CULTURE SHAPE
PARTICIPATION

In the previous chapter, I described how unequal power relationships and
dependencies shaped the debates surrounding the framing of the media policy that was
eventually passed in India in 2006. This policy, along with a number of other factors
discussed later, constrain the deployment of community radio. In this chapter, I set the
stage for later discussions, by defining three ways that these factors constrict community
radio practice. Indeed, similar factors influence the participatory potential of social media
and mobile phones in India. First, the 2006 guidelines stipulate that content must be of
immediate relevance to development issues, thus framing community radio as primarily a
tool to present a certain set of government-defined development issues. Second, the
guidelines mandate that community radio licenses must be granted to NGOs—not
directly to community groups—and the NGOs may not turn over ownership of the license
to any other entity (including the local communities they serves). The combined effects
of the content guidelines and the NGO-based licensure procedure are what have been
commonly referred to in community radio movement as the “NGO-isation” of the
community radio movement, implying that so-called ‘community’ radio has been
institutionalized as part of the larger system of international development, complete with
the pre-established goals set by external development institutions. The third constraining

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feature of the policy is that, according to Indian law, no entity other than the government
broadcaster AIR can broadcast news over the radio. Thus community radio is prohibited
from serving as a local information source. This ban on news largely reflects a struggle
over communication, with the government resisting any abdication of its control over the
prized resources such as news content. In the next section, I will first describe the process
of NGO-isation and its impact on community radio. Then I will explore how the news-
ban narrows community radio’s ability to serve as a platform for communication rights
that gives visibility to alternative voices. In the second half of this chapter, I look at
additional contextual factors (including financing, the technological environment, social
exclusion and gender) that combine with the policy restrictions to define the contours of
participation in community radio.

NGO-isation
Two features of the 2006 community radio policy—content guidelines and
licensure restrictions— severely limit what community radio stations can do. Guidelines
requiring content to be immediately relevant to community development concerns such
as health, agriculture, education, or social welfare,
33
theoretically allow for some variety
of programs. However, in practice these content restrictions privilege programs that
address the more mainstream development goals associated with rural development.
Notably, justice, rights, and social inclusion are not listed among these community
development issues, although these topics have significant ramifications for social

33
http://mib.nic.in/writereaddata/html_en_files/crs/CRBGUIDELINES041206.pdf

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development. This omission, said Ram Bhatt, a prominent member of the CRF, results
from a desire to side-step the political nature of such issues:

The government is very clear that [community radio is] not a politicized
tool. It's a very soft development kind of a tool. So, justice never enters the
framework, or any kind of justice-related issues. It’s all about
awareness…It’s a very soft kind of language spoken. And I think the
language of rights hasn’t entered yet (R. Bhatt, personal communication,
September 12, 2010).

Whatever the reason, the result is that content tends to avoid controversial issues that
might challenge the status quo of development approaches, thus making it difficult to
articulate new visions.
The second feature of the policy that contributes to NGO-isation—limiting
community-radio licensing to NGOs and select educational institutions—compounds the
tendency toward conservatism by restricting licenses to the sub-set of organizations that
have been registered as NGOs for at least three years. The problem with this approach is
that, as Sajan Veniyoor of the CRF leadership noted, if licenses are granted only to NGOs
that have been registered for more than three years, “then most of the licenses would go
to more established NGOs that tend to be the big-time NGOs with lots of
money…corrupt[ing] the whole idea” of expanding access (S. Veniyoor, personal
communication, Novermber 23, 2010).
Indeed, the requirements do favor a certain class of civil society group that is
better versed in the conventions of mainstream development practices, and perhaps as a
result, less likely to challenge them. Moreover, as discussed in the previous chapter,

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NGOs are not typically in the position to question or re-define development agendas,
since their funding stream is linked to their ability to promote their funders’ agendas
(Gilmore, 2007; Lindenberg & Bryant, 2001). When applying for government licenses,
the NGO must submit a petition demonstrating its proposed contribution to rural
development issues such as health or agriculture. As Veniyoor notes, the effect is that
licenses are restricted to “not only certain kinds of NGOs, but NGOs that speak a certain
language—a certain development language.” Such NGOs, he stated, “always manage to
get licenses” (S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23, 2010). Thus these
two policy guidelines assure the continued NGO-isation of the community radio sector:
community radio takes on NGO priorities and promotes a pre-set development agenda,
rather than encouraging expression and greater inclusion of marginalized voices in
development agenda-setting. As Stalin described, the communication rights agenda often
gets sidelined in the process:

[community radio] takes a very development perspective. The paradigm is
completely “...Oh, let’s have a development channel. It is about education.
Its about “Stop HIV!”’ But the right of a person or of a community to have
free access to air space it is not dependent on his or her interest in talking
about HIV. I mean, how is that related? (Stalin K., personal
communication, Deceber 29, 2010).

Hence, community radio programming tends to be weighted toward certain development
issues (e.g., HIV), at the expense of the community’s ability to propose new priorities.
Part of the problem, further notes Veniyoor, is that the licensing policies, by
definition, exclude groups that might exist outside the structures of formal governance

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and development institutions and that could therefore offer new perspectives. For
example, grassroots community groups, more loosely organized social movements or
identity-based movements that lack centralized NGO representation cannot legally access
the airwaves:

If [the basis of licensing was]…a free speech or rights issue, there would
probably be a lot of other groups that could apply. For instance, we will
never have a gay rights radio in India if we go by these [current]
definitions, because their issues will not be seen as a developmental issue.
[Gay rights] is not education, agriculture, or health. So, they fall through
the cracks. So very many marginalized groups which need a voice could
very easily fall through the cracks because they don’t fit in this
developmental agenda (S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November
23, 2010).

As I have argued throughout this manuscript, the future prospects for an equitable
and inclusive development depends on our ability to include these very voices that “don’t
fit in this development agenda,” voices that are not always represented by formalized
NGOs, and hence are excluded from the activity of collectivly defining and re-defining
the development agenda.

The Impact of NGO-isation on Content
The “NGO-isation” of community radio that the 2006 guidelines reinforced
breeds a limited approach to content, ownership and participation that constrains the way
communities experience community radio on a day-to-day basis. NGOs are accountable
to donors and other stakeholders who typically expect programs to impact knowledge or
to shape behavior related to specific issue areas. Community radio programming is, then,

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often dependent upon the agendas of NGOs, who are, in turn sensitive to the priorities of
the funding sources to which they are beholden. Hence, content created within the
framework of an NGO-operated community radio station cannot help but reflect the
dependency relationship between the NGO and donor agencies. This can constrain the
NGO’s ability to respond to the communities’ requests or suggestions about content. The
development-orientation of most NGOs inhibits them from thinking outside the box
about other kinds of content that can contribute to community building, as their attention
is focused on the typical health and development initaitives, or, as Stalin criticized, “they
are too busy thinking about distributing vitamin tablets to women” (Stalin K., personal
communication, December 28, 2010).
Even when the is aim to provide content that is more relevant to the community’s
daily lives, the result can be that the audience is ambivalent about the content. This
proved true in the case of the Namma Dhwani (Our Voices) project in South India,
launched by the NGOs VOICES
34
and MYRADA with the intention of providing locally
relevant content to the Budikote community. The project was designed to serve as a voice
to counter the existing radio stations, based in the state’s capital, which broadcast what
the planners considered to be “city-based information.” It soon became clear, however,
that what was served up as “locally relevant” programming was boring to many of the
targeted audiences, who ignored the programming because broadcast times conflicted

34

VOICES is an organization with a long history of engagement in the community radio sector. As
part of its advocacy for community media, it convened the conference where the 1996 Bangalore
Declaration was drafted.

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with their favorite soaps or entertainment shows airing on the mainstream stations (Ali &
Bailur, 2007).
Yet despite the community’s lack of interest, the station persevered with the same
style of programming so that donors would see a justification for funding the station.
Indeed, one station manager acknowledged that the content had to be “development,
development, development” to ensure future grants (Bailur, 2007, p. 9). The implication
is that he was referring to “development” as the donor understood it, not necessarily as
the community would have defined it. As noted in the previous chapter, this station
manager admitted that, as a result of this dependency relationship and its associated
pressure, the NGO needs “to keep pushing programming in a certain direction” (Bailur,
2007, p. 9), even if that direction is out of step with what the community determines it
needs or wants.
This need to please donors confines the degree of freedom the NGO station
managers or coordinators feel they can grant to community participants. For this reason,
most managers of so-called “community” radio stations prescribe programming priorities
and issue areas before inviting local participation. The very small number of trained
community reporters and producers upon which these stations rely must adhere to these
priorities when they go into the village to seek the participation of local people as
respondents or interviewees for pre-determined program segments. Community members
may be free to express themselves, but the parameters of the topic have already been
set—usually determined by the development goals of the particular NGO’s agenda. Bhatt
describes the result:

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It’s participatory, yes, but the kind of framework of the particular topic
that is already in place. So you can only participate within the
framework...For example, I’ll make a program about women’s issues. So,
[the] framework is set. Now, yes, all the voices in [the] program are from
the community. But the question they are asked is: What are the problems
you face because of HIV, for example? So, it’s participatory [on] one
level, but you’re not allowed to participate at the higher level of proposing
a whole different problem that should be addressed (R. Bhatt, personal
communication, September 12, 2010).

In extreme cases, community members may have an experience similar to that of
one of Ali & Bailur’s (2007) respondents, who reported that she was asked by the station
staff to read a script provided by the reporter on the topic of hygiene, but to read it as if it
were “in her own words” (p. 9). While she was technically participating, her pre-scripted
commentary fell far short of what could be ethically labeled “participatory content.”
All of this is not to say that NGOs purposefully seek to silence or circumvent
local voices. Indeed, many NGOs are deeply committed to participatory development in
principle, and do their best to promote meaningful local involvement within the
constraints in which they work. However, under the current conditions, NGOs are
positioned such that they must privilege certain goals that constrain the kinds of content
and participation allowed. For example, in Bailur’s (2007) case study, the community
repeatedly requested that the local community station broadcast a wider variety of content
more suited to their needs, but the NGO felt the community needed to hear about
government social programs. When the community continued to insist on different
content, the station manager said, “then we started dictating things a bit” and they struck
a bargain whereby the community participated in the station’s priority programs on things

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like road maintainence, and in return the station aired some of the content requested by
the community. Finally he concluded, “It’s your community”, so the content is “your call,
but you can’t walk away and do as you please” (p.11), implying that while the
community has a certain element of control over the content, this participation has very
real parameters and limits and must have what the NGO deems to be development-related
value. In essence, the community’s ability to embrace the fact that “it’s your community”
is tempered by the admonition that the community members cannot “do as you please.”

The Effect of NGO-isation on Ownership
Community media advocates typically call for community ownership over the
media system itself, but what can ‘community ownership’ mean if licenses currently are
granted only to NGOs? These policies grant NGO radio station operators a lot of power
over content in the community radio dependency system.
Thus, while the 2006 legalization of NGO-run stations was an important step
forward for community radio, it is not equivalent to community ownership. While NGOs
often serve as strong advocates of community needs, they are, nonetheless, governed by
priorities, goals and dependency relationships that can rein in their efforts and/or put
them at odds with the aspirations of the communities they seek to serve. Furthermore,
NGOs vary greatly in the strength and quality of their integration into the community
fabric. As many of my respondents shared, the degree to which the community is aware
of the existence of—or feels a sense of ownership over—a community radio station can
be influenced by how grounded the NGO operating the station is in the community. In

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areas where the NGO already has a history of creating projects in consultation with local
communities, one is more likely to find that when the NGO introduces the new radio
station, community members quickly become aware of—and stand in support of—the
station, its purpose, and its value. Where NGOs initiate projects without community
involvement, the community will likely lack awareness or be confused or suspicious
about the station and its goals.
In the case of the Our Voices radio station, for example, the community had
reservations as to whether one of the key NGOs involved in the management of the
station truly represented the community, or whether it was more closely aligned with the
interests of outsiders, answering to international donors who were out of touch with the
realities of the community (Bailur, 2007). Researchers found a lack of awareness among
community members about the station’s existence and purpose, and little sense of
involvement or sense of ownership over the station’s identity (Bailur, 2007). Because of
this kind of disconnection between the communities and the NGOs, the NGOs are
struggling with the idea of community ownership, and are not sure how to hand over
ownership to the community when their program term ends. One participant at the
National Consultation on Community Radio, for example, asked the attendees, “Where
do we go from here? What is the exit strategy? Are NGOs going to be running the
stations forever?” (conference participant, personal communication, December 13, 2010).
He argued that NGOs should be clearer about their exit dates and more committed to
facilitating the community take-over of the station. “Those next steps are the most

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important”
35
, he concluded, yet they are also challenging when there is no legal structure
by which a community can own a station independently of an NGO.
Supriya Suha, Director of Broadcast at the MIB, agrees that “ideally we would
move to [a] situation where a community is running the radio station without the support
[of the NGO],” she stated in our interview. “The community of women, men or laborers,
the agricultural farmers—they should run their own community station. But… for the
time being, I think it’s good to go with the NGOs, because they have necessary expertise,
they have the resources” (S. Suha, personal communication, January 6, 2011). The NGO-
based licensing policy, therefore, is likely to remain a reality for the foreseeable future.
Part of the government rationale for this likely rests in the need to have a legally
definable entity that is accountable for the content, thus allowing the government to
maintain some degree of control. As Veniyoor described:

…the government makes it clear in the policy that the responsibility for
what goes on air is with the license holder. So, that is [the NGOs']
argument: ‘that if [the community participants] say something unfortunate,
we will get in trouble.’ And in India, everything is unfortunate! [Laughter]
So, limits of participation [are] there. You participate on the terms [set by]
the NGO, the station manager, the policy—and the development agenda
which is in the programming of the station (S. Veniyoor, personal
communication, November 23, 2010).

Bhatt concurred, highlighting “the contradiction of the policy” is the idea that the NGO is
accountable if something goes wrong, even if stations are considered to be “community

35
This quote is taken from live transcripts that I took during the question and answer sessions at the
National Consultation Meeting. While I made every effort to be as accurate as possible to the word, in the
absence of audio recording, it is possible that this contains slight errors.

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owned and managed” (R. Bhatt, personal communication, September 12, 2010). This
accountability makes NGOs wary about giving community participants free reign in the
content production process. In short, the policy makes community access to radio
dependent on the NGO, which is in turn dependent on its legal standing with the
government that allows it to receive funds from donors (on which, of course, it is also
dependent). Thus, under current conditions, the NGO can grant only limited community
ownership over the station without jeopardizing its own institutional well-being.
Even though the NGO may keep the ultimate decision-making power over the
content, it relies heavily on financial and/or managerial inputs from local communities.
Such was the case with Our Voices, where the concept of the radio station emerged from
outside the community, but the community was then expected to participate in
implementing day-to-day management tasks, including reporting and producing
segments. Pointing to case studies (e.g., see Michner, 1998) of such “instrumental”
participation where the community is excluded from decision making, Bailur (2007)
argued that “This kind of participation is more to do with administrative task-sharing and
less to do with empowerment” (p. 5). Such an approach certainly runs the risk of
reducing participation to a mere box-ticking exercise for program planners, and
undermines the empowerment-related outcomes of participation.
Although Bailur’s criticisms are astute and well founded, in truth, setting up
meaningful participatory systems can be challenging, even under the best of
circumstances. It is also critical to remember that community radio is quite new in India.
Even the more seasoned organizations that may have been involved in narrowcasting

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experiments prior to the legalization of community radio are unlikely to have more than a
decade’s history of engagement in radio management. Mis-steps and wrong turns are
therefore an inevitable and necessary—but potentially costly—part of the learning
process. Bhatt is optimistic that NGOs will become more comfortable inviting
participation and ownership as they gain confidence with the medium, and this will result
in better content:

[Community radio] is still under a very ‘NGO development’ kind of
framework but that’s bound to change over time. As the constituents
mature, I think people get more relaxed about being on air. Right now it’s
very formal, it’s very awareness-oriented. In the coming years, if some
group—even without realizing it—actually has a very participatory kind
of radio station which does not include or try to push...its own agenda…if
it happens inadvertently, then that will demonstrate the success or the
potential of radio, and the others are bound to catch up. So, I think it’s a
question of time because right now, there’s no sensitization among the
NGOs [about] what community radio is and why you should deal with it?
Most [NGO] people think ‘Oh, it’s another government scheme which we
can take advantage of it to get funding (R. Bhatt, personal communication,
Septermber 12, 2010).

Bhatt feels that, as the CRF capacity-building and training activities continue, and as the
NGOs come to see community radio as more than just a support to their awareness-and-
fundraising activities, then the true benefit will be realized. Veniyoor shared a similar
prediction:

I'm waiting for community radio to find its own level, after this first flush
of romance with developmentalism is over and then it doesn’t work. Then
the NGOs will look at it and say, 'Now what will I do with this damn
thing?' So then, at that point, they might just say, “Let’s just talk,” on the

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radio. Then we’ll see people start using it for all kinds of free expression
(S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23, 2010).

The reality remains, however, that even those NGOs with the best intentions of
passing on ownership to the community are hampered by policy. The guidelines stipulate
that legal ownership has to be with the NGO, and the NGO cannot pass ownership of the
license to any other entity, including a community group. In this way, the dependency
relationship between the NGO and the community served by the radio station is
enshrined in the policy framework. In turn, the NGO’s dependency on government and
funding institutions requires that it abide by these policies.

The Ban on News
While the first two features of the 2006 policy—NGO-based licensing procedures
and development-oriented content guidelines—contribute to an overall “NGO-isation” of
the sector, a third policy feature—the ban on community radio’s ability to broadcast
news—infringes on community radio’s ability to promote communication rights.
Although print and television have vibrant and booming news industries, only AIR is
authorized to broadcast news on the radio. Given that newspapers require literacy, and
television ownership necessitates greater investment than radio ownership, this lack of
independent and locally relevant radio news is felt most strongly by the poor, the rural,
and others in marginalized situations. “For the bulk of India's more than 1 billion people,
radio is all they have,” reported a Global Post article on the community radio sector.

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“Restricting [news on the] radio, then, is a powerful way to keep information from the
masses” (Overdorf, 2011).
Not only does this central control over news result in limiting independent and
alternative source of news, but it also contributes to a dearth of locally relevant news and
information. As a part of the process of decentralization which has been underway since
the 1990s, AIR launched a number of “local” stations that attempt to more-directly serve
communities and provide local content. However, this effort has been largely
unsuccessful in meeting the need for local news because these “local” stations rely on
urban-centric programming from the national or regional capitals rather than producing
locally relevant content (Fraser & Restrepo-Estrada, 1998). This lack of critical local
information was a prime motivating factor for Shubhranshu Choudhary, former BBC
journalist and Knight International Journalism Fellow, as he began to envision CGNet
Swara, a voice-based community media platform accessible by mobile phone, created for
the Gond community, an isolated and marginalized Advisai (tribal) group in the troubled
Eastern state of Chhattisgarh. Although similar to community radio in its purpose and
content, CGNet Swara does not require a broadcast license since it is accessed via mobile
phone. As Choudhary remarked:

…There was not a single tribal who was journalist in the whole state [of
Chhattisgarh] at the time. There were not many journalists who understood
any of the tribal languages. If you add the entire circulation of all the
newspapers together, it would not cross even 10% population of the
state...But in AIR, there is not a single news bulletin in any of these tribal
languages…The biggest tribal population is called Gonds. There are 4
million Gonds in this country, but not a single news bulletin [in Gondi] (S.
Choudhary, personal communication, June 2, 2010).

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Choudhary’s CGNet Swara system fills a vital gap by serving the information
needs of the Gondi people, and by enabling them to access, create and share local
news and content. This is particularly critical in places such as Chhattisgarh, where
political unrest creates a constant threat of violence. Access to local news and the
circulation of community storytelling is critical to helping people navigate such
unstable environments, yet as Choudhary’s comment illustrates, the state lacks the
communication infrastructure and the enabling communication action context to
enable this vital circulation of news.
To confuse matters further, the legislation is not clear about what constitutes
“news” nor does it differentiate between different kinds of news. The result is confusion
about whether all kinds of news is banned (as opposed to only political news) and under
what criteria the law is likely to be enforced. “My problem,” Bhatt shared, “is that the
government hasn’t...defined what is news,” which gives them significant leverage. If, at
any point, “the government wants to come down upon a community radio station, they
can interpret any program as news. And then the NGO has to spend years fighting it out
in court” (R. Bhatt, personal communication, September 12, 2010). The effect is that
NGOs are pressured to err on the side of caution, avoiding any content that could be
construed as news. Veniyoor further described the effects of the ban on news on the
community radio stations’ NGO license holders:

…[The government] said they are only banning political news. In India,
everything is political [laughs]. So, [the CRF] said ‘Ok, define political
news for us.’ And they said, like in your [American] obscenity laws, ‘We
don’t know what it is, but we recognize it when we see it.’ So, people play

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it safe, and they don’t broadcast any kind of news. But in reality, you are
allowed to do news if it is not hardcore political news, but it is at your own
risk (S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23, 2010).

The dependency relationship between the NGO and the government thus leads the
NGO to self-censor, while the ambiguity about the definition of news serves to further
entrench the government's media power, since the threat of government censure always
looms, even for non-political or so-called “soft” news. Community radio practitioners are
thus rightly concerned that India’s restriction on news-broadcasting is not only a violation
of the right to free speech, but may also have significant effects on the relevance of
content, thereby undercutting the potentially empowering effects of community radio.
In arguing for a revision of the guidelines at the National Consultation on
Community Radio, Steve Buckley, President of AMARC, argued that this limitation
“diminishes the ability of community radio stations to contribute to development” or to
ensure that “people are able to take informed decisions and to participate in daily life.”
Moreover, he argued, if the ban were to be tested in court, it would most likely be ruled
as “contrary to the constitutional right to freedom of expression,” again meaning it would
be better if it was quietly removed as part of the current review of the guidelines (S.
Buckley, personal communication, December 14, 2010).

After all, as Bhatt observed, “If
you can’t talk about local news, what else can you talk about?” (R. Bhatt, personal
communication, September 12, 2010).

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Protecting the Social Fabric: The Ban on News and National Security
In debates about community radio policy, national security—and protection of the
“social fabric” —are the government’s most cited arguments in defense of the ban on
news. When I asked Suha of the MIB about the ban on news, she described the rationale
as follows:

[Radio stations] are not allowed to broadcast the news mainly because of
the fact that we need to bring in very comprehensive monitoring
mechanism to see who is broadcasting what. Given the seriousness of the
issues in a country like ours, where tempers can run very high on a very
small issue, because there are so many castes, and so many languages and
regional divides, the concern is that the social fabric of the country should
not get disturbed (S. Suha, personal communication, January 6, 2011).

Indeed, in a country with a brutal history of caste-based violence and bloody political
conflicts, incendiary, biased, or politically-motivated news can have devastating impacts.
For evidence, one need look no further than tragedies such as the Gujarat Riots or the
Babri Masjid massacres, both of which were fueled by inflammatory speech,
misinformation, and biased news coverage spread through mass media. However, some
community radio advocates also feel that “national security” becomes a rationalization
for state censorship more broadly, providing yet another rationale by which the
government can exert disciplinary power over radio stations. “There is this issue of
national security, which they [the government] love,” Veniyoor shared in one of our
discussions:

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Anything that is problematic to the national government...is an issue of
national security. So, that is where free speech is usually stifled. They
bring in national security and communal harmony—the potential of
inciting communal violence—or national interest. ‘National interest’ is
very broad category, so it is very useful for government! (S. Veniyoor,
personal communication, November 23, 2010).

In fact, “national security” has been used to justify not only restrictions on news
broadcasting, but also to outright deny community radio broadcast licenses to
organizations in areas of conflict. For example, before experimenting with mobile phones
as a delivery channel for CG Net Swara, Choudhary hoped to facilitate the creation of
community radio stations to serve the Gondi tribe in Chhattisgarh. The tribal populations
there are squeezed between corporations that strip their land of resources on one side,
and, on the other side, the Maoist insurgents who control much of the territory and who
destroy their villages and terrorize their families (when not busy trying to recruit them to
the Maoist cause). The government, for its part, protects corporate interests in
Chhattisgarh’s natural resources by using its supposed security initiatives to remove tribal
people from their land.
36
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared the Maoists to be
the single greatest internal threat to India’s security (as cited in Singh, 2007), and the
government uses this as a justification for strict control over information flows in and out
of the state, coincidentally making the government’s treatment of the tribal groups less
subject to scrutiny. The government thus will not grant community radio licenses to

36
The government’s collusion with corporate interests in mining and resource extraction leave the tribal
people landless and disaffected, and, as a result, vulnerable to the recruitment tactics of Maoist extremist
who promise the villagers reclamation of land, self-determination and other basic rights that the
government has denied them. The government, in turn, routinely raid and destroy villages in their efforts to
root out the Maoist threat. While the Maoist efforts to recruit villagers do sometimes succeed, most
villagers remain neutral while living in fear of Maoist attacks and government raids (Sundhar, 2007;
Human Rights Watch, 2008).

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groups in the area. “Security” then becomes not only an excuse to control the flow of
news, but to control even the more basic issue of licensing. Given the government’s
involvement in the killing of innocent tribal villagers and the often-brutal suppression of
human rights activists (Human Rights Watch, 2008; Sundhar, 2007), one may wonder if
the government’s tight control over information may also be motivated by desires to
control reports of misconduct by its own forces. M.S. Kiran, a researcher involved in the
implementation of action research projects to build the capacity of community radio
stations, was pessimistic about possibility of NGOs in Chhattisgarh ever getting licenses.
“I will be shocked if they get it,” he said (M. Kiran, personal communication, January 5,
2011). Even non-aligned, pro-peace organizations in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand,
37
have
been denied licenses on the grounds that their station would operate in Maoist-controlled
areas (S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23, 2010).
Prior to the implementation of the 2006 guidelines, Choudhary had been hopeful
that legalization of community radio would provide the means to improve the
communication environment of the politically- and linguistically-isolated tribal
populations of Chhattisgarh. To that end, he started training groups in radio production in
2005, even before the policy came into effect, in the hopes that, once the policy was
effective they would apply for licesnes for a network of community radio stations that
could serve as the back bone of a bottom up news gathering system, with CGNet playing
a mediator role in the network. Buoyed by the Supreme Court ruling that the airwaves
should serve the public good, many groups in Central Tribal India did apply for licenses.

37
Another state in India with Maoist presence.

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Unfortunately, however, as Choudhary reflects, by the time the policy came into effect,
“The area was very, very, very, violent…So, in the tribal areas we understood that no one
will get the license to start a radio station.” The state, he felt, was “very frightened of
Maoist[s] taking over the transmitters” (S. Choudhary, personal communication, June 2,
2010).
Community radio advocates have argued strongly that it is precisely in such
troubled areas where free speech and voice are most critical. In the National
Consultation, for example, multiple advocates argued that the best way to counter
extremism is to give everyday people voice. Following a similar line of thinking,
Choudhary believes that the continued strength and growth of Maoist power in the state
can be linked directly to the tribal groups’ lack of voice:

...The problem, which our Prime Minister calls 'the gravest internal security
threat'...is not a Maoist problem. It is a problem of breakup of
communication between [tribal people and outsiders]. You [a tribal person]
have some grudges against me [an outsider] which I'm not able to solve and
you go to a third person who might be a person with some [Maoist] agenda.
So, he is pursuing his agenda and you are just a pawn. So, I thought, to
solve this problem, you have to create a communication system. And (this
could just be my wishful thinking), once there is communication between
you and me, once I start addressing your problems, you will go and say to
that…Maoist, that 'Ok, thank you. You helped us. But actually now the
outsider is now listening to me; my problem is solved. I don’t need to kill
him, I don’t need to blast his vehicle’ (S. Choudhary, personal
communication, June 2, 2010).

Thus the issue of national security as the justification for the ban on news has far-
reaching implications for where stations are allowed to operate. The result of the
ban, and the other security-related measures of control, is that some of India’s most

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vulnerable people have to live in volatile locations without adequate access to
news and information that can help them navigate the frequent threats to their
safety.

Lifting the Ban on News
Given the government’s concerns about security and misuse of resources, it is
unlikely that this policy will change until a content regulation system is in place.
Television, for example, is extensively and centrally monitored by the government. At
the Electronic Media Monitoring Center, 70-80 young men and women, trained by the
MIB, monitor about 150 channels around-the-clock. Each is responsible for about 4
channels—chosen for them by the MIB—ranging from serials to soaps. They send daily
monitoring reports and must call or text should there be any urgent concerns about
content (S. Suha, personal communication, January 6, 2011). Although a similar
monitoring system for radio news has been discussed in the Ministry, the cost would be
quite high, perhaps prohibitively so, and this, too, may negatively impact any remedy to
the news-ban. Community radio advocates argue that it would be better to set certain
guidelines in place and then penalize stations when and if there is a breach, rather than
subject them to a blanket ban. Suha has indicated the government is open to discussing
such changes to the policy if a system of monitoring can be devised. Even the Telecom
Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has recommended lifting the restrictions on news-
broadcasting. Hence the policy does not seem completely and forever unchangeable, but
the process of negotiating and instituting monitoring mechanisms pose serious challenges

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to the reversal of the news ban.
In the meantime, a number of notable efforts like Choudhary’s CGNet Swara
have sought ways to fill the immediate need for local information and news by
circumventing radio broadcast altogether. The increased availability of mobile phones—
even in remote areas—has now made it possible to reach rural or marginalized audiences
through cheap, voice-based audio platforms that, like CGNet Swara, are accessible by
phone. The flexibility of this medium allows not only for easy dissemination of locally-
relevant news, but also, as will be detailed in later chapters, for local participation in the
creation and sharing of content. However, this contest over who should have the means
and the mandate to generate news is likely to carry over into new communication
technologies, and the government is unlikely to leave the mobile-phone medium
unregulated. Indeed, the government has already exerted its power to ban the use of SMS
technology during periods of high political tension.
38
Questions and uncertainties about
the current legality of more formal uses of mobile phones to disseminate news have also
already arisen, and there are concerns about future policies that might limit it further in
the future. This will be discussed further in the next chapter on mobiles and social media.

38

In fact, the government banned all bulk SMS and MMS services for 72 hours in in anticipation of the
controversial Babri Masjid verdict delivered by the Allahabad High Court on September 24, 2010 because
of “apprehensions from the intelligence agencies that anti-social elements and rumor-mongers could use
SMS and MMS services to create tensions and disrupt peace in the country, particularly in communally-
sensitive cities and towns” (Joshi, 2010). Similarly, text messaging has been banned a few times in Jammu
Kashmir, a state troubled by separatist protests and violence, so as to discourage the use of the technology
for coordination among anti-nationalist groups (Buhkhari, 2010; “Govt bans SMS”, 2010) . These instances
demonstrate the government’s ready willingness to censor communication in the name of national security.

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Socio-economic Barriers to Access
Social constructionist views on technology remind us that, as shown by the effects
of NGO-isation and the ban on news broadcasts on community radio, the way individuals
deploy and experience technology is shaped by social and political forces. We now turn
from the political factors that shape access to emerging technologies to concerns such as
economics, the existing technological environment, and social exclusions which
influence how individuals relate to community radio. Concerns such as these set the stage
for examining, in later chapters, how similar forces shape social media and mobile
phones.

Financing
Setting up a community radio station is expensive. According to community radio
experts with whom I spoke, adhering to the MIB-recommended configurations would put
the cost of outfitting a station somewhere between four and six lakh rupees
39

(approximately 8,000 to 12,000 USD). This is an intimidating price tag for most of the
smaller NGOs that operate at the community level. The high set-up costs are partially
attributable to government stipulations that license holders must acquire their radio
transmitters from certain government-approved vendors. Since most of these vendors are
overseas, high import taxes can double the cost of the transmitter. Recently, Nomad, a
small Indian company, has begun manufacturing approved transmitters in India that sell

39
One lakh = 100,000

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for rupees 1.25 lakh. Although the availability of the Nomad transmitters onto the market
has brought set-up costs within reach of a wider range of NGOs, the considerable outlay
needed would still be too great for many small, community-based NGOs. More
investment in indigenous technology is likely to help reduce the cost associated with set-
up, but radio equipment for small stations remains a small industry in India. The high
cost of technology means that NGOs remain dependent on donor backing for such large
investments—further privileging larger, more established NGOs. Hence, the economics
of set-up amplifies dependency dynamics and NGO-isation effects that favor mainstream,
established NGOs as opposed to those that may bring a more alternative vision to the
project.
Some countries with thriving community radio sectors such as France and South
Africa have instituted independent community radio subsidy funds that provide loans or
grants to support the set-up costs of new stations. The CRF has included the creation of
such a fund in its recommendations for the revisions of MIB guidelines. As of the time of
writing in January 2012, the Ministry remains in discussion about establishing expanded
guidelines, funding and other proposals suggested by the CRF.
However, once the start-up funding obstacle has been transcended, the NGO still
needs a continuing revenue-stream to sustain community radio operations. Osama
Manzar, founder and director of the Digital Empowerment Foundation,
40
believes that
many NGOs—unable or not-yet-ready to make the investments to pay for reporters and
staff, studio maintenance, and content production—will hesitate to apply for licenses.

40
An organization concerned with increasing inclusion of the poor in the information society, and
which has also been heavily involved in community radio advocacy through the CRF

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Therefore, Manzar supports the creation of an independent body to provide financial
support, “...if not to all [NGOs], [then] to some of the smaller ones, even [if] on a
returnable basis” (O. Manzar, personal communication, January 19, 2011).
Presently, in lieu of a community radio support fund, most NGOs redirect funding
from other programs to support the station, which, as discussed earlier, enhances
dependency relationships and the need for development-oriented content. Some radio
stations have begun to explore alternative revenue-generating models to decrease
dependence on grant funding. For example, some have instituted shareholder, co-
operative, or membership-based models in which station participants and audience
members pay a nominal subscription fee. This model tends to work best for radio stations
that can achieve economy of scale with a large number of listeners. For smaller radio
stations, however, such a system is unlikely to produce enough funds. In some cases,
community stations have offered the use of their studios on a rental basis for media
production as a way to help cover expenses.
Other stations may turn to advertising to help pay the bills. The community radio
guidelines do allow for advertisement revenues as one source of financial support to
stations. Under current guidelines, stations are allowed to broadcast five minutes of
advertising for every hour of programming. Typically, most NGOs do not have the
financial or staff capacity to generate more than a couple of hours of programming per
day, which means only a few minutes of salable advertising slots a day. If a station can
find low-cost ways of producing more hours of content, they could boost revenue. Live
programming, which is cheaper and easier to produce then pre-recorded segments,

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presents one such solution that, suggests Bhatt, would not only allow for more
participatory interaction with the audience, but also allow the station to sell more ads.
This solution is a harder sell with NGO station managers and coordinators, however, as
they generally fear the potential diminishing control over the content quality that live
broadcast is perceived to unleash (R. Bhatt, personal communication, September 12,
2010).
Selling ad time on a community radio station that is intended to provide an
independent voice brings its own set of concerns. For the most part, community radio
activists feel that the certain types of ads, particularly those for local community
businesses or services, can be appropriate or even beneficial. Commercial content,
however, which may be at odds with socially-oriented content, can create a new set of
dependency relationships with advertisers that could prompt NGOs to censor or steer
toward content with more commercial appeal. Moreover, said Aadi Seth,
41
the head of
Gram Vaani (a company designing low-cost technology to support community radio
stations) “...not many of these stations are mature enough to decide what ads are going to
be good or not so good. They might be desperate to just get some more money to keep
operating.” Even so, “people are conscious that they don’t want to have just any company
manipulating the agenda of their station,” he said. They are certain, for example, that they
do not want to have Coke advertising on their stations. Some have told him, “We’re okay
with ads for fertilizer companies and such, but not for Coke,” or “things like fairness

41
Seth is also an engineer and technology designer for rural information systems at India Institute of
Technology (IIT).

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cream” (A. Seth, personal communication, June 13, 2010).
42
But as stations do not seem
particularly clear on what their criteria were for selecting proper ads, commercial
advertising runs the risk of becoming a contentious and slippery slope.
Because most community radio stations serve rural populations or urban poor
who have typically been a difficult market to target, community radio can potentially be
one of the forces that contribute to the opening of the so called “bottom of the pyramid”
markets (see Introduction). “We can provide the 'last mile connectivity' [to rural
markets]...that many companies want,” Seth said (A. Seth, personal communication, June
13, 2010). In fact, through his company Gram Vaani, Seth plans to offer advertisers
access to the network of his community radio stations clients. Together, the stations cover
a large broadcast footprint into the rural market, saving the company the time and effort
of negotiating on an individual basis with each station. The station, on the other hand,
gets connected to advertisers while getting support to negotiate ad deals that they may not
otherwise have the time or the capacity to broker. Seth feels that once he is able to
establish a wider footprint with stations, he can build the kinds of relationships with
advertisers that will make his activities—and therefore those of community radio—
sustainable (A. Seth, personal communication, June 13, 2010).

Many donors welcome such efforts to make community radio self-sustainable. In
recent years, financial ‘sustainability’ has become one of the foundation world’s latest
preoccupations. In what some would identify as a turn towards neoliberal approaches to

42
Skin lightening cream is a wildly popular consumer product in India that is quite controversial for its
perpetuation of skin color-based social hierarchies and prejudice (including the caste and class prejudices
that are implied by skin-color politics).

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grant making, the worth of a project is often measured in its potential to generate revenue
to cover its costs (or even turn a profit). While certainly, independence from donor
institutions is a desirable end, community radio advocates warn against the potentially
damaging effects of this current funder fad. One of the National Consultation on
Community Radio working papers, for example, noted that “self-sustainability by itself is
unlikely to completely address the issue of financial sustainability.” Unfortunately, the
NGOs and the remote communities they serve “...are unlikely to have the requisite
financial resources to meet the infrastructural and support costs of setting up a
community radio station” (Jaiman, Stalin K., Sen, 2010, p.4).
In one of our discussions, Stalin K., one of the authors of the above mentioned
Consultation working papers, further underscored his belief that “community media is
never going to be fully self-sustainable.” By definition, a marginalized community will
not have the resources to support such activities over the long term. Instead, he suggests,
we should “talk about community media as an investment” and not “get hung up on
sustainability.” He agrees that funders should be concerned about where their money is
going and that it is going to the right places. But they cannot expect, he says for “that
money to jump back to [them] in profits.” A profit model is untenable, he says, because
“profits are not going to jump back from poor communities,” and it is unfair, he feels, to
ask them to sustain the burden (Stalin K., personal communication, December 29, 2010).
In arguing that community media should be viewed as an investment in the
community (rather than as an immediately financially sustainable enterprise), Stalin K.
has articulated the argument I laid out previously about the importance of investing in

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those communication assets that strengthen the communication action context, creating
an enabling environment for the expression of voice. However, as Stalin K. rightly points
out, such investments in a communication infrastructure and communication action
context are not likely to generate quick profits or the short-term project impacts that
donors typically demand from project-based grants. The unrealistic expectation of
financial sustainability thus further highlights the need for a support fund to provide
critical start-up capital, capital that is not tied to a specific agenda other than the growth
of community radio as an inclusive medium.

In addition to the potential infeasibility of asking community groups to self-
sustain their stations, there are also concerns about how advertising as a funding stream
constructs the audience as consumers, emphasizing their integration into markets, rather
than constructing them as citizens for whom these communication tools provide greater
integration into democratic processes, just as highways, bridges, electricity, and other
infrastructure help to facilitate democracy, equality, and national/community cohesion. In
targeting this new category of consumer—the BoP—development efforts and corporate
interests may be coming into too close of an alignment. For example, Veniyoor re-tells
the reaction of some of his Left-wing colleagues, who worry about the potential for
community radio to become “the vanguard of commercial FM.” Community radio
activists are sent to “open up the market...[and] persuade everyone to buy hand radios,” in
areas where radios are scarce. “Once they have audiences,” his friends charged, the
audiences will eventually gravitate toward the FM stations (S. Veniyoor, personal
communication, November 23, 2010). Although Veniyoor did not take these concerns too

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seriously, this line of thinking serves as a reminder that the politics of business models
and questions of whose interests they serve are ever-present and important. These
concerns will be explored in more detail in Chapter Five on mobile innovation for
participation and social networking, as well as in Chapter Six on Breakthrough’s Chatpati
Chat mobile community media platform.

Technology
The financial factors discussed above make it clear that there is a need for more
affordable technology to lower the barriers to entry for NGOs seeking community radio
licenses. It is also necessary to educate NGOs about less-expensive ways to set up a
station. Bhatt suggests that by using Nomad transmitters and a combination of other low-
cost and/or locally made equipment, a studio in a rural area could be built for about
40,000 rupees (about 850 USD). Greater support for the research and development of
indigenous technology would help further decrease these costs. The successful set-up of
even one radio station with such a package of indigenous technology could serve as a
model to encourage more NGOs to enter the radio sector (R. Bhatt, personal
communication, Septermber 12, 2010).
There are also solid political and ideological arguments for using locally-available
technology instead of fancier imports. In other sectors like agriculture, for example, said
Bhatt, NGOs are quite good at offering theories as to why one should use local seed as
opposed to genetically modified trademarked products (e.g., from Monsanto). In addition
to the economic concerns, there is a clear political and social advantage in supporting

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indigenous economies and agricultural products and there is a consciousness about the
value of local agricultural expertise and products. Yet, many do not yet apply this same
logic to communication technology. “If you substitute communication for agriculture,”
Bhatt notes, “that politics is missing” from their arguments. People living across the
street from each other “don’t mind paying Airtel [one of India’s largest mobile carriers]
in Delhi for the cost of our phone call,” he said, even though that money does not stay in
the community (R. Bhatt, personal communication, Septermber 12, 2010). In addition to
the economic arguments for sourcing the technology as close to home as possible,
technological theorists have also pointed to the ways in which technology often bolsters
the interests of those who are most able to influence its design, thus using indigenous
technologies can help ensure that the technology is best suited to local needs, and that it
will contribute to empowering users as producers, rather than consumers (Bijker, 2006;
Brough, Lapsansky, Gonzales & Bar, 2011; Lessig, 1999; Light & Luckin, 2008;
Longford, 2005). The NGOs, Bhatt felt, should be helping local residents to understand
these implications.
In addition to cost considerations that limit the set-up of stations, the technology
used in the station can also either enable or hinder participation. Complicated
technologies can increase the barriers to access for community members who may require
extensive training before they can start producing content. For this reason, in most
community radio stations today, content is created by a few, well-trained community staff
and producers with the aid of a small, dedicated, and highly trained group of volunteers.

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It is therefore difficult to involve broader sections of the community because of the time
and money involved in training.
Simplified technologies, on the other hand, can increase opportunities for wider
participation by enablling community members with more casual associations with the
stations to contribute interesting content or commentary with adequate production value.
Moreover, the current rise in mobile technologies and their integration with community
radio broadcast technologies also makes it possible to bring content creation to
individuals who may not otherwise have access to the station equipment. In the case of
Our Voices, for example, the station developed ways to use PDAs to enable community
members to record content from the field, thus overcoming the problems of time and
distance that kept people from being physically present at the station’s recording studio.
This allowed the Our Voices program to include farmers and other villagers who were
not part of the smaller group of highly trained staff and volunteers. “If they cannot come
to the station,” the station manager stated, “let the station come to them” (Bailur, 2007,
p.12).
This idea of bringing the station to the audience has gained new momentum with
the onset of deeper mobile phone penetration. A number of initiatives are now exploring
the overlap between mobile phones and community radio. Some of these, like CGNet
Swara, use voice-based telephony systems to circumvent the need for radio airwaves and
transmitters altogether. Others combine the convenience and accessibility of mobile
phones with existing radio functions. These initiatives will be considered in more detail
in the next chapters.

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Using mobiles to collect community radio content, however, requires a backend
technological system to manage the content to be aired. Seth’s company, for example, has
designed a system called GRINS, which aims to simplify the process of managing
content at the station, thus enabling community producers to expand the varieties of
content and opportunities for audience involvement. GRINS also has good integration
with telephony, making it easier to produce phone-in shows that balance multiple callers
or to handle live reports or segments delivered by mobile phone from the field. It also
supports an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system that allows callers to browse
content via their phones, making content available at all hours. GRINS even allows for
recorded messages to be stored for later airing, which increases the opportunities for
engagement and participation.
The GRINS system opens up possibilities for anyone to contribute (or listen) to
content more easily by simplifying the management of mobile phone content. With the
more traditional Radio Automaton Systems (RAS) currently used by most stations,
effectively managing incoming mobile content would require as many as four people,
more than most stations can manage. With GRINS, only one or two staff would be
needed, and there is greater functionality. This then allows reporters and audience
members to more easily use mobiles to connect back to the station and offer new uses for
community radio. For example, Seth suggested that mobiles could be used to record and
broadcast local government meetings, allowing villagers to listen-in and even call-in with
responses or questions. Thus local government processes that few would have had access

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to before could become more transparent (A. Seth, personal communication, June 13,
2010).
The GRINS system was still at pilot stage at the time of my interviews with Seth
in June 2010, however, and it remains to be seen how effective it will be. In the
meantime, mobile contributions remain a more advanced technology for community
radio that, although not yet widespread, offers much potential. However, this example
serves to demonstrate that the solutions available (or unavailable) in a given environment
shape the opportunities for user-participation.

Social Exclusion and Physical Access
The social environment also influences the form and extent of participation. In the
earlier chapter on voice, I suggested some ways that social exclusion can affect access
and use of communication technologies, and hence participation in storytelling processes.
This is of course also true of community radio. Existing social structures, practices and
norms, including household hierarchies, socio-economic positioning, the division of labor
between the genders, and the time that must be devoted to fulfilling basic needs can affect
listening patterns and inhibit the discussions that the community radio programs are
intended to trigger (Pavarala & Malik, 2007). Physical access to both the production
technology offered by the station, the radio sets needed to listen, and the technological
literacy needed to produce and/or retrieve content can also affect participation.
Even things as basic as the physical placement of the station can have important
ramifications with regard to whose voices are most represented by the station. A typical

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community radio station, for example, has a broadcast radius of about seven to ten
kilometers, depending on the features of the terrain. In urban areas, this radius may
encompass just one part of a city, but more commonly, this radius includes a number of
different villages spread out across a rural geography centered around one larger town or
village. While it is usually logistically easier to set up a station in the central town, such a
location may discourage participation by rural people who may have to travel long
distances to reach the station. Situating the station near a bus stand can help to mitigate
this concern, but travel time and bus fares will still favor the participation of those who
live closer to the town or who have the privilege of greater discretionary time. The
limitations that this places on participation will be felt all the more strongly for women,
who typically enjoy less mobility and access to public space then their male counterparts.
Women also tend to have heavier domestic and employment work loads that limit their
time for participation. Hence, they may find it particularly difficult to make bus journeys
or otherwise reach stations that are located some distance from their immediate
community.
Even if an NGO tries to place a station outside of the central town so as to favor
rural inhabitants whose need for access to information and communication channels may
be far greater than those of town inhabitants, there may be serious political consequences
to the placement choice. Because villages can vary widely in their socioeconomic
composition, choosing one village out of the many candidates in a given broadcast range
or the particular placement of the station within a village can exacerbate pre-existing
social tensions. The first community radio station in Andhra Pradesh in 2002, for

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example, was set up in a village that was heavily divided along caste lines. The
coordinators first planned to situate the station in the Dalit area, to ensure access for this
marginalized group. The higher castes, however, unhappy with this decision, refused to
support the station if it were to be placed in the Dalit area. On the other hand, if placed in
the upper caste area that Dalits are forbidden to enter, their exclusion would be absolute.
Finally, the organizers met with the panchayat (local village government) and obtained
permission for the Dalits to cross into the other area of the village to use the station.
While in theory, this greater access to the village for Dalit community members could
contribute to breaking down caste barriers, in reality, the discomfort of entering areas
where they are unwelcome probably discourages Dalits’ participation, at least to some
degree (S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23, 2010).
Even if issues of distance, location, and social conflict within the community can
be overcome, issues of caste, class, and gender between the station staff and community
members can limit a potential participant’s willingness to access station resources. A
sexist station coordinator, for example, can discourage the participation of women, or
class-based concerns can lead to distrust of the station staff. In the case of Our Voices, for
example, the station staff were perceived as outsiders who were aligned more closely
with urban concerns, prompting participants to pronounce, “We don’t like the people who
work at the station...They are snobbish” (Ali & Bailur, 2007, p.19). This emphasized the
role of social hierarchy in shaping an individual’s ability to access communication
technology, and their comfort levels in doing so.

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In particular, women often find themselves excluded. As discussed in Chapter
One, the communication ecology of women and other marginalized individuals tends to
be more restrictive, (Skuse et al, 2007), which of course has implications for their ability
to participate in community radio. Though the community radio sector has shown some
success in addressing these barriers through the creation of women-run stations, women’s
participation remains a continuing challenge.

Women and Radio
There are many potential barriers to women’s access and ability to participate in
community radio. Access to ICTs is often through public centers, which tend to be male-
dominated spaces in India and many other developing countries. In Bangladesh, for
example, women were unable to meet in jiggasha discussion groups because of the norms
of purdah and their husbands’ restrictions on their activities (Kincaid, 2000). In addition
to multiple roles and domestic responsibilities that place heavy demands on their time,
women may also have limited mobility (especially after dark), and they may be
constrained by cultural attitudes that discourage their access to—and comfort with—
technology and technological education (Gurumurthy, 2004; Hafkin, 2002).
In other cases, low-literacy, age, or the lack of confidence to speak out adds to
women’s marginalization (Pavarala & Malik, 2007). At least one radio station noticed
that women and non-literate community members—marginalized in so many other areas
of their lives—were particularly self-conscious about submitting scripts to a radio station,
even when invited. Their hesitation, which contributed to the trend of “professional”

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reporters shaping programming without local input (Pavarala & Malik, 2007), further
excluded those already on the margins. During an interview, Veniyoor described some of
these obstacles to me:

One of the oldest community radios in India is called the Alternative for India
Development. They have a station and have been doing radio through other means
[i.e., narrowcasting] for the last 8-10 years. At one time, their field reporters were
50% women, when it was a small enterprise. But now they have their own radio
station, all the women have disappeared. They said it was too dangerous for them
to work with the station. Women are not allowed to go into other villages to
report. And because of the social restrictions, they cant travel, they can’t use a
motorbike to get there (S. Veniyoor, personal communication, November 23,
2010).

Within the family context, technology continues to be controlled mostly by men.
Hence, women’s ability to listen to community radio may be mediated through their
husbands’ control over the radio set. While some men may listen with their families,
many men take the radio set with them when they leave the house so they can listen with
friend or neighbors in public spaces—spaces from which women are absent (Pavarala &
Malik, 2007). Such practices of male group listening often mean there are few
environments conducive to women’s listening. Many women report that they end up
listening at home while cooking or doing housework, and are therefore not able to listen
with full attention, which reduces their ability to recall the content of the program and, as
a consequence, their ability to make meaningful use of the information (Pavarala &
Malik, 2007).
43

43
One of the respondents quoted in Pavarala & Malik’s (2007) book on community radio in India, for
example, sums up the situation well: “We have FM radio at home, I try to listen to Chalo Ho [a community

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In addition, in many instances, the pressure arising from social gender norms
impacts women’s ability to participate in community radio. The kind of mobility and
outspokenness required of community media reporters are often outside the accepted
norms of behavior for women and girls and can lead to social consequences, as was the
case in the IT for Change program, which worked with their partner NGO Mahila
Samakya to involve adolescent girls in community content production. As the IT for
Change program designers told me, NGO staff had to constantly work to counter the
gossip about the girls selected to participate in the program. Some men would ask parents
why their daughters were “going around everywhere.” Others warned that a young
women who had a mobile phone (provided to facilitate their work), had too much access
to “talk to boys”, and that her parents could not “keep an eye on her” (IT for Change
staff, personal communication, September 9, 2010). These comments implied that, with
this new technology, a young woman’s reputation and good standing in the community
were at risk. Some parents, IT for Change staff reported to me, became frightened and
wanted to withdraw their girls from the project. The NGO organizers were able to
intervene in that case, convincing the parents to allow their daughter to particiape, but the
experience served as a reminder for staff about the many social forces that collude to
make women’s participation a challenge.

radio program] every Sunday. But I can only listen while doing housework. When my husband or his
brother takes the radio outside the house, I can’t listen” (p. 221).

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Small Victories for Women’s Participation
Nonetheless, despite these many barriers, community radio has, in many ways,
been a crucial support for gender-rights and the inclusion of women and girls. While
gender is not addressed in the government’s community-radio policy, it is included in the
CRF’s ethical guidelines and a commitment to gender equality is often evident in the
sector. Many stations, including Our Voices (discussed above), the Deccan Development
Society’s station in the Medak district of Andhra Pradesh, the station run by Alternative
for India Development in Jharkhand, and the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan radio
project in Bhuj district of Gujarat, place particular emphasis on ensuring the involvement
of women in content management, production and post production. Some stations have
created entirely women-run radio governance and production structures in the hopes of
empowering women.
A review of the case studies presented by Pavarala & Malik (2007) suggest that
this conscious effort to involve women in management, control, and ownership of
community media technologies has provided women broader access to representation and
other opportunities to participate in decision-making, and has helped them catalyze their
potential to usher change in their communities. Many of the women who received
training in content production, for example, have described how their radio production
training has helped them overcome their fears about leaving their homes or talking to
men. As reporters and active members of station management teams, they now travel
between villages to conduct interviews and confidently use technology to express their
views on-air and through the stories they produce. One of the respondents in Pavarala and

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Malik’s (2007) focus groups described how community radio can transform women’s
lives:

We women were earlier very inhibited. When the men used to sit outside
for discussions, we used to sit inside. Today, after this programme, we feel
we…are confident to come out of the house to even take part in
processions [i.e., public events] (as cited in Pavarala & Malik, 2007, p.
229).

These examples give hope that the participation of women can be increased as
community radio matures, but it will certainly take conscious and sustained effort.

Chapter Three Conclusion
Community radio remains a contested space where ideological debates are waged
and the results of these negotiations shape the reality of community radio practice in
India. As argued in these two chapters, community radio is a critical asset in the
communication action context that offers great opportunity for increasing voice.
However, the case of community radio in India demonstrates some ways in which the
democratic potentials of a medium—be it community radio, social media or mobile
phones (to be discussed in following chapters) —is not determined solely by the nature of
the technology itself, but also by the political and social contexts and dependency
systems in which it will have to operate.
As mobile phones become increasingly ubiquitous, there has been increased
excitement about the potentials of participation they will offer. Indeed, as I will describe
further in Chapter Five, they will offer even greater activities and opportunity for content

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production for community media. However, in the next chapters, I will show that many
of the ideological contestations that have both enabled community radio to find its
footing in India and constrained its implementation also effect the development of mobile
community media. In the next chapter, I will first look at these forces in social media. I
will later turn to the ways social media and mobile phones are coming together in a
number of experiments to increase participatory content, and I will identify some ways
that the political, financial and social challenges faced by community radio will likewise
affect the deployment of participatory mobile phone efforts.

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CHAPTER FOUR
THE META-NARRATIVE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN INDIA

As I have shown in earlier chapters, the value of community media is in its ability
to support bottom-up content-generation and to create a space for individuals and
communities to voice their concerns, thoughts and ideas about what they “have reason to
value” in the development and social change process. Community media facilitates a
social process through which individual views, opinions and concerns are not only heard,
but can be engaged, built upon, and critiqued by other community members. It is a
process of storytelling and narration about the values, collective identities—and possible
identities—of a given community. Community media can also potentially invert power
hierarchies in the production of media and the construction of knowledge as it shifts the
power of content creation from dominant power centers to the margins.
In recent years, many scholars have begun to argue that online social networking
sites can provide similar spaces for bottom-up content generation and the expressions of
voice. Both academic and popular literature has included a number of calls-to-arms about
how Web 2.0 and “participatory culture” enable new democratic modes of knowledge
production and civic engagement that will allow online publics to generate content from
the margins, thereby challenging the dominance of mainstream media and broader social
structures (Benkler, 2006; Jenkins, 2006; Shirky, 2010). Indeed, exciting developments
such as the recent events of the Arab Spring (Iskander, 2011; Hofheinz, 2011; Russell,
2011) do indicate that new media and peer-to-peer content-sharing can provide valuable

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alternative means of communication, coordination, and expression for voices from
outside of mainstream media’s centers of power. A similar rhetoric about social media is
emerging in India as well. In 2008, the Mumbai terrorist attack—and the public’s turn to
Twitter and the blogosphere to help make sense of it – indicated to many that social
media had “come of age” in India (Lewis, 2008). This chapter will discuss this, and other
key events since, including the Pink Chaddi campaign—an online protest against Hindu
fundamentalist attacks on women—and the 2009 general elections (India’s first ‘digital
election’). These three events, in additon to others (such as the Sashi Tharoor and Radia
tape “Twitter scandals” and the Anna Hazara anti-corruption movements
44
) that are
beyond the scope of this chapter have captured the attention of both Indian and
international trend watchers, and have demonstrated the ways in which social media is,
supposedly, changing public life in India.

Social Media, Democracy and Voice
Such events—both in India and globally—have engendered a certain cyber-
utopianism that assumes that new media are somehow inherently revolutionary and
democratic, and will therefore usher in more egalitarian societies. As Google executive

44
The political career of Sashi Tharoor, one of India’s most respected statesmen, took a public beating
after he made an off-color joke on Twitter. Shortly after Sashi Tharoors gaff, a large government scandal
concerning corruption in the allocation of the 2G mobile spectrum was broken on Twitter. The mainstream
media, many of whom were implicated in the scandal itself, has been widely accused of orchestrating an
intentional media blackout of the scandal, but pressure from social media sites such as Twitter and
Facebook eventually forced public attention, and, eventually, media attention on the corruption. Finally, in
the Spring of 2011, a new populist hero was born in the anti-corruption advocate Anna Hazara whose
hunger strikes and sit-ins galvanized the nation to stand up against corruption. Even as the numbers of
supporters increased, news coverage began on the use of social media by both Anna Hazara himself, as
well as his public, for organizing, coordinating and gaining support for the movement.

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Wael Ghonim said on the day Mubarak resigned as president: “If you want to liberate a
society, just give them the Internet” (Cooper, 2011). This sentiment is alive and well in
India as well, where, in the words of one Times of India columnist, social media has
quickly and dramatically become “more than a place where you scrapbook to tell the
world whether you are sipping tea or combing your hair.” The media had been
transformed by social media, the author continued, “rais[ing] the level of self-expression
to a higher and revolutionary level” (Nair, 2009).
Web 2.0 interactive and peer-to-peer media do seem to be promising sites for the
expression of voice and broader involvement in the public spheres that influence political
change, including the construction of development agendas. However, it is necessary to
recognize the ways in which Web 2.0 and social networking, under many circumstances,
provide only a limited form of voice, and indeed only to a limited few. Returning to our
earlier discussion on digital inclusion and exclusions, it is clear that discourse and debate
on online social networking sites are invitation-only, and you aren’t invited unless you
have the skills and the access to get online. For example, Iskander (2011) shows that
while social media served as a valuable tool for political debate and organizing during the
Egyptian uprising, “the Web 2.0 activists, although they were talking more, were still
largely talking only to each other” (p. 1231). Further, while social media allowed this
group of ‘Web 2.0’ activists to voice their views and demands about the revolution, this
Facebook discourse was not necessarily representative of the political voices of the
majority of Egyptians (Iskander, 2011). Iskander and others rightly point out that the
success of the Egyptian revolution was not brought to us by Facebook alone, but rather

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social networking sites were just part of larger communication ecologies and practices
that connected and empowered activists—even those with no digital proclivities or
access—in many different ways (Hofhienz, 2011; Russell, 2011).
Furthermore, scholars such as Sarah Banet-Weiser (forthcoming), Alison Hearn
(2008) and Nick Couldry (2011) have shown the ways that social networking sites have
become platforms for self-branding, performance and reciprocal evaluation, thus
amplifying a neoliberal preoccupation with the entrepreneurial self. Burgess and Green
(2009) argue that user-generated content sites such as YouTube were not created to
support the creation of communities or collaborative groups, but were instead designed
with intentional focus on the individual and the individual’s potential for self-
representation online. This self branding, premised on a neoliberal value of freedom,
results in what Couldry calls “an apparent expansion of ‘voice’ as cover for the
increasing penetration of market values into the space of self” (Couldry, p. 34, emphasis
original). As he goes on to argue, “a logic of self-branding prima facie offers a route to
voice and recognition, but each is on offer only on the terms that govern a competitive
market of appearances” (p. 131).
Many of these critiques raise the question of whether alternative visions of social
change can emerge from social networking sites that are both products of and supports to
mainstream capitalist logic. Others are more optimistic. For example, Peters and Seier
(2009) describe the “self-staging” that takes place on YouTube as a means to political
and social transformation.

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Similarly, community media advocates are forced to ask whether commercial
social media can really enable the marginalized to critique dominant discourses about
development, or if this new media’s close interdependence on status-quo capitalist social
structures will limit the medium’s utility in this regard. I find it useful to recognize that
both views can comfortably coexist. As Aouragh and Alexander (2011) note, the
“Internet is both a product of imperialist and capitalist logics and something that is
simultaneously used by millions in the struggle to resist those logics” (p. 1344).

Meta-narratives, Social Media and Development in India
In recent years, Web 2.0 platforms and social media use have increased
remarkably in India, and with it, the cyber-utopian beliefs in their power to do everything
from transforming democracy, increasing transparency, ending corruption, increasing
inclusive political participation, and mobilizing publics. These mythologies have been
constructed partially through prominent social media news events in the last few years
such as the Pink Chaddi campaign, the Mumbai attacks and the 2009 elections (see for
example, Krishnan, 2009).
The dramatic engagement of social media users in these three events seem to
indicate that there is potential to apply the technology to strengthening participation and
voice in development processes. As Hallin (1986) would have described it, we may be
seeing an expansion of the sphere of legitimate debate—through the creation of networks
among individuals—that can give voice to everyday citizens who have previously not had
such tools to influence mainstream debate, and this process could be purposefully steered

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to engage development discourse. On the other hand, we may simply be witnessing a
froth of excitement whipped up by the hyperboles of an overzealous media. Only time
will tell.
However, what is clear is that the events ignited a public discourse about the role
and impact of social media in society. Optimisitic press coverage about the role of social
media in these events feeds a fascination and excitement about social media both among
industry leaders and the population at large. It contributes to an idealistic vision of social
media as the harbinger of a new era of democratic potential and entrepreneurial
opportunity. Russell (2011) has described such discourses as journalistic meta-narratives
such as those that tend to emerge following any major news media event, pointing to
Gitlin’s description of meta-narratives about the profession of journalism and its
legitimacy in constructing news events. Russell identifies the ways in which, in recent
years, these meta-narratives often become about the stories being reported by people via
social media, as well as about social media as a force in and of itself. This meta-narrative
about social media, is, ultimately, about the legitimization of information and knowledge
and who has the authority to construct it. It is this meta-discourse that I explore in this
chapter.
In this section, as a way to begin to map the features of this emerging meta-
narrative, I look closely at the public dialogues surrounding the Pink Chaddi campaign,
the Mumbai attacks, and the 2009 election in the media and blogosphere that sought to
make sense of the social impacts of the rise of social media. This discussion takes as its
point of departure the assumption that, as Arceneuax & Weiss (2010) note in their

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analysis of news coverage of Twitter from 2006 to 2009, the press coverage about a
technology can provide “insight into the euphoria, confusion, skepticism and contested
process of technological adoption that greet all new forms of media” (p. 1263). As they
go on to say, press coverage “is not simply a transparent method to distribute information
but can function as a force of change itself, influencing the ways these technologies are
diffused, utilized and regulated” (p. 1263).
Hence, whether or not the prolific coverage of social media’s role in prominent
news events in India constitutes a true and accurate reflection of social media’s
significance in India, the story itself contributes to a meta-narrative which constructs that
very significance. The press coverage informs the reader of social media’s significance,
and through that very act, it helps to further construct and increase its significance. It is
the resulting meta-narrative that influences how social media are understood by the
public. More importantly for the purposes of this study, it is also part of the social milieu
which influences how development practitioners and communication planners think and
talk about the role of social media in their work.
Thus, analysis of the coverage of these high-visibility social media moments helps
to map the emergent dominant narrative constructed about the social impacts and
implications of social media in India. Here I do not attempt to pass judgment on whether
or not social media has in fact made the impact on Indian society that the media claims.
There is currently insufficient literature to make such claims one way or the other, and it
is too early in the game to observe the long-term effects. This is thus not an analysis of
actual social media use practices, but rather an analysis of the images, metaphors,

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debates, hopes and fears that are communicated in the press coverage of social media in
prominent news events.
Indeed, in many ways, a meta-narrative about social media and society has
already begun to influence development communications, especially within the ICT4D
subfield. Web 2.0 culture and its many metaphors is driving the vanguard of ICT4D as it
moves towards what Heeks describes as “ICT4D 2.0” (see Chapter One). My interviews
have also indicated that social media has become a metaphor that guides not only
communication for development projects and technology design, but also the framing and
rhetorical turns used to position and describe these projects. As I will show in the next
chapter, many projects that aim to create space for community voice are inspired by the
task of bringing the benefits of Web 2.0 and social media “to the village” or to other
communities challenged by digital exclusion. Further, many designers I spoke with
turned to the language of social media to explain the merits of their social initiatives. For
example, Kohl Singh is the social entrepreneur driving a new venture called Labour
Voices that aims to reduce labor rights violations by providing peer-to-peer information
to workers. He explained his platform as a “Yelp for migrant labor” multiple times in our
interviews and correspondences (K. Singh, personal communication, November 25,
2010). Similarly, the website for Babajob, a system that helps low-income workers in
Bangalore connect with potential employers through references in their social networks,
also compares itself to existing social media services as a way to help audiences
understand the project. Their website notes that Babajob founder Sean Blagsvedt
observed that low-income individuals often find jobs because they “knew someone who

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knew someone” and goes on to quote the founder: “great—all they need is the village
version of LinkedIn.com!” (as cited on Babajob, 2011, para. 3), and so the idea for
Babajob was born.
It is clear that the meta-narrative does affect development projects. The question
then becomes whether these turns, be they rhetorical or actual, lead to the creation of
platforms where voice— and the collective practices of storytelling, listening and
debating that are needed to support it—can truly be exercised. In later chapters, we will
look at the actual efforts to create such platforms “for the village” that are being driven
by both development planners and technological or social entrepreneurs in an attempt to
make social media more inclusive. Here, however, we will look at the construction of the
meta-narrative about mainstream social media in India more broadly as part of the
context in which these implementers operate and which affect their work in both subtle
and obvious ways.
Next I turn to a review of several important moments in the evolution of the social
media meta-discourse that began in the pivotal year of 2008. Following this, I will
discuss some of the key implications and impacts of these events.

The Mumbai Terrorist Attacks
Although social media was growing in popularity prior, the horrific 2008 Mumbai
terrorist attacks have often been described as social media’s (in particular, Twitter’s)
coming of age in India (Beaumont, 2008; Lewis, 2008; Mehta & Kumar, 2009). During
the 60 hours that Mumbai was under siege, Mumbaites turned to Twitter, YoutTube,

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Facebook, and blogs to both consume and create real-time information to help navigate
the crisis.
Within hours of the first attack, Google Maps of affected areas had been created,
blogs posts had emerged with the latest updates, and Flickr and Twitter streams had been
populated with up-to-the-minute images and news flashes. Officials and the public alike
used Twitter to disseminate public information and announcements, including the names
of hospitals in need of blood donations and helpline numbers to reunite friends and
family (Busari, 2008), while eyewitnesses and concerned residents sent an estimated 70-
80 tweets via SMS every 5 seconds (Beaumont, 2008; Busari, 2008). Google documents
helped track the identities of the dead, and real-time updates guided citizens away from
the most dangerous locations (Busari, 2008).
The surge in online activities during the crisis drew international attention not
only to social media’s arrival as a significant feature of India’s media landscape, but also
this technological potential and limitation as a source for public information. Many felt
that the attacks had served as a testing ground for new media and its role in public
emergencies. As one Twitter-user observed, Mumbai became “a social media experiment
in action” (Busari, 2008). Indeed, the case has become the basis for much theorizing
about the implications of social media in India and globally.
45
Social media was used as

45
For example, academic studies have used the case to examine Twitter’s potential as an information
broadcasting and brokering system (Hughes & Palen, 2009), as a tool for “citizen sensing” or open-source
intelligence gathering (Battle, 2009; Sheth, 2009) and as a form of citizen media operating alongside
traditional media institutions (Kaplan, 2009). Its utility and vulnerability as an emergency response
information and coordination platform have also been analyzed, pointing to the potential of Twitter and
other platforms to provide terrorists with vital situational information that enables strategic responsive
decision making and more efficient attacks (Oh et al, 2010).

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an emergency response system; a challenge and an alternative to mainstream media; and,
in the aftermath, a platform for channeling and directing anger and outrage towards both
the terrorists and a seemingly apathetic and ineffectual government that proved unable to
protect its citizens.
The wave of analysis (from mainstream media, the blogosphere and the
academy
46
) that followed the attacks represented a complex constellation of attitudes
towards social media. First, it called into question the efficacy and role of mainstream
media and prompted a collective examination of mainstream media practices during
public emergencies. Second, it brought to light the cultural tension between the optimism
and emancipatory hopes attached to social media on the one hand, and, on the other, the
social anxieties and fears about its misuse, particularly in the context of national security.
Third, and perhaps most significantly for the larger questions of voice and engagement, it
set off a wave of engagement and activism among a previously apathetic middle class. A
number of online portals sprang up to support the increasing political engagement at the
time (e.g., Jaago Re, which I will discuss later), starting a trend that continues today. In
this section, I will briefly discuss each of these three outcomes.
Typically, the meta-narrative that emerges in the wake of crisis includes a cultural
examination of the roles, functions and shortcomings of traditional media (Gitlin, 2002;
Ibrahim, 2009). Similarly, the heavy use of social media to narrate the Mumbai attacks
initiated such an examination. In the decades since deregulation of India’s media
industry, the media has evolved into a thriving and important component of India’s

46
E.g., see Mishra, 2009; Oh, Agrawal & Rao, 2009; Pepper, 2008.

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democracy. However, the 60 hours of continuous telecast coverage of the attacks exposed
a number of the media industry’s limitations. At one point, South Mumbai news channels
were even shut off for forty-five minutes on the orders of the Deputy Commissioner of
Police. Presumably an act meant to preserve national security, this measure only
increased panic among Mumbaiites. The move may not have been unwarranted; however,
as the broadcasters had earlier reported details of the Indian security forces’ latest tactical
maneuvers and other information that could potentially have threatened rescue operations
(Ibrahim, 2009).
There was widespread condemnation, from all sides, of the shortcomings of the
media during the attacks, especially the failures of the 24-hour news channels. Some felt
that the intense competition among India’s many private news channels had led them to
engage in over-sensationalizing events, reducing these serious events to the level of
“reality show” or “TV terror” (Ibrahim, 2009; Pepper, 2008). A survey conducted by a
media watchdog group in New Delhi found that 74% of respondents felt that the coverage
was overly theatrical. The media tendency to report live “exclusives” of unconfirmed
rumors (Pepper, 2008) was certainly troubling. Most problematic, however, was the
media’s over-simplification of political analysis, and the use of unsubstantiated and
jingoistic claims that vilified Pakistan. Such tactics, which threatened to destabilize the
already-troubled political relationship between the two nuclear powers, were considered
particularly irresponsible (Chandran, 2009; Pepper, 2008). In addition, later analysis and
press covereage criticized TV news for elitist reporting that gave disproportionate
attention to hostages in the high-end Taj Mahal Palace and Trident-Oberoi hotels, and

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much less camera time to the Chhatrapati Shivaji train terminal—the site of the largest
number of casualties—where migrant workers constituted the majority of the victims
(Pepper, 2008).
47

All of this led to a public examination of the responsiveness, efficacy, and
accountability of traditional media in the wake of the attacks. Sociology professor
Dipankar Gupta felt the event provided an important opportunity for the media to be
introspective and to “figure out how to operate in a time of crisis” (as quoted in Pepper,
2008). Others, even within the media, were less forgiving. “It’s high time we realize and
accept we were at fault,” said Shishir Joshi, editorial director of Mid-Day, a Mumbai
newspaper. "We did well getting into the line of fire, but from an ethical point of view,
we screwed up big-time" (as cited in Pepper, 2008, para 5). The broadcast media had,
many felt, failed to uphold its role of providing accurate, ethical, and responsible
coverage that could serve the interests of the nation and democracy (Ibrahim, 2009).

Twitter and Citizen Journalism: A Viable Alternative?
In his discussion of the relationship between social media and mainstream news
during the Arab Spring, Russell (2011) describes the ways in which the use of networked
and decentralized news from social media sources altered not only the news product
delivered by mass media, but also the professional norms and practices of the mainstream

47

In its defense, the media points to the government’s lack of a coherent information and
communication management strategy as one of the causes of the media’s chaotic and at times irresponsible
reporting, and point to the failure to fix police lines around the hostage sites and the lack of regular police
press briefings as exacerbating the problems (Pepper, 2008). In fact, military authorities themselves were
providing unfiltered detail to the media that formed part of the questionable reports (Rand, 2009).

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journalists. Similarly, social media analysts argued that a new wave of crisis reporting
was born when Western journalists turned to Twitter updates and other user-generated
content from people on the scene for details of the events (Beaumont, 2008; Director of
National Intelligence [DNI], 2010; Mishra, 2009a). At the same time, the crisis in
confidence in the traditional news media brought more attention to the possibilities of
Twitter and social media as a more nimble, efficient, relevant news source that could
operate somewhat independently from the private interests that influence mainstream
media. Media analyst argued that, at least during the first two hours of the attack, Twitter
and Flickr were much more relevant sources of information than the mainstream media,
thanks to Twitter and Flikr’s greater flexibility and responsiveness to rapidly unfolding
events. While television reporters were seemingly anchored to one location by their
cumbersome broadcast equipment, social media users were able to nimbly navigate the
streets, capturing the story on digital cameras and cell phones from multiple locations as
events unfolded across a complicated urban geography. This mode of networked and
mobile coverage was seemingly much more relevant to a multi-sited attack such as this
one, and arguably represents a model for future styles of journalism.
Even so, social media had its own set of limitations; there was much concern and
debate both about misinformation flows and about issues of verification, credibility, and
reliability of sources from these platforms (Bell, 2008; Busari, 2008; Heussner, 2008;
Lewis, 2008). As blogger Tim Mallon put it, "I started to see and [sic] ugly side to
Twitter. Far from being a crowd-sourced version of the news, it was actually an
incoherent, rumour-fueled mob operating in a mad echo chamber of tweets, re-tweets,

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and re-re-tweets” (Busari, 2008). Indeed, it became increasingly apparent that many so-
called facts were unsubstantiated, and that blatantly incorrect information was being
propagated through Twitter. For example, one Internet report claimed that the Indian
government was going to shut down Twitter streams as a step towards tightening
security. The BBC reported this unverified story, and used unsubstantiated live reports
from Twitter as part of its coverage. In response to the criticisms that followed when the
rumors proved false, Steve Harmann, news editor for the BBC, commented that the
organization would need to be more careful about its use of ”lightening-fast,
unsubstantiated citizen posts from Twitter in the future” (“BBC admits mistakes”, 2008,
para 2). In short, while it was clear the mainstream media had a number of failings in a
crisis situation, it was even more clear that full reliance on new media was not a sure fix
to the problem either.

Social Media and the Co-construction of News in Mumbai
Whether or not it was effective as a source of reliable information, the widespread
use of Twitter undermined the media’s control over the message. Traditionally,
mainstream news media largely act as a center of power that determine the terms of the
debate and the social construction of the reality surrounding media events such as the
Mumbai attacks. Because the public is traditionally connected to these media makers, but
not to each other, there is not much room for average citizens to enter into the meaning-
making process of news content production. Participatory media culture, on the other
hand, connects audiences members to each other, so they can bypass the centralized

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control of the mainstream news outlets to create and construct news and its interpretation
from the margins (Russell, 2011).
This inversion of media power allows the public to be part of the construction of
media events in new ways (Ibrahim, 2009; Kaplan, 2009). Media events in the social
media era, for example, are co-constructed by users whose Tweets, Facebook activities
and blog posts become an ever-increasing part of the story that the media generates. In
addition to the Mumbai attacks, Ibrahim pointed out, media events such as the 2004
Tsunami, 9/11 attacks in the United States, the 7/7 Bombings, the war in Iraq, and the
Saffron Revolution all represent examples of the ways in which new media and
traditional media have become “inextricably conjoined” in the process of constructing a
narrative for the public (Ibrahim, 2009). More recently, the Egyptian revolution and other
uprisings in the Middle East have demonstrated how social media can simultaneously be
one of the engines driving the events of the news story and a platform through which the
media event is narrated and constructed, while simultaneously becoming the news story
itself (Russell, 2011).
This represents an interesting new dynamic in the process through which media
events take on meaning. In their classic work, Dayan & Katz (1992), for example, have
described how media events mark historical events through the interruption of routine
broadcast schedules and the collective focusing of national attention to one event (see
also Katz & Liebes, 2007; Liebes & Katz, 1997; Scannell, 1996). Blondheim & Liebes
(2002) point to the ways that the media, through its role as a story-teller, constructs—and
attaches meanings to—these events. These media events are usually highly-orchestrated

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by the media and those involved in the event, thus concentrating the media’s power to
construct their meaning. Katz & Liebes (2007) have expanded this observation, noting
how media events in the age of modern terrorism are often less ceremonial in nature, and
are instead defined by collective attention to national trauma, or, as Ibrahim writes, they
lead to “the suspension of usual routines to carve a moment in time where the nation
convenes over the televiual space…to mourn and commemorate” (p.393).
Importantly, however, the Mumbai terrorist attacks demonstrate that, in present
times, not only are such attacks significant media events, but the visibility given to
everyday voices of “citizen journalists” through social media subverts traditional media’s
former exclusive control over the construction of the event. This, I argue, creates a new
form of media event—a social media event. The social media event is a modern,
networked form of media event that shifts both the ways in which the narrative is
constructed and how it is consumed.
The Mumbai attack thus constituted India’s first “social media event” whereby
the media’s supreme role in the construction and ownership of meaning around critical
events was brought into question by high-visibility, user-generated content creation by
“citizen journalists.” Indeed, a steady stream of user-generated content bubbled up from
social media sites into both the public consciousness and the mainstream media, diluting
the mainstream media’s control over the construction of meaning.
This inversion of media power, putting the ability to create the story in the hands
of common people, has given birth to a new breed of “citizen journalists,” or ordinary
people whose tweets, blogs, and status updates can shoot them to international celebrity

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status. The live blogging by Amit Varma, a previously-unknown young IT professional in
Mumbai, for example, landed him on Larry King Live only hours after the attack began.
Similarly, Vinukumar Ranganathan, amateur photographer, was celebrated in countless
news stories for his Flickr stream, which contained over 300 graphic photos from the
epicenter of the attack. Many of these photos were later picked up by global television
and print media, and Ranganathan himself received considerable coverage in the news
media. The rise of such “social media stars” bolstered the perception (or perhaps,
illusion) that social media is a democratizing space where anyone with something
worthwhile to say can be heard, even if they do not have the establishment of mainstream
media and its corporate interests legitimating their voice.
The greater participation of the audience in the construction of its own news
certainly lends some credence to the utopian claims of new media's democratizing
potential. Certainly, similar observations from other parts of the world about the ways in
which online participation of the audience can shift what is considered to be news and
how it is gathered contribute to this impression (Benkler, 2006; Benson, 2010; Jenkins,
2009). Most recently, of course, the Egyptian revolution illustrated how control over the
creation of the news story can shift from embedded journalists (who still maintain their
status as separate and distinct from the action) to participants who are part of the
unfolding events, even as they are covering them (Russell, 2011).
In the previous chapters, we have seen that locally relevant news, as well as news
and opinions from alternative voices outside of these traditional centers of
communication power is critical to community media’s ability to enable voice and

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participation. As we have just seen, such activities, when writ large, can destabilize
entrenched power structures. The meta-narratives about social media and news, then,
echo the political struggles of community media practitioners, especially community
radio activists in India, to provide access to news creation and sharing to communities or
individuals who have typically been excluded from the processes of making news and
contructing its meaning.

National Security and Social Media
However, this optimism about increased democratic participation in news-
making—which has become part of the narrative that marks India’s current discourse on
social media—is in tension with fears and anxieties surrounding the rise of these new
technologies, particularly fears concerning national security. Kaplan (2009), for example,
pointed out the ways in which this news coverage of the attacks highlights the multiple
and contradictory understandings of communication technologies. On the one hand, the
media celebrates the democratic appeal of these innovations, and lauds their ability to
promote national security by engaging a larger population in active citizenship. On the
other hand, the increasing use of social media as tools of defense and warfare by both
state and non-state actors undermines their democratic and emancipatory potential and
plays on the public anxiety about security.
48
In the wake of the Mumbai attacks, “the

48
The widespread use of these media also creates very real dilemmas for a state. Although Twitter and
other platforms could be very useful as emergency response information sources and coordination tools,
they can simultaneously provide terrorists with vital situational information that could make their strategic
responsive decision-making easier and more efficient (i.e., deadly) (Oh, Agrawal & Rao, 2009). The
perception that information technology tools could be appropriated by “the enemy” thus leaves many
uneasy about the potential dangers and insecurities presented by this new technology (Kaplan, 2009).

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technologies that produce the possibilities of access and participation, so celebrated as the
dawn of a more perfect democratization,” wrote Kaplan (2009), “are also feared within
the context of security as the source of new forms of terror” (p. 304).
Specifically, while networked communication technologies like social media (and
the mobile devices used to access it) served as vital sources of information for a
frightened populous, information technologies were also critical to the terrorists’ ability
to implement such a harrowing offensive (Battle, 2009; DNI, 2011; Oh, Agrawal & Rao,
2010; Rand, 2009).
49
The news media paid particular attention to use of Blackberries,
Google maps, VoIP telephony, and GPS as critical to the coordination of terrorist
offensives, generating the image of ‘networked terrorists’ that then loomed large in the
public imagination. One observer described a gunmen who “seemed to be talking on a
mobile phone even as he used his other hand to fire off rounds,” (as cited in Kaplan,
2009, p. 305) conjured images that contrasted with the prevelant stereotypes of jihadis as
unsophisticated, backwards villagers. Moreover, it did not help that the media portrayed
the local security forces as outmatched, both strategically and tactically, by the highly-
networked terrorists. That combination of images stoked fears and anxieties associated
with what defense analysts categorize as a new form of modern terrorism—a multi-sited

49
Of course, the appropriation of new media tools by terrorists was not a new concern at the time of
the Mumbai attacks, nor is it a concern particular to India. Just over a month before the attacks, news of a
draft US AMRY intelligence report detailing the perils of social media hit the headlines in the US. The
report stated that intelligence officials had for years been concerned about the possibility that terrorists
could use commercial hardware and software to coordinate militant attacks and that web to mobile and
mobile to web services (e.g. Twitter) pose particular risk (DNI, 2010).

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offensive made possible by the emergence of mobile and networked technologies (Rand,
2009).
The Mumbai terrorists’ use of social networking tools, in combination with the
rising number of dissident elements on social media sites, has led to concern about the
use of social media to enable future terrorist attacks and strengthen separatist movements
in India. A US government report that received wide coverage in India, noted an increase
in pro-separatist material and propaganda on social networking sites in India since 2008
(DNI, 2010). Sikh separatist groups advocating for Khalistan (an independent Sikh state),
rebels in India’s contested Northeast states, separatist groups in Kashmir, and pro-Maoist
Naxalite groups have all been reported to use Orkut, Facebook, YouTube, blogging sites,
and other social media to both disseminate ideas amongst current supporters and reach
out to new recruits (DNI, 2010).
These growing concerns about chinks in the armor of national security reflect the
anxieties attached to the rise of new media, even as the excitement about its potential is
palpable. At the time of this writing, for instance, the Indian government is in continued
talks with Research in Motion (RIM), the company that manufactures Blackberry, about
the security concerns surrounding its Blackberry Messenger (BBM) service, apparently
one of the tools used by the terrorist in Mumbai. The government has threatened that it
will shut down all Blackberry service in India if RIM does not meet its demands to
provide the government with monitoring and surveillance mechanisms for the BBM
service.

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This is not the first time that the government has enforced controls over
telecommunication services. In fact, the government banned all bulk SMS and MMS
services for 72 hours in anticipation of the controversial Babri Masjid verdict delivered
by the Allahabad High Court on September 24, 2010 because of “apprehensions from the
intelligence agencies that anti-social elements and rumour-mongers could use SMS and
MMS services to create tensions and disrupt peace in the country, particularly in
communally-sensitive cities and towns” (Joshi, 2010, para 4). Similarly, text messaging
has been banned repeatedly in Jammu & Kashmir, a state troubled by separatist protests
and violence, so as to discourage the use of the technology for coordination among anti-
nationalist groups (“Govt bans SMS”, 2010). These cases indicate the government’s
willingness to assert its power to limit communication channels in the name of national
security. Although unconfirmed, there are also suspected cases of government
interference with Web 2.0 technologies that have been used to promote dissenting views.
For example, in Spring, 2011, the tech blogs and listserves were abuzz with rumors that
in order to control anti-national sentiment, the government had shut down access to
Blogger, a prominent blog site. Although not well documented, it is also widely
acknowledged that India has been experimenting with website filtering since at least 2003
(Opennet.net, 2012). Shubhranshu Choudhary, the founder of the CGNet Swara audio-
based social media platform for the tribal state of Chhattisgarh (see previous chapter) has
also faced government pressure that has lead to the suspension of the service at various
times. When the project launched, its tech partner, the reseach outfit of a leading global
software company, hosted the servers needed to maintain the audio service. However,

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suddenly and without warning, the MSR legal department demanded that the server no
longer be hosted by MSR. The circumstances are unclear, but there is good reason to
believe that the government put pressure on MSR to remove the server. CGNet Swara
continues to have trouble finding hosting services, as many mainstream companies will
not host their content because of fear of government reprisals. Activists involved in the
CGNet Swara project have also been trailed and intimated by police, who warn them
against association with the project. Because of this pressure, many of them have stopped
their engagement with the online discussion forums that are part of the project. The
CGNet Swara case demonstrates the ways in which government control can fly under the
radar and work through coercion and intimidation (rather than direct censorship) to shut
down free speech on social media platforms. This highlights the government’s
willingness to control new media practices, and alerts us to the reality that freedom of
expression on these platforms is subject to government’s goodwill. As these tools are
increasingly used to air dissenting voices, we may see ‘national security’ becoming a
cover under which the government seeks to control expression on this platform, just as
national security is the catch-all mechanism of control for community radio licensing,
leaving would-be broadcasters in conflict states without means of expression.
Meta-narratives that fan the fears about national security—and the resulting
government surveillance or coercion at the hands of the government—threaten the
openness of these platforms and may limit their potential for the supporting and
expanding communication rights. For evidence, one need look no futher than the
government’s use of national security to justify the ban on news on the radio or the denial

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of communitry radio licenses to NGOs in conflict-ridden states. Many of my interviewees
hope that mobile social networking and/or mobile community media platforms can help
circumvent some of this censorship, and indeed, there is some indication that this may be
the case. However, the ban on SMSs in Kashmir and the shut down of CGNet Swara’s
servers demonstrate that mobiles do not transcend restrictive regulatory environments.
Currently, mobile content is relatively open, as limiting regulatory policies have not yet
caught up to the newness of the industry. However, as mobile technologies become more
established, the government may seek to place additional restrictions in order to limit the
mobile communication networks’ ability to support expression of community voice. This
will be discussed further in following chapters on mobile innovations for social and
community media.

The Longer-term Impact of Social Media Use During Mumbai Attacks:
Enabling Political Engagement Through Social Media
Perhaps the most significant and long-lasting outcome of social media use
surrounding the Mumbai attacks was its role in giving people a place to voice their
frustration. After the attacks the momentum of these networks has helped to inculcate an
online political culture that has lasted far beyond the attacks and its aftermath. People
turned to Facebook, Orkut, and text messages to express their anger and criticize the
mainstream media’s coverage of the event. They used SMS campaigns to rail against
corrupt politicians who failed to protect the populace, and used Facebook and Orkut to
organize protests and campaigns (Lakshmi, 2008). This online political response,

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suggested social media expert Gaurav Mishra, inadvertently mobilized a cohort of
previously unengaged youth who, also angered by the attacks and the apathy of the
politicians in its aftermath, were ready to join an increasing number of e-protests and
online election mobilization activities such as Tata Tea’s “Jaago Re” and Mishra’s own
“India Vote” (Mishra, 2009d). Since many of these intiatives were ultimately linked to
the 2009 election, I will discuss the implications of their use in the later section on the
elections. First, however, we will look at the next social media event in the chronology:
the Pink Chaddi campaign.

The Pink Chaddi Campaign: Contesting Gender and Indian Identity Through
Social Media
On Valentine’s Day, 2009, thousands of pairs of pink “chaddis”
50
arrived by
courier at the Mangalore office of Pramod Muthalik, the leader of a right-wing orthodox
Hindu group called the Sri Ram Sena. The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward
Women—the group responsible for this flamboyant “Pink Chaddi” campaign—managed
to garner significant national and international media coverage with the stunt, bringing
great embarrassment to the Sri Ram Sena. The Consortium—a Facebook group 59,000
strong at its peak (“Moral police”, 2009) that formed to protest the Sri Ram Sena’s use of
violence and intimidation to control women's behavior in the Southern city of
Mangalore— and its campaign are often cited as an example of the power of social media
to enable collective mobilization and citizen engagement in India.

50

Chaddi is a colloquial word meaning 'underwear.’

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The Sri Ram Sena, whose leader was the target of the Pink Chaddi actions,
describe themselves as the ‘custodians of Indian culture’ (Crowder, 2009; Page, 2009).
As part of this self-appointed role as India’s moral police, the Sri Ram Sena is
particularly critical of women whose “anti-traditional” lifestyle choices in regards to
clothing and dating, in their view, “are against Indian culture” and threaten the morality
of Indian women and the virtue of Indian society as a whole. Said founding member
Pravin Valke is quoted as saying,

These girls come from all over India, drink, smoke, and walk around in the
night spoiling the traditional girls of Mangalore…Why should girls go to
pubs? Are they going to serve their future husbands alcohol? Should they
not be learning to make chapattis [Indian bread]? Bars and pubs should be
for men only. We want to ensure that all women in Mangalore are home
by 7 p.m. (as cited in Johnson, 2009, para 9).

The Sri Ram Sena has shown its willingness to back up its regressive sentiments
with action. On January 24, 2009, a group of about forty Sri Ram Sena supporters
stormed a popular pub, physically assaulting young women and men for defying Indian
traditions.
51
The incident was widely denounced and was criticized by the state’s Minister
of Women, Renuka Chowdhury, as the “Talibanization of India” (Page, 2009).
52
While

51

Video of the incident was shown repeatedly on television and shared widely on social media sites,
instigating nationwide outrage against the attacks (Mishra, 2009a). This widespread public anger was likely
a critical factor contributing to the high levels of participation in the Pink Chaddi campaign. Thus, while
the campaign itself serves as an example of the organizational potential of social media, it is also important
to note that it was social media that brought high visibility to the attacks in the first place, thus inspiring the
Pink Chaddi efforts.

52
‘Talibanization’ of Indian culture has been used to describe a number of cultural wars waged by
Hindu radicals in recent years, including their protestation of kissing in Bollywood films and scantily-clad
cheerleaders at cricket matches.

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politicians and public figures denounced the violence, some were careful to clarify that
condemning it did not amount to condoning pub culture or the Westernization of Indian
youth. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss, for example, stated: “We definitely
condemn the incident where women were attacked, but the pub culture must stop” (Page,
2009).
These attacks were followed by further threats when Pramod Muthalik announced
the Sri Ram Sena’s plans to protest Valentine’s Day, which he called a Christian
conspiracy against Indian culture (“Ram Sene”, 2009; Sengupta, 2009), by forcibly
marrying couples found celebrating the holiday in public. “Our activists will go around
with a priest, a turmeric stub and a ‘mangal sutra’
53
on February 14,” Muthalik
announced. “If we come across couples being together in public and expressing their
love, we will take them to the nearest temple and conduct their marriage” (as cited in
“We’ll not spare dating”, 2009).
In response, on February 5
th
, a group of four young women created a Facebook
group to organize a collective response to the Sri Ram Sena, stating, “Most women in this
country have enough curbs on their lives without a whole new franchise cashing in with
their bully-boy tactics” (Pink Chaddi, 2009). Eight days after its launching the
Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women had attracted over 28,000
members. The page was used to encourage members to participate in a symbolic protest
of the Sri Ram Sena by sending pink chaddis directly to Muthalik, or dropping them off

53
Tumeric and mangal sutras are both important components for the Hindu marriage rites.

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at collection points set up in major cities. Pink chaddis were chosen not just for the
obvious Valentine’s Day symbolism, but also because they evoked the derisive term
“chaddi wallah” (chaddi wearer), a term used for the followers of some right wing
groups, in reference to the short khaki shorts that are part of their uniforms (“Underwear
protest at India attack”, 2009). The pink chaddis, then, were meant to shame the Sri Ram
Sena for its attempt to restrict women’s choice, mobility, and access to public space.
The outrageousness of the action, the magnitude of the response (evidenced by
the number of chaddis sent), and the campaign's novel use of social media all ensured
widespread national and international media coverage of the Pink Chaddi campaign. The
campaign organizers used this visibility to call on the government to take action against
the Sri Ram Sena. Specifically, in response to the Sri Ram Sena’s claims that pub-going
and dating are “against Indian values,” the Pink Chaddi campaigners asked the
government to acknowledge that “beating up women is against Indian values” (Pink
Chaddi, 2009). The national government did respond by placing Muthalik and other
prominent members of the Sri Ram Sena in protective custody in hopes of preventing
attacks on women. As one of India’s leading newspapers reported, “In what was widely
acknowledged as a successful campaign, the Pink Chaddi idea effectively took the wind
out of the saffron
54
sails” (as cited in “Moral police”, 2009, para 6).
The Pink Chaddi campaign has become a favorite example of the power of social
media to enable collective mobilization and citizen engagement in India. Clay Shirky has
repeatedly used it in his public appearances and writings as an example of social media’s

54
Saffron is the color most strongly associated with Hindu fundamentalsim.

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potential to engender meaningful social action and collective coordination (Shirky, 2010).
In India, industry analysts, bloggers, and tech savvy social activists have celebrated it as
well. Gaurav Mishra, for example, one of India’s most respected social media analysts,
wrote that the Pink Chaddi campaign “has become one of the best Indian examples of
how a grassroots community can come together, collaborate and take collective action
using social media tools” (Mishra, 2009a, para 3), while another popular blog stated that
the campaign was an indicator that “civil society is finally asserting itself in India”
(Krishnan, 2009). Among the non-profit social media professionals I interviewed, it was
widely regarded as an example of the potential offline impact of social media organizing.
For example, Avijit Michael, an online campaign organizer from Greenpeace India said,
“the only major change [in India] that I have seen that was brought about with using
social media…was the Pink Chaddi campaign” (A. Michael, personal communication,
September 15, 2010). The campaign thus emerges as a symbol of the growing enthusiasm
and optimism about the power of online social networking to facilitate collective action
in India.
Despite the apparent immediate success of the Pink Chaddi efforts that resulted in
the shaming of Sri Ram Sena leaders and in sparking debates about culturally acceptable
behaviors and the limits of freedom for Indian women, my interviewees and media
analysts alike raised doubts about the magnitude of the campaign’s long-term impact and
its ability to sustain political momentum after the delivery of the panty payload. Indeed,
the practitioners of social media for development and social change I spoke with all
voiced the concern that the Pink Chaddi campaign had squandered an opportunity to

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engage its thousands of followers in a deeper political engagement that went beyond the
one-off action. As Sanjukta Basu, a social media consultant for NGOs, said in my
interview with her:

[The Pink Chaddi campaign] was sexy, funny and very easy to do and it
was very youth friendly so it caught on hugely. … the takeaway from it is
how easy it was to mobilize people. But what are you going to do with this
huge group of people who have joined you? How will you lead them?
That foresight was not there…So yes, while it’s very important to
mobilize them, it’s also important to think how do you keep them engaged
(S. Basu, personal communication, August 31, 2010).

The campaign also received wider criticism about the homogeneity of its urban
elite audience. Its choice of tactics likely contributed to constituting its high-end
audience. Online tactics by nature attract the small elite subsection of India’s population
that has ready access to the Internet and to the digital-literacy skills to engage on social
media platforms. Additionally, the Pink Chaddi campaign relied entirely on Facebook,
which, compared to platforms like Orkut that have a considerable Hindi speaking base,
appeals more strongly to upper-class English speaking urban Internet users (DNI, 2010).
One of Breakthrough’s social media team suggested in our interview that the Pink
Chaddi campaign was partially successful because it channeled outrage about attacks on
women “just like us” — i.e., middle class, urban, modern, pub going (T. Chatterjee,
personal communication, June 10, 2010). However, in mid-size Indian cities such as
Mangalore, it is not common for women to frequent pubs, and it is only a very small
cross-section of upper-middle class and privileged youth who are likely to frequent such
places, or feel compelled to defend their right to do so. The failure to address larger

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women’s rights issues, or women’s access to public spaces more generally—beyond the
context of bars—was a missed opportunity to create a more vibrant platform for public
debate that transcended the campaign’s urban, middle- and upper-class identity. In fact,
many criticized the campaign's gimmicky tactics as superficial, obfuscating a deeper and
more troubling question about why so many people in India willingly supported the ultra-
conservative agenda expressed by the Sri Ram Sena (Mishra, 2009a).
Although it engaged only a limited upper-class audience, the Pink Chaddi
campaign nonetheless brings to light the ways in which new media has become a site
where social mores, especially those around sexual and gender identities and behaviors,
are debated and contested. This is part of a longer history of social debates about moral
dangers of new media that have arisen in India in the last decade (Schwittay, 2011). In
2004, for example, a teenage boy and girl from Delhi Public schools used a mobile phone
to film themselves kissing. The two-second clip was later distributed by the young man to
his friends’ mobile phones via multimedia messaging (MMS), and eventually it was
made available for sale on the Internet. While a case can be made for disciplinary action
against the young man who distributed inappropriate content that violated the young
woman’s right to privacy, it seems that the young woman’s only offense was disregarding
moral standards that condemn sexual activity for unmarried women. The event became a
national scandal, kicking off a debate about the link between so-called moral corruption
and the use of mobiles and new media that eventually led to the ban of the use of mobile
phones on some university campuses in an attempt to protect students from this moral
danger (Schwittay, 2011). On the other hand, young people also used new media to

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contest and challenge these moral sanctions, using blogs and discussion forums to
counter the moral danger discourse (Schwittay, 2011). These debates on sexual behavior,
gender norms and technology have particularly significant implications for women, as
new media becomes both a locus of control and commodification of the body, as well as
a site for resistance.
Both the MMS case and the Sri Ram Sena’ attacks on women demonstrate the
conflation of feminine identity with nationalism and national virtue. Narayan (1989,
1993) has described the ways in which Indian womanhood becomes a site of struggle
over national and cultural identity, in the process de-legitimating indigenous Indian forms
of resistance to dominant gender hierarchies. Mankekar’s (1999) work also reminds us
that media, especially in the era of state run television, is one important medium through
which these ideological notions of nation, womanhood, national identity and citizenship
are constructed. Hence, it is not surprising that this battle over the role of women in
maintaining and preserving “Indianness” continues on new media platforms.
In the era of dominance of State run television (called Doordarshan in India),
audiences had few opportunities to participate in the construction of womanhood and
national identity as it was portrayed on Doordarshan’s news and entertainment
programming. New media, on the other hand, with its participative nature, potentially
offers the opportunity for participation in this construction of the images of women and
womanhood. For example, in an analysis of gender equality in the information society in
Asia by IT for Change, a Bangalore-based NGO, Kuga Thas (2008) notes that the
emerging public sphere created by ICTs have “the potential to foster new sub-cultures or

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counter-publics…and thus opens up spaces for feminist consciousness. By shaping the
content that is shared through technology, grassroots movements and collectives can
challenge negative stereotypes in mass media and violence against women in virtual
spaces” (p. 7). Indeed, the use of virtual tools to challenge violence against women is
greatly evidenced by the Pink Chaddi campaign.
However, it must be remembered that social media is a gendered space, and
digital exclusion is also gendered. Like any technology, gendered issues are likely to
influence access and use, and indeed, studies and figures suggest that there is a gender
disparity among social media users (DNI, 2010). This is likely to conflate with the issues
of class exclusion evidenced by the Pink Chaddi campaign, which seemed to privilege the
feminist voices of only a few urban elite woman.

The Digital Elections of 2009
The next event in the chronology of the three major social media evets examined
was the 15
th
general elections in April and May of 2009, widely referred to as “India’s
first digital election” because of the increased emphasis on Internet, social media, and
other digital campaign strategies of India’s two most influential political parties: the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party. This marked the third wave of high-
visibility social media use in India. This was also the first election that saw significant
involvement of both civil society groups and corporations in the creation of online voter
information and engagement portals that sought to mobilize citizens—especially those
from the urban middle- and upper-classes—to participate in the electoral process. Before

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turning to a discussion of these trends, however, it is important to briefly revisit the
previous general elections of 2004, because this election laid the foundations for the
increased reliance on digital tools evidenced in 2009.
The BJP’s infamous “India Shining” campaign leading up to the 2004 election
was the first to depart from the tried and tested vote-stimulation models that relied
heavily on face-to-face engagements such as rallies, door-to-door canvassing, masks,
handbills, and “walking rallies” (padayatras) that were supplemented with the use of local
billboards, wall paintings, and print ads (Gadekar, Thakur & Ang, 2011; Mishra, 2009b).
Because politics in India has always been a largely local affair—people vote mostly on
the grounds of very local or regional issues as well as along ethnic and caste lines—
campaigning favored such forms of personal interaction over the use of communication
technologies. However, inspired by the potential of new technology, the incumbent BJP
party decided that, for the 2004 election, to depart from this tried and tested model and
instead to call upon ad agencies and PR firms to target first-time voters through print and
TV ads. They also ran an e-campaign that included a website, SMS, emails, and even a
recorded voice call from the sitting Prime Minister (Prabhat, 2004: Vyas, 2004).
Even though they did not win that year
55
, the way they allocated their campaign
funds set a new standard for campaign management.
56
The BJP’s efforts in 2004 also
paved the way for increased online efforts, as evidenced by an upward trend in web use

55
Analysis varies as to whether the loss signified a failure in its campaign strategy and its emphasis on
tech-savvy voters; some argue that the BJP’s failure was its elitist campaign approach which alienated
ordinary people.

56
The allocation is approximately 40-50% on print, 20% on outdoor advertisements, 15% on TV, 5-
10% on Internet and mobiles, and the balance on radio, film theater spots, and on-the-ground mobilization
(Gowda & Gupta, 2010; Mishra, 2009b).

196

by political parties. A survey of political campaign websites in the 2009 election season
found seven candidate websites and 24 party websites in just the states of Maharashtra
and Gujarat alone. This marked a significant shift from 2004, when only seven candidates
and 26 parties had websites in all of India (Gadekar et al, 2011). However ahead of its
time the BJP was, its tactics were largely of the “Web 1.0” variety, focusing on
information dissemination through electronic media. It is only in the 2009 elections that
we begin to see emphasis on the more participative functions of the web, including blogs
and social media.
Although it might appear that the 2009 shift to elections as social media events
was a natural outgrowth of the advancement in communication technology and ever-
increasing rates of Internet penetration in India, this is only partially true.
57
The centrality
of the Internet in that campaign year was more reflective of an ongoing shift in the locus
of political attention from the rural voter to the urban middle class and, in particular, the
young, tech-savvy urban voter.
Since the 1990’s there had been a decline in voter participation among urban,
middle- and upper-class constituents. Contrary to the pattern typically seen in other
countries, the typical Indian voter has traditionally been rural, uneducated, and of the

57
A much-cited quote from L.K. Advani, “the iPhone-carrying, 81-year-old leader of Hindu national
BJP,” expresses this view that new campaign tactics are merely part of the inevitable march of progress:
“In the first general election (in 1952) even printing a rudimentary handbill was a novelty. From printing
handbills in small printing presses that used movable types – which have almost disappeared now – to
writing a blog on my own website on the Internet, I too have come a long way in using technology for
election communication” (Advani, 2009, para 2).

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lower-caste (Yadav, 1999).
58
As a result, India’s politicians have tended to invest the
lion’s share of their efforts in traditional campaign strategies targeted to rural voters.
Recently, however, there has been a slight uptick in urban middle-class voter
participation, perhaps partially due to the recent “delimitation” (re-districting) that has
increased the weight of the urban vote by as much as three-fold (Gowda & Gupta, 2010).
Hence, political parties began to turn their gaze back towards the urban middle-class,
with particular emphasis on urban youth. At the time of the 2009 elections, one third of
India’s voting population was under 25 (Gowda & Gupta, 2010).
However, as a result of a perceived lack of engagement, political parties had not
heavily courted young voters.
59
By 2009, however, the combination of Barack Obama’s
youthful, tech-savvy campaign in the US (which had infused India’s urban youth with
optimism about the possibility of political change), and the Mumbai attacks (which had
provoked anger and dissatisfaction within the middle-class voters) had changed the
landscape. The rise in political awareness among these groups, many expected, would
lead to a concomitant increase in their electoral participation. Rising Internet penetration
(Charndran, 2009; NDTV, 2009) within these populations meant that politicians could

58
According to Varshney (2000), this discrepency can be attributed to two causes. First, in recent years,
politics has become dominated by local leaders from caste and tribal backgrounds with lower levels of
education who appeal to voters on regional issues. Varshney suggest that this demographic shift has led to a
disaffection of the more educated urban middle classes. Secondly, he argues that parallel systems of
governance exist for the rich and the poor. While lower classes vote in exchange for patronage in order to
ensure critical services, the upper class can rely on bribes, employment of intermediaries, or purchase of

services from private sector to fulfill their needs, and hence have less compulsion to partake in the political
process. Similarly, the more privileged classes are often able to affect policy change through backroom
political dealing more effectively than by traditional electoral politics.

59
For example, in 2004, only 10% of urban youth voted (Chandran, 2009; NDTV, 2009).

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target young, first-time, urban and tech-savvy, and middle-class voters (Chandran, 2009;
Mishra, 2009b) using digital campaign tactics.
Thus, both parties aggressively sought the youth vote. However, while Congress
banked on the appeal of its young scion Rahul Gandhi, the BJP, inspired by the
successful online strategies of the Obama campaign (Mishra, 2009b; NDTV, 2009),
embraced an aggressive 360-degree strategy that called for extensive online components,
including increased use of social media. Although the BJP’s website itself was a static re-
hashing of its party platform brochure, the blog of its prime candidate, L.K. Advani,
made better use of the interactive and social capacities of Web 2.0.
60
A “Bloggers for
Advani” initiative asked prominent bloggers to put BJP badges on their sites and promote
BJP ideas (Mishra, 2009b). An initiative called “Advani@campus” used more than 7000
campus youth volunteers to promote the Advani website and BJP social media profiles
(Gowda & Gupta, 2010; Mishra, 2009b). Other prominent members of the BJP set up
their own sites, and some even ventured onto Twitter.
61
The BJP also maintained a
presence on Facebook and Orkut, on which it had over 30,000 members (Gowda &
Gupta, 2010).
Congress, on the other hand, was “stuck in Web 1.0,” as one prominent social
media analyst put it (Mishra, 2009b). Their party site, like that of the BJP, was little more

60
Advani’s site, with over 800 pages, 400 pictures and 250 videos, was the largest political site during
the election season (Manjunath & Khosa, 2009).

61
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and
VK Malhotra had well-designed websites while Narendra Modi and VK Malhotra also had Twitter profiles
(Mishra, 2009b).

199

than an online brochure, and none of the Congress leaders maintained visible blogs
(Manjunath & Khosa, 2009). When the Congress Party did wake up to the importance of
Web 2.0 and finally launched a digital campaign, it was too late in the game. While they
managed to create a respectable Youtube presence, their Facebook, Orkut, and Twitter
presence was overall much weaker than the BJP's (Singh, 2009). Moreover, their efforts
were continuously compared—usually unfavorably—to the BJP’s. Said one respected
digital media industry blog about Congress efforts: “Mr. Advani’s blog
http://blog.lkadvani.in/ has shaped up very well. His posts are frequent and well-written.
On the other hand, Congress’s blog http://votecongress2009.blogspot.com/ looks like an
initiative gone wrong—bad formatting, errors, uneven fonts, and the list goes on…”
(Singh, 2009). The BJP was, thus, easily able to use its savvy and strategic online
presence to differentiate itself from Congress’s minimal and uncoordinated efforts.
Despite the excitement generated by the BJP’s embrace of digital strategies, these
tactics were still emergent in India and had not reached the sophistication of the Obama
campaign that had partially inspired their efforts. Observers noted that the Internet was
not used to its fullest potential, and integration with social networking and other methods
of interactive engagement were still weak (Gadekar et al, 2011). With the exception of
Advani’s site, most sites were static, one-way information delivery channels, and did not
make use of the participatory aspects of Web 2.0. Even the celebrated Advani efforts
generated only limited online activity. Advani himself promised his public that he would
update his blog three times a week, yet there were often gaps of two weeks or more
between posts (NDTV, 2009). Despite the resources put to the “Bloggers for Advani”

200

initiative, a month before the election, just over 100 bloggers had actually written for
Advani (NDTV, 2009).
Interestingly, the level of citizen participation in both of the campaigns was
unfavorably measured against that of the Pink Chaddi campaign, calling into question the
ability of either poltical party to effect meaningful online political mobilization. A
prominent blogger commented with dismay that, while the 50,000 bloggers active in
India “can generate a mighty run on the market for pink panties, by ourselves, we are
powerless to vote a party to power” (Vadukut, 2009). Similarly, an Economic Times
report noted: "Even within the Indian context, the Facebook groups of all the politicians,
taken together, have fewer members than the Facebook group for the recent Pink Chaddi
Campaign” (Mishra, 2009b, para 2).
The efficacy of online campaigning was, of course, called into question in a more
significant way by the ultimate defeat of the BJP by the incumbent Congress party.
Commentators felt that, as in 2004, given the relatively small online population in India,
the BJP’s campaign over-emphasized Internet-based strategies. Some understood the
party’s loss as evidence that future campaigns should be cautious about Internet usage
(Gadekar et al, 2011). On the other hand, the BJP's loss may have been due to problems
with the BJP itself. Leading social media analyst Gaurav Mishra, for example, cautioned
others “against reading too much into” what he called a “coincidence.” “It's not BJP's
campaign, but BJP's Hindutva ideology, that has failed the party,” he said. “BJP has lost
in spite of its brilliant campaign, not because of it" (Mishra, 2009c, para 5). Increased
online campaigning, in other words, was not yet significant enough to make or break the

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elections. Even so, new technologies have undoubtedly changed the way politics are
conducted in India and, just as in 2004, the BJP’s 2009 efforts set new management
standards for future elections regarding increased reliance on online strategies.
The 2009 election earned its name as the first “digital election” not only because
of the use of online tactics by political parties, but also because it was one of the first that
saw heavy usage of online communication tools by voters and civil society groups. While
the politicians were focused largely on the blogosphere, the populace used Twitter to
react and respond to election developments. On election day, “#indiavotes09” became the
number one global trending topic on Twitter as the poll results rolled in. Performing an
ex poste analysis, Global Voices (Rezwan, 2009), an international community of bloggers
that reports on blog activity and citizen media across the world, found that the Twitter
discussions that day focused on three topics. First, in keeping with the often navel-gazing
tone of Twitter, the “trending” of “#indiavotes09” became tweet-worthy news in-and-of
itself. Second, the BJP’s failure, and speculation about its causes, was a popular topic of
conversation. Third, Twitter-users followed and re-tweeted Shashi Tharoor’s live-
tweeting of election results. Whatever the quality and nature of the conversation, the high
levels of activity certainly brought global attention to the widespread use of social media
in India, especially during these significant events. This added to the popular perception
that social media was transforming civic engagement in India. Even Global Voices
(Rezwan, 2009) agreed, boasting that the trending of the “#indiavotes09” hash tag
“demonstrat[ed] once again the strength of Indians using these new technology tools”.

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The potential significance of an increasingly engaged middle class was also
recognized by civil society. A number of voter engagement and civic engagement online
portals emerged to capitalize on the reinvigoration of the urban middle class youth that
was perceived to follow the Obama campaigns and the Mumbai attacks (Gowda & Gupta,
2010). Largely led by NGOs or created as part of corporate responsibility initiatives,
these sites channelled this new political awareness into meaningful participation around
issues of policy formation, transparency and anti-corruption
62
, and voter participation
(Gowda & Gupta, 2010).
The Jaago Re
63
campaign, for example, was perhaps the most visible and
successful of all the campaigns, launched in 2008 as a partnership between the NGO
Janaagraha and the Tata Tea Company. This initiative aimed to register voters for the
2009 elections in India’s 35 largest cities. The cumbersome registration process, lack of
information about where to go to vote, lack of clarity about voter-eligibility for new
urban migrants, and the requirement that a voter's address be physically verified by an
official’s home visit combined to result in huge barriers to voter participation in urban
areas. The verification requirement was especially daunting—even if people were to
register, their application may not be accepted if they are not home when verification
officers come to their residence (Gowda & Gupta, 2010). In recognition of these barriers,

62
Corruption among politicians in Indian is rampant. It is not uncommon for party candidates to have
criminal records or to have siphoned off public funds for personal advancement. However, a lack of
transparency and inadequate access to information about the backgrounds and finances of candidates has
traditionally made it difficult for voters to recognize corrupt candidates and, thus, to make informed
decisions. In the 2009 elections, a number of initiatives, including No Criminals in Politics, Vote Report
India, National Election Campaign, and SmartVote, aimed to provide voters with information about the
criminal records and finances of candidates.

63
“Jaago Re” means “wake up” in Hindi.

203

Jaago Re set up interactive application completion via its website and kiosks; provided
individualized information to users about their nearest polling station and other election
day information; and sent SMS updates about the names of candidates added to ballots.
The site used a mix of online and social media tools (Facebook and Orkut) to help
register over 600,000 people throughout India (Pinglay, 2009).

The Middle Class and Social Media in India
The rise of social media in India, as evidenced in the three cases discussed in this
chapter, do give reason for excitement about the new opportunities for the expression of
voice; be it to organize cultural protests like the Pink Chaddi campaign, to involve the
public in the co-construction of meaning around journalistic media events like the
Mumbai attacks, or to voice political demands during election times. However, given the
grave inequality of access to the Internet in India
64
, these social media opportunities have
become largely the domain of society’s “creamy layer,” as it is often described in India,
that includes the upper-middle classes and an already relatively empowered urban elite.
For example, the Jaago Re campaign, in efforts to counter-middle class disengagment
during election seasons, have intentionally appealed to a very tech savvy urban audience
that was hungry for change after the terrorist attacks. Most of the civic engagement
platforms that have emerged since the catalytic Mumbai attacks and 2009 elections have

64
According to the Telecommunications Authority of India (TRAI), there are, at the time of writing, 83
million internet users in India (56% of whom are on broadband), 60% of whom are reached by social media
(Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, 2011). Even though it is clearly not an insignificant number, it
does not amount to even one-tenth of India’s population. Thus, while there is no doubt that there is an
emergent impact of social media on public life, its impact is likely limited to a privileged few for the time
being.

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targeted the same groups. VoteIndia.in, a civic engagement intiative started in the
election season, also strategically chose to target the middle-class because of its
perceived power and political influence. As one of the young representatives of the
campaign stated in a media interview:

A lot of people have seen the change in the US since the elections and [it]
made them realize that they can actually do something. It was the literate
middle class that brought the change. What happened in the US has
inspired people in India to go out and make a difference (as cited in
Mishra, 2009d, para 4).

Clearly, here he is talking about the inspiration of a specific “literate middle class.” The
emphasis is not on inclusive-movement builing, but rather on the interests of one
particular (increasingly influential) strata of society.
Indeed, the Internet and ICTs are a natural choice of expression for middle and
upper classes because the information technology sector from which these tools emerge is
largely responsible for the economic opportunities that have led to the expansion of the
middle class in India (Gowda & Gupta, 2010; Upadhaya, 2007). As Gowda and Gupta
(2010) note, the “homoenous identity of the middle class itself was largely constituted
through the expanson of the information technology sector” (p. 79). As Upadhaya further
points out, when the middle and upper classes need to quickly mobilize against policies
or actions that run counter to their interests, it is the Internet that they turn to first—as
evidenced by the Pink Chaddi campaign, as well as the other mobilization efforts
discussed in this chapter. As often as not, these efforts are aimed at defending established
hierarchies that keep the middle class firmly in a positon of privilege.

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For example, one of the first uses of ICT for political mobilization in India—the
“Youth for Equity” initiative—used online tools to mobilize students from elite schools
to protest against the extension of government reservation programs (similar to
affirmitive action in the US) to lower-caste and marginalized groups in education and
private sectors (Gowda & Gupta, 2010). The creation of such quotas for these formerly
exclusive institutions greatly threatened the largely upper-caste Hindu middle class'
structural advantages in admission to premium educational institutions and job
opportunities. Hence students mobilized highly visible nation-wide protests against
measures that would make these admission processes more equitable. In many ways,
then, the visible face of online public engagement in the online era has become
synonymous with the protection of middle-class concerns and lifestyles—including the
preservation of social structures that secure their power, and the challenging of social
controls that restrict their lifestyle choices (i.e. Pink Chaddi campaign).

The IT Sector, Entrepreneurship and the Middle Class
On one hand, it can be argued that this resurgence of middle class social
engagement has created a demand for the kinds of Internet and social media-based online
political engagement efforts discussed above, leading to their proliferation. On the other
hand, perhaps the resurgence of the middle class in politics is itself an outcome of these
efforts. It is unlikely that causality can be neatly parsed out. It is perhaps more useful to
recognize this as a confluence of social and technological forces that created the
conditions for increased online engagement of the middle classes. Specifically, a rapid

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expansion of a middle class that is in many way constituted by the growth in the
information technology (IT) sector; the influence of the IT sector in fostering an
emerging valorization of the entrepreneur (and especially, the social entrepreneur); and
the rise in availability of online social networking platforms—each has fed the growth of
the others.
The IT sector, and its many start-up initiatives, has introduced a new spirit of
entrepreneurism into India’s economy, and with it, increased emphasis on neoliberal
formulations of the individual as a social change agent empowered through—and in
service of—market-based activities, which in turn become new sites for the expression of
citizenship. For example, I interviewed Ankur Gupta, a computer programmer who, at the
time of our interviews in 2010, was launching Halabol.in, a social networking site for
social change, which he compares to an “Indian Change.org”. The project allows
individual users, NGOs and corporate entities to create profiles representing their social
engagement interests, and to connect with the individuals, organizations and corporations
who share their social change agendas. In true social entrepreneur form, Gupta has
designed and launched this project with a small group of friends and family during his
nights and weekends, while his day job in the IT sector provides the necessary skill set
and connections needed to pursue the passion project. Gupta hopes that his work will not
only enable social enagement but that it will also generate revenue through the sale of
advertising, tie-ups with corporate social responsibility ventures, and the sale of services
to NGO clients. He described to me why he felt this is the right time for a site such as this
to succeed, illustrating the connection between the rise in Internet start-ups and

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entrepreneurism, a new excitement about online voice, and a political awakening of the
middle class:

If there was this sort of platform [like Halabol], you know, five to six
years ago, I don’t think it would have worked, honestly…Earlier, people
would say, ‘I’m the only one [who thinks this way], what can I do’... But
now people are saying, “because I have new social media tools—I have
Facebook, I have Twitter, I have other ways to express myself, like
blogging—now I can possibly create that change”. So people are starting
to believe that, as an individual, “I can do it!”…When I was in India
before I left for the US five to six years ago, people would say: “I cant do
anything.” But now people are starting to believe that “I can do
something”. This is part of the culture shift, with more and more
technology revolutions happening, people have started to form more start-
ups. They have become more entrepreneurial. As individuals, people are
believing in themselves more than they used to. So as a society, I feel we
are ready [for things like Halabol] (A. Gupta, personal communication,
June 4, 2010).

This quote highlights the linkages between the rise of a “start-up” energy from the
IT sector (which is largely entwined with the meteoric growth of the middle class in
recent decades) and the rise in optimisim about an individual’s ability to affect political
change. When you add to this the potential for “self-staging” that social media provides,
the conditions are right for a rise in middle class engagement, especially through ICTs.
Interestingly, with the exception of VoteIndia.in, the most successful engagement
campaigns were either led by, or prominently backed by, corporations such as Idea
Cellular, Tata Tea or Times of India group. There is an inherent tension between the
democratic potential of the Internet and Web 2.0 as sites for the expression of voice and
dissenting views and the capitalist logic within which the Internet, and especially within
well-capitalized, corporately-owned-and-managed platforms, operate. The user-generated

208

content which forms the basis for expression of voice and participation in 2.0 online
spaces often constitutes free labor that is exploited for profit making by the entities that
own the software or platforms where these dialogues take place (Arnoldy, 2007). A rise
in surveillance culture further ensures that user-generated content is mined and used to
improve the profit potential of other online products and services. In some extreme cases,
like Facebook for example, the users’ content ceases to be their own once it is posted on
the site becoming the property of the company instead. Returning to Couldry’s argument,
the expression of opinions, concerns and personal values in such a space may simply be
“an apparent expansion of ‘voice’ as cover for the increasing penetration of market
values into the space of self,” it is a form of voice that is “on offer only on the terms that
govern a competitive market of appearances” (p. 15).
The question then arises, can such places really provide platforms for the
expression of voices from the margins when the platforms and architectures used to
express that voice are owned and operated by companies like Google and Facebook,
which are clearly constitute capitalist centers of power? This question is especially
critical in India, where so many of the online social engagement platforms are operated
by large corporations. Although it may not be immediately apparent to the average users,
who freely express their inner monologues through constant narration on social media
sites, there are complex economic and political dependency ties that dictate the flows of
user-generated content, and which are, in turn, dictated by existent hierarchies of
communication power which favors corporate interests. Again, however, social media,
and the Internet more broadly, can simultaneously be both part of mainstream dominant

209

logics and something that is used to resist them and suggest alternatives (Aouragh &
Alexander, 2011). While the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, it does raise the
necessity to look beneath the veil and be aware of the economic, corporate or political
dependency relationships that shape the platforms we may seek to use in creating
opportunities for voice in development. As the previous chapter on community radio
demonstrates, this is true not only of online social media, but of more traditional forms of
community media as well.

Chapter Four Conclusion
Aouracg & Alexander (2011) draw a useful distinction between Internet tools and
Internet spaces. While Internet tools can be applied to aid coordination and execution of
social aims, Internet spaces on the other hand, can function (among other things) as
spheres of dissidence in which collective critiques of existing social and political
structures can be formed and articulated. The Pink Chaddi campaign, for example,
demonstrates how social media can be used as a tool, in this case, to focus anger against
the Shri Ram Sena and to shame them out of their patriarchal attacks. However, the
ephemeral nature of the group and the lack of engagement with the larger social issues
surrounding the Valentine’s Day attacks kept the Pink Chaddi campaign Facebook group
from becoming a lasting “sphere of dissidence”. The online engagement platforms that
have begun to emerge since the 2009 elections, on the other hand, have made concerted
attempts to create Internet spaces where more permanent communities of socially
engaged online users can sustain dialogue, action and connection. Halabol and iJanagraha

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are great examples of the ways in which these sites hope to bind together users and help
them build networks through which they can effect social change (albeit social change
within a neoliberal market logic).
As I have argued before, voice is best supported by platforms that not only allow
for individual expressions, but for ongoing, collective storytelling and narration about
what a community “has reason to value”. Hence, although the Pink Chaddi campaign has
shown that social media can be a powerful tool, I argue that online social networking is
most likely to strengthen voice and participation only to the degree that it can create and
sustain online spaces where specific articulations of voice (e.g., sending a pink panty) can
become part of an ongoing collective process of debating, examining and re-defining the
contexts in which those articulations take place. Given the middle-class flavor of many of
the spaces that have emerged since 2009, and the neoliberal entrepreneurial logic that is
associated with many of them, they may not prove to be spheres of dissidence in the more
radical ways envisioned by Aouragh and Alexander, but they have indeed shown that
they can be spaces where collective values and concerns (albeit of a limited middle class
elite) are debated, identified and articulated. However, I have already shown the ways in
which dependency relationships affect the ways in which voice can or cannot be
exercised on any given platform. Often, dependency relationships between the less
powerful and the more powerful (or users and corporate owners) limit the possibilities for
true critique or challenge to social structures. While considering the possibility of social
media as a site to promote voice, we must similarly be aware of these relationships. In
addition, government regulation, particularly those related to national security concerns,

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will likely increase limitations on freedom of speech on the Internet, even as corporate
interests mean that our ‘spheres of dissidence’ must be mounted on proprietary software
built by companies with a deep vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Hence,
these spaces are automatically guaranteed to set strict limits on authentic voices that
could more fully articulate concerns of marginalized groups and visions of
transformationaly social change. Rather, the creation of space where all voices get a
hearing will have to be fought for and defended in ways that recognize and challenge the
broader social forces which can constrain openness and free speech on the Internet.
However, in many ways, these concerns put the cart before the horse in the
context of India. Currently, online social media in India is marked by extreme digital
exclusions. As noted above, it is in many ways a public sphere by and for the middle and
upper classes. As long as these digital initiatives continue to use the same digital tools
that are only accessible to a privileged few, the discussion will continue to be dominated
by these rariefied middle class concerns, rather than becoming a site for broader
meaningful public deliberation or social change visioning processes. As Gowda & Gupta
(2010) conclude, “as they proceed with their efforts, India’s upper and middle classes
will need to imagine new forms of inclusive citizen engagement based on ICTs and e-
tools that are accessible and useful to all sections of Indian society and that bring about
genuine reform” (p. 79).
Indeed, social media is unlikely to live up to the hopes that it will provide a
democratic voice and access to participation in social discourse in any meaningful way
until it has been opened up more widely to encompass India’s heterogeneity. In fact, a

212

number of players including development communication specialist, communication
rights activists and even corporate industry leaders are now turning increased attention to
expanding the reach of social media and Web 2.0 participatory connectivity to larger
sections of society, including the coveted ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ consumer. In the next
chapter, I discuss some of the efforts underway among community media practitioners
and communication for development specialists to bridge these divides by, in the words
of the social media consultant Basu, “bringing social media to the village” (S. Basu,
personal communication, August 31, 2010). In particular, many of these efforts to give
rural and lower-income populations access to voice in the online public sphere have
focused on the potential of mobile phones, and audio platforms to facilitate access for the
poor, illiterate, and non-tech savvy, thus creating a moment at which social media and
mobile phone technology are converging. In the next chapter, I will discuss these efforts
and their potential to increase voice in the development discourse, as well as raise some
of the critical challenges and ethical dilemmas that are presented when one takes social
media ‘to the village.’

213

CHAPTER FIVE
MOBILE PHONES AND SOCIAL MEDIA: CONVERGING TO CREATE NEW
OPPORTUNITIES FOR VOICE

While to date, it has largely been India’s ‘creamy layer’ that has made use of
social media, other entities have been rapidly awakening to the possibilities.
Corporations, marketers, NGOs, IGOs, and even local and national government agencies
are eager to tap into the power of social media to reach broader sectors. It seems the
public relations potential is limitless. Municipal services such as the Delhi Traffic Police
and the Municipal Corporation of Delhi have launched their own Facebook pages. The
Tihar Jail, India’s largest correctional institute that houses more than 10,000 inmates, has
launched a page in order to, according to its Director General, “invite public opinion and
suggestions…to improve our performance, and…[to] update the masses about our day-to-
day activities” (as quoted in “Tihar Jail”, 2011, para 3). But who are these “masses”?
Whose social media revolution is it? With only one-tenth of India's population online,
and only 60% of that 10% on social media, it is hard to make the case that India's social
media users represent the “masses.” (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India [TRAI],
2011). The blogosphere is similarly marked by class divisions. A 2009 survey by
Indiblogger, a network of bloggers in India, found that approximately 92% of blogs were
written in English, 4% in Hindi, and only 4% in other regional languages. In a country
with over 100 languages, 22 of which are considered official government languages, the

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homogeneity of language in the blogosphere severely limits potential participation
outside of an English speaking elite.
As noted in the previous chapter, the elite flavor of the online public leads to an
amplification of upper middle class concerns and interests, giving this creamy layer of
society even more influence and voice. As a result of the powerful combination of
disparities in access to Internet and communication technologies, and of inequalities in
digital literacy, people on the margins have had little opportunity to enter the discourse.
These realities have ensured that social media in India are largely networks for the rich
and upper middle classes. In the online world, where the loudest voices (increasingly
those that can make a splash on Twitter or Facebook) are often mistaken for prevailing
popular sentiment, we often lose sight of the fact that it is only a small segment of the
population that makes the most noise.
If social media is to be a meaningful development platform, the perspectives of
voices from outside the upper and middle classes will need to be brought into important
conversations. We will need to envision new forms of inclusive citizen engagement and
community storytelling based on ICTs that can be made accessible to broader sections of
Indian society. Sanjukta Basu, the founder and director of Samyukta Media, a social
media consultancy firm specializing in non-profit outreach strategies, described the need
as one of, “Bringing social media to the village”
65
(S. Basu, personal communication,

65
Here it should be noted that it is not only rural villagers that are excluded from social media usage,
but also urban slum dwellers or other low-income populations. However, the “village” is often used in
India as a shorthand, as a broad social construct that refers to a large section of marginalized, offline, and/or
below poverty line populations, whether they live in rural villages or urban slums.

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August 31, 2011). While Basu summed it up most succinctly, this was a theme echoed by
many of my interviewees, including, among others, Aadi Seth of Gram Vaani who
remarked that the principal challenge for Gram Vaani, the community radio station
content management system his team designed, was to figure out “how can we do social
media in rural areas” (A. Seth, personal communication, June 13, 2010).
Given the wide penetration of mobile phones in India, mobiles seem to offer a
promising answer to this question. Indeed, a number of studies from computer science
and the ICT4D field have suggested that mobile phone-based social networking software
shows a lot of potential for adoption in developing country settings where these new
techniques are likely to mesh well with existing technology usage and information-
seeking habits (Kolko, Rose & Johnson, 2007). Specifically, Kolko et al (2007) have
suggested that mobile social networking platforms are likely to be especially successful
in cultural contexts where there are substantial infrastructural barriers to Internet use, a
high reliance on personal (i.e., face-to-face) social networks for information, and a lack
of strong institutions to provide information and services. Certainly, all of these
conditions are prevalent in India. In addition, however, India also has a large ‘bottom of
the pyramid’ population that both corporations and development agencies alike are eager
to reach. The drive to reach this population—whether for commercial goals or for
development-related goals—is in many ways driving innovations to expand the social
networking user-pool.

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Hence, commercial technology firms, as well as ICT4D specialists, are turning to
platforms that function on low-end mobile phone technology to bring social networking
services to this population. Breakthrough’s Chatpati Chat platform was precisely one
such effort and in the next chapter, I will examine how successfully it was able to offer
social media to lower-income populations as a site for the expression of voice. So as to
better understand the opportunities and constraints that such platforms offer for voice and
participation, I will explore some of the efforts to use mobile phones to “bring social
media to the village” that preceded Chatpati Chat. Specifically, I look at projects that
have been driven by three different goals for using mobile social media “for the village”.
First, I look at programs aimed at capitalizing on the potential “fortune at the bottom of
the pyramid” (Prahalad, 2010) by using mobile-phone-based social media as a way to tap
into these markets for commercial gain. Second, I look at ‘social entrepreneur’ ventures
designed to raise profits while simultaneously contributing to the economic development
of so-called “BoP” populations. While both of these categories of social media mobile
platforms have had the effect of providing content-creation power to the poor, providing
a platform for voice is not their primary motivation. Thus, I conclude by looking at a
third category of mobile social media platforms, which were created expressly to support
community storytelling functions and to promote greater voice and participation in
development.
In describing each of these three categories, I will pay particular attention to the
funding and business models of these platforms, along with other dependency

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relationships that shape their degree of openness for participation and voice. Clearly, BoP
communities do not have the funds or capital to invest in such service for themselves. As
Basu noted, there are no profits to be made, so “Who will do it? And with what funds?
The village is not going to fund it” (S. Basu, personal communication, August 31, 2010).
Because funding must come from external sources, there will always have be an
externally generated agenda that will shape—and sometimes constrain—the ways in
which the goal of bringing social media to the village can be realized. It is these
relationships I explore in my descriptions of each type of platform.
Before turning to descriptions of specific platforms, however, it is necessary to
briefly review some of the emerging technological trends shaping the possibilities of
these mobile platforms.

Mobiles and Connectivity in India
The majority of the efforts to “bring social media to the village” in India have
involved mobile phones in some way. This is not surprising, considering the rapid and
ever-increasing penetration of mobile phones in India and elsewhere throughout the
developing world. Given that mobiles outnumber Internet connections by ten to one in
the developing world, the majority of first-time Internet users in the developing world are
likely to experience it through a mobile phone (Donner & Gitau, 2009). In India, while
land-based Internet connectivity is still a largely urban privilege, mobile phones are
reaching some of the most remote rural villages and poorest urban slums. Clearly, then, if
one wants to reach beyond the middle and upper classes, the mobile phone offers

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considerable advantages over computer-based Internet. Because mobile phones are
relatively inexpensive, and do not require literacy or a steady electrical supply, they also
offer great advantages over more traditional mass media such as newspaper, television
and radio. LIRNEasia's study on tele-use at the BoP, for example, found that access to
phones (both fixed-line and mobile) in the household is now overtaking access to TV and
radio (LIRNEasia, 2011).
The excitement about such possibilities, coupled with the widespread penetration
of mobile phones in India, has led to an explosion of “mobile for development” initiatives
(UNICEF, 2010) that have experimented with mobile phones as a new medium for the
delivery of development-related communication. There are countless examples of the use
of mobiles to promote heath and development. However, “mobile for development”
initiatives still tend to construct the beneficiary as a consumer—either of commercial
offerings or of social services and information. We see this where mobiles are
increasingly used to improve delivery of rural health services (Wold Health Organization
[WHO], 2011) to provide medical or agriculture information (Patel et al, 2010), and to
support rural education efforts (Cui & Wang, 2008) by providing information to people
who are usually considered hard-to-reach. For example, HeathPhone, a service that will
soon be launched in India, pre-loads low-end mobile phones with heath information
videos on maternal and child health for illiterate and rural women, so when anyone in the
rural pilot districts purchases a new phone, they will be able to access a library of health
information. Similarly, MILLEE is a educational program that distributes mobile phone

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games to children in villages and slums that help them learn language and literacy skills
(for more on each program, see Lapsansky, 2011).
These are important services that stand to provide significant benefit, yet they are
very much about one-way information delivery. The capabilities of mobile phones for
enabling content creation continue to be greatly overlooked. Many of the initiatives put
forward to date, although relying on mobile applications and services, have not
emphasized or exploited the participatory potential of this technology.
66
Recently,
however, a few advocates have begun to raise this critical question. The Digital
Empowerment Foundation (DEF), for example, which seeks solutions to bridge the
digital divide, is championing the idea that development agencies and telecommunication
companies alike need to understand BoP users as active agents in content and knowledge
production. DEF brings mobile telecom operators, NGOs, tech developers, and
foundations together at a number of India-wide and global fora to discuss future
directions for mobiles in emerging markets. A recurring discussion in these fora is how
mobiles can facilitate the user’s shift from consumer to producer, and why this should be
a priority for mainstream operators and designers.

66
For example, the Indian’s government new initiative to promote inclusive government through e-
government initiatives are increasingly emphasizing the importance of mobile phones. In the health sector,
“mHealth” has become the latest way to ensure delivery of quality health services and information to the
BoP. Phone-based banking and finance mechanisms are now being developed to help serve the “un-
banked” and enable them to participate more effectively in commerce and trade. These are all examples of
efforts to promote inclusion in larger social processes that can also improve development outcomes for
marginalized communities, but they do not necessarily expand access to the kind of peer-to-peer and
creative expressions that make social media so promising.

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Text, SMS and Voice-based Services
A key question, however, is how best to provide such mobile connectivity to
social media and content generation. Mobile access to web-based social networking
services is not a feasible solution for providing social networking access to this
population because even if Internet services are available and affordable for their phones,
the basic handsets available to this population may not support web browsing. Voice,
SMS, and USSD (an interactive text-based messaging service) remain the most widely
accessible services to mobile phone users, and studies indicate that SMS is a promising
choice because of its widespread usage in the developing world as a cheaper alternative
to the use of airtime minutes (LIRNEasia, 2011). Indeed, a number of emerging social
media platforms targeting low-income users (such as SMS GupSup and SMS One
discussed below) do rely on SMS precisely because of its low cost. Such initiatives have
shown that SMS-based services do indeed open up a large new market of lower-income
users who otherwise would not be heavy participants in web-based social media. While
such efforts are primarily driven by commercial goals, they do allow users an opportunity
to create and share their own content using even very basic mobile phones.
However, such text-based services are clearly largely inaccessible to low-literacy
users. Moreover, most mobile phones cannot support the scripts used by Indian
languages, so even users with basic literacy in their first language would be challenged to

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read content—much less post their own content—in a second language in which they
may not have literacy skills.
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These barriers can significantly limit the ability of such services to fully engage
marginalized or poor users. Neil Patel, the director of Awaaz De, a mobile social media
platform seeking to enable content production and sharing among rural farmers,
described the challenge: “Even introducing a text-based interface, something that requires
screen navigation [and] button presses complicated things. [This takes] away from
farmers being able to get involved” (N. Patel, personal communication, January 20,
2011).
Awaaz De’s solution was to create a system that can be navigated entirely through
audio-prompts and keypad selections instead of SMS or text-based menus. The use of
such an audio-based service thus enabled greater content production and sharing among
Awaaz De users, regardless of their literacy skills. As Patel described:

We deliberately chose voice as the medium of content dissemination and
exchange over the phone, mainly because we want to encourage farmers
themselves to contribute what they know and so we wanted to keep the
barrier to content creation as low as possible…if it is just as simple as
speaking into the phone, which everybody knows how to do if you own
the phone, then you don’t really keep anybody...from participating in the
knowledge-creation process (N. Patel, personal communication, January
20, 2011).

67
The issue of local language support is one that is in many ways holding back the field of mobiles for
development, and a number of programs that I came across during this fieldwork were working towards
applications or platforms that could support Indian languages scripts. Interesting, just at the time of writing,
the handset manufacturer HTC announced a new low-priced smart phone that will support Hindi script.
Innovations such as this are likely to rapidly shift what is possible.

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Indeed, ‘Mobiles for Development’ literature similarly recognizes that, while
falling prices of multimedia phones may make multi-media and visual content
increasingly available in the near future, voice services and audio-based platforms are
currently the most inclusive category of mobile phone services because they do not
require literacy and—unlike applications designed for specific operating systems such as
Android or iPhone—audio-based applications work on any mobile phone. Additionally,
voice platforms can be appealing and intuitive to groups with strong oral traditions where
information and stories are routinely exchanged verbally. The inclusivity of such
platforms is especially strong in India where the mobile operator tariffs for voice services
are among the lowest in the world (Lapsansky, 2011).
Therefore, it is not surprising that many of the efforts to create social media
platforms for the poor rely on voice services and audio-platforms. Such services use
technology such as Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR).
68
Through such IVR systems,
information is searched and accessed through audio-prompts that do not require the user
to read text-based messages or menus. Instead, they need only listen to pre-recorded
menus and messages and select the appropriate number associated with their selection.
Below, I will describe some of the specific instances in which such technologies have
been deployed.

68
IVR services will be familiar to Western readers who would have heard the pre-recorded messages
and navigated the interactive menus using the numbers on the key pads that are routinely used by banks,
airlines or other corporate customer service lines.

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Mobile Social Media for Profit: Tapping into the Fortune at the Bottom of the
Pyramid
There are a number of commercial efforts to design social networking platforms
specifically for the so-called ‘BoP’ users who do not enjoy PC and Internet access. Many
offer voice-driven or SMS-driven applications for content sharing with the aim of
generating profit from user activity. Venture capitalists and major brands willing to
advertise on such services are clearly banking on their ability to attract large numbers of
users in markets where mobile phones outnumber Internet connections by sometimes as
much as 10 to 1, and the idea that those users have large cumulative buying power. These
are—first and foremost—profit-making ventures. All the actors involved seek to make
money off the BoP, either by selling products through advertisement, or by driving
customers to pay subscription and operating fees that the company can share with the
telecommunication company partner.
One such effort, SMS GupShup, is an SMS-based mobile social networking
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service launched in 2007 that allows members to create, join, and disseminate content to
issue-based or location-based groups via SMS according to their location and/or interests.
There are now over 10,000 groups on SMS GupShup, representing a wide variety of
interests and geographic communities. In 2009, SMS Gupshup accounted for an

69
It should be noted that SMSGupshup’s categorization as a social network is questionable as members
cannot share content amongst themselves in true peer-to-peer fashion. Only group leaders can send SMS’s
to the group, hence it is better characterized as a bulk SMS service. However, it has been widely described
in the media as “the Twitter of India” and in every news article reviewed for this research it is referred to as
a “social network” service. Hence, even if it is not a social network in the strictest sense, it is clear that it is
using the social media metaphor to market its service and attain investor attention.

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estimated 5% (Rao, 2011) of all SMS traffic in India and, as of April 2011, its 45 million
users were sending over 2 billion messages a month. Beyond just connecting users,
SMSGupshup also offers messaging services to small and medium enterprises, (SMEs) as
well as advertising services and brand engagement solutions for corporate clients.
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Advertisers can use the service to place targeted ads in the groups that are related to their
products, or they can create their own groups to drive consumer or fan engagement (Rao,
2011; Saxena, 2011a).
Although clearly wildly successful in attracting users, SMS Gupshup has not yet
turned a profit. This may change in the near future; revenue increased 400% in 2010, and
they are targeting 100 Crore
71
Rupees in revenue by the end of March 2012. Investors are
taking notice. As of August, 2011, the company had raised close to 47 million dollars
from venture capitalists and was valued at ten times its projected revenue, underscoring
the potential value in start-ups that use mobiles to acquire large user bases, especially
among so-called ‘BoP’ users (Nair & Chatterjee, 2011).
Similarly, Bubbly, launched in India in February 2010, is a voice-based micro-
blogging service, or a “Twitter for voice,” that also seeks to garner a wide user-base
among lower-income mobile users. It allows users to record their own personal voice
blogs that are then shared with “followers,” who access them by dialing an individualized
phone code. Bubbly, and its parent company Bubble Motion, are backed by venture

70
Clients include Pepsi, eBay, ICICI Lombard, Microsoft, Cadbury, Vodafone, Nokia, Ford, Puma,
Maybelline, Dell, Kingfisher, Sun Microsystems, and ING Financial.

71
A “crore” is a South Asian unit of numbering equivalent to ten million.

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capitalists, and it is rumored that Bubble Motion has raised at least $35 million since its
launch in 2003. Bubbly’s success is partially attributable to its emphasis on celebrity
users. Soon after its launch, it secured mega-stars like Amitabh Bachan and Aamir Khan
to use “Bubble groups” to stay connected to fans. While one can listen to the blogs of
friends and family for free, there is a fee of ten to thirty rupees (twenty to sixty-five
cents) a month for subscribing to a celebrity blog. As more actors, comedians, and
politicians launched their own voice blogs on Bubbly, the number of paid subscribers
rose steadily, breaking 1.2 million paid subscribers in just its first six months (Saxena,
2011a). The success of Bubbly has prompted the creation of a number of copy-cat voice
micro-blogging sites that are following in Bubbly's footsteps. Most recently, Tata
Teleservices, Limited, and the Indian Institute of Technology’s (IIT) Bombay Centre for
Excellence in Telecom announced the launch of a new mobile social network that will
allow telecom operators to create personalized applications and target promotions to
users in the network. The network utilizes the user's demographic profile, location,
interests, buddy list, and, most significantly, call records to tailor ads more precisely to a
user's consumption habits. The algorithm mines the call details and records to search for
patterns of interaction between users which will help it to better personalize
advertisements. Although all mobile social networks analyze user profiles and buddy lists
to offer recommendations for advertisers (Saxena, 2011b) , the fact that the Tata/IIT
platform will be managed by a telecom operator (rather than a third party vendor like
SMS GupShup or Bubbly) will allow it to be the only one that can analyze actual call

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records to more precisely target ads and collect even more detailed user-data for
marketers.
For both SMS GupShup and Bubbly, scale is critically important. Subscription
fees, for example, are an important source of revenue for Bubbly, which shares
subscription fee revenue with its telecom partners Airtel Bharti, Reliance Mobile and
Vodafone India—three of India’s largest mobile carriers. However, to ensure that
subscription fees can contribute sufficiently to revenue, a large number of subscribers is
required. Even more important than subscription fees for both Bubbly and SMS Gupshup,
however, is the ability to attract advertisers and the investments of venture capitalists,
both of which base their support on the platform’s ability to attract a large market of
consumers. Bubbly’s model and its overwhelming growth suggest that it will not have
problems attracting users. If its deployments in other developing markets are any
indication, it is likely that there will be increased advertising usage in India in the future.
During a beta-test of Bubbly in Egypt, for example, BMW “bubbled” a promotion to
visitors in their showrooms, while Citigroup and Vodafone successfully used it to send
ads and promotional materials.
In the case of both Bubbly and SMS GupShup, venture capitalists and major
brands who advertise on such services are predicting large returns on investment, which
in turn indicates their belief that there is money at the bottom of the pyramid, and that the
platforms are eager and able to deliver this category of consumer. “With so many mobile
social networks looking for scale and revenue,” said Bubbly spokesman Kevin Jordan,

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“Bubble Motion is proving that a new model exists for such services and can make
money even in emerging markets” (Huo, 2010, para 6). Clearly, ‘bringing social media to
the village’ is a promising business venture, and venture capitalists are backing the
promise with significant cash. These platforms allow for content-creation and content
sharing and thus they offer the possibility for the expression of voice.
Yet the profit-driven nature of the platforms raises questions about the extent to
which they can serve as channels of self-expression for those on the margins. Certainly,
both platforms discussed here offer opportunities for content creation and for user-driven
production. Similarly, users' active role in forming online communities with friends,
family, or others around shared interests or geographies can also help catalyze and sustain
discursive communities and social movements, as in the case of the Arab Spring. Hence,
these platforms may present spaces where the discursive storytelling activities that are
critical to voice occur.
However, the underlying goals of these services (as marketing channels and sites
for data-collection and surveillance of consumer practices) threaten to foster the
“apparent expansion of 'voice' as cover for the increasing penetration of market values
into the space of self” (Couldry, 2010, p. 34, emphasis original). Thus, while the user
may experience a sensation of participation and voice, there is a darker side to their
engagement. As Mark Andrejevic (2007) argued, a user's participation in participatory
culture (at least the commercial aspects of it) is shaped by undisclosed practices of data
mining and surveillance. By offering such user-generated platforms, he claimed, the

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marketer can shift the labor of creating content and marketing products onto the
consumer themselves, inviting them “to participate in [their] own manipulation by
providing increasingly detailed information about personal preferences, activities, and
background to those who would use the knowledge to manage consumption” (p. 242).
True as that may be, I argue that it is too soon to write off these commercial social
media platforms as vacant of any real political possibility. The struggle between
marketing dominance and user agency need not be a zero-sum game. Bar, Pisani and
Weber (2007), for example, in examining the process of technological appropriation (or
the process through which mobile phone users “make the technology their own
and…embed it within their social, economic and political practices” [p. 1]), found that
users were not hapless dupes, doomed to fall prey to marketers' insidious intentions.
Instead, in negotiating “power and control over the configuration of the technology, its
uses, and the distribution of its benefits” (p. 1), users are taking an active role in
constructing its meaning and application through their use practices. Moreover, some
have argued (Bar et al, 2007; Light & Luckin, 2008) that users are often adept at re-
purposing technology for their own political or social goals, including the purposes of
collective voice, dialogue, and social mobilization.
As platforms like SMS GupShup and Bubbly are so new, there have not been
enough studies of their use and appropriation to determine where non-hegemonic voices
might find their entry point.
72
It will certainly be important to watch as these spaces

72
See Rangaswamy, Jiwani & Chowdhury (2010) for a case study of uses of SMS GupShup.

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evolve. After all, Facebook and Twitter’s foundation within a market logic, although
certainly impacting the ability to express authentic voice, did not stop them from serving
critical functions in a growing number of social uprisings. Similarly, the fact that Bubbly
and SMS Gupshup are largely profit-driven ventures does not preclude appropriation of
the platform for more populist goals.

Social Media for Economic Inclusion
While SMS GupShup and Bubbly are purely commercial activities, there is also a
category of mobile social networking activities that—emerging from a combination of
the growing emphasis on social entrepreneurship in India and its thriving “start-up”
culture—aim to improve economic development for the poor while also turning a profit.
Like the corporate models discussed above, these initiatives are dependent on their ability
to demonstrate scale and reach to large BoP markets, but they combine this market logic
with the development-related goals of increasing the integration of BoP consumers into
employment markets. As such, these initiatives efface a neoliberal approach to
development in which the marketplace is considered to be the best vehicle to provide the
solutions for social problems.
Many of my interviewees cited SMSOne as one such promising social
entrepreneurship model for development-oriented social networking. SMSOne is a start-
up venture that utilizes mobile phones and text-messaging to provide hyper-local news
and information services to rural areas and BoP users. SMSOne is based on a franchise

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model, through which the founder selects an unemployed young person in a new project
village to be the local reporter in his area. This local reporter signs-up new subscribers,
generates news stories and sends them out via SMS, and seeks advertisers. The news is
highly local and, hence, tailored to the needs, interests, and concerns of the local
community. The reporter pays a one thousand rupee fee for the right to work with the
franchise at the outset and is paid a portion of every ad fee he collects, along with 50
rupees per story he broadcasts.
Both the mission and vision statements of the organization communicate the
commitment to development, while also demonstrating a faith in the concept of social
entrepreneurship. The project’s vision is “to empower the under-served rural
communities through application of ICT-based solutions” while, also, setting “an
example of Social Entrepreneurship in India.” (SMSONE.com, 2011, para 4; Lacy,
2009). Indeed, the entire model, and others like it, are premised on the promotion of
economic opportunities through the franchise models and improving access to markets
for BoP users by leveraging social networks.
One of the most well-regarded of these efforts is Babajob.com, a social network-
based jobs board that, as its website states, “uses the Web and mobile technology to
connect employers and bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) informal sector workers (i.e. maids,
cooks, drivers, etc.) with the goal of creating a scalable, replicable, and profitable
solution to combat poverty” (Babajob, 2011). The Babajob initiative consists of two
parallel sites—Babalife, a social networking site that targets Bangalore’s middle class,

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and Babajob, the job board for BoP workers which allows job seekers to create and post
profiles online. Babajob leverages the social connections of Babalife users to locate jobs
for its own registered users. In addition, employers can post job ads and search for
candidates through the site as well. Since many potential users do not have Internet
access, Babajob provides cash incentives for friends, family, or others with access to act
as “mentors” to help a low-income user build an online profile. Babajob also supplies
multiple channels by which users can use their phones to upload information, including
mobile Internet, interactive text message (USSD), operator-manned call centers, or an
interactive voice response (IVR) system.
Babajob has multiple streams of revenue. Users pay one rupee a day for SMS-
based membership; the revenue from these fees is shared with its telecom partners.
Babajob also generates income by offering job candidate search assistance services to
employers, as well as through ad revenue. So far, large companies, recruitment agencies,
and educational and vocational training institutes have all placed ads on the service.
Babajob believes that as their user base grows, it will be of interest to telecom companies
that are seeking to reach the ‘next billion’ subscribers at the bottom of the pyramid. As
their website claims:

Because Babajob offers a scalable form of livelihood enhancement to
India’s base-of-pyramid users, Babajob resonates strongly with India’s
Telco carriers and handset makers. Why? Babajob’s services on their
networks and devices allows companies to make credible claims that
buying a better handset or additional VAS
73
services will lead to higher

73
VAS stands for ‘Value Added Services’, or paid services on a mobile phone that provide functions
beyond text and voice. For example, popular value added services in India include daily horoscopes or

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incomes and better job opportunities for their customers. As the next 300
million Indian phone customers are likely to be poorer than the first 400
million customers, telcos and handset makers must enable incomes to
increase through the use of their services to maintain growth (Babajob,
2011)

Here, Babajob recognizes the telecommunication companies’ interest in BoP
markets and seeks to capitalize on this to further advance their own ability to provide the
service, while simultaneously providing valuable services to its BoP users. This, along
with the potential profit in selling ads on platforms like Babajob, is a clear case in which
the market potential of the BoP is used to validate its right to services.
Similarly, LaborVoices.net is, like Babajob, an effort to use mobile phones and
social networking to improve employment options and conditions for BoP workers.
Founder and CEO Kohl Singh formerly worked with the US State Department on issues
of labor rights and corporate social responsibility. Singh’s background made him
particularly sensitive to and concerned about labor rights violations, especially those
faced by international migrant workers. Often, low-income workers who migrate to
international positions have little information about potential employers, and what little
they can gather from friends, family, or the employers themselves, is often biased or
incorrect. Workers are consequently left vulnerable to exploitation in working conditions
that severely limit their human rights.

cricket scores delivered by SMS, special downloadable ringtones, friend chat services and so on. The VAS
industry in India is incredibly advanced and expansive, probably accounting for as much as 13,026 crore
rupees in profits in 2011 (Singh, 2011)

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To mitigate this problem, Labor Voices uses a voice-based interactive platform,
helping workers find and share information on employers, labor recruiters, and other
factors that could affect their well-being (e.g., housing and childcare, health services) at
their potential worksite destinations. The system
74
can be accessed via a phone call from
a mobile, and navigated by simple touch-tone prompts that help users find content on the
system or record their own questions and/or responses and ratings. They can also
comment on reviews and either access or create information about other services. The
system has a moderator who can direct questions or comments to certain responders who
may have relevant knowledge or expertise. At the time of the pilot in September 2010,
Labor Voices had selected and trained trusted community responders to address questions
posted to the system. However in the future, Singh expects the information can be crowd-
sourced to the user-base itself in true peer-to-peer fashion.
Although Labor Voices was born out of a commitment to human rights and fair
labor practices, it marries its altruistic goals with an unapologetically profit-driven vision.
Like many other commercial social media platforms, its business model relies on the
collection and sale of user data as a key revenue stream,
75
as well as the sale of
advertising, offering companies access to the coveted BoP market. Labor Voices hopes to
provide advertisers with an entry point to the vast and upwardly-mobile ‘next middle

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The Labor Voices system is a customized version of a platform called Awaaz De, which will be
discussed later.

75
Although, unlike commercial platforms, Labor Voices makes this user data available to researchers,
activists, and other interested parties for free after a profit-making embargo period. This is an interesting
turn on Andrejvics notion of surveillance and labor on social media platforms. In a sense, Labor Voices is
appropriating this surveillance and data mining practices for social and development goals, while still
operating within the neoliberal mode of market-drive solutions to social problems.

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class’ that is superior to radio broadcast ads and facilitates the targeting of specific
audiences. Moreover, Labor Voices’ website notes, they do so in order to provide their
users with “the most relevant products and services” —from public service
announcements to information on micro-savings accounts (Labor Voices, 2011).
For Singh, there was no real contradiction between a commitment to making a
profit and promoting social change, and in fact he believes the two goals should
complement each other:

It's mostly a philosophical thing for me…I think if there is a
possibility…then an organization should make every effort to be self-
sustaining without outside grants. I incorporated [Labor Voices] as a for-
profit with [the] idea in mind that, not only is there [a] potential to be self-
sustaining. There is a potential for [an] incredible amount of profit (K.
Singh, personal communication, November 25, 2010).

For Singh, there is an unstated neoliberal moral framework in which profitability
becomes a “philosophical” goal. As Banet-Wesier and Lapsansky (2008) have written,
under the neoliberal framework, profitability itself serves as a moral framework through
which entrepreneurial enterprise becomes an efficient route to social change, which is
itself “best achieved through free market forces” (p. 1255).
Indeed, a market-based profit strategy did offer Singh a certain liberation from
some of the donor dependencies that characterize so many development initiatives. He
hoped, instead, to be free to craft Labor Voices as a value-driven company, carefully
selecting venture capitalists who would back his rights-based vision without imposing
their agendas. It is important to note, however, that advertisers and venture capitalists are

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primarily attracted to platforms that have achieved a certain scale, thus delivering a large
number of consumers is an utmost concern for Labor Voices.
In summary, for Labor Voices, Babajob, and other such initiatives, “social media
for the village” is largely an entrepreneurial endeavor to integrate the poor into labor
markets while also turning a profit. Both of these platforms offer important services by
promoting humane economic inclusion through social networking for economically
disadvantaged groups. However, just as promoting voice in the form of free expression,
debate, and participation in the construction of development agendas is not the mandate
of these enterprises, neither is questioning the logic of the present conditions that led to
this economic disenfranchisement in the first place. Thus, while these efforts give the
user agency in terms of expanded economic options, the underlying assumptions upon
which that ‘agency’ is built is constrained by a framework that views the BoP mostly as
an under-utilized and untapped labor and consumer market. It does not make the shift
towards enabling them as producers of content, knowledge, or alternative agendas and
visions of redesigned social norms.

Social Media for Communication Rights
There are some, however, for whom “bringing social media to the village” means
inverting the hierarchies of power surrounding who can produce content. These initiatives
tend to take inspiration from the idea that the web can be a revolutionary tool if its
participatory elements are fully exploited and users are enabled to be producers. Yet

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those who strive to use new technologies to operationalize the right to voice also
recognize that, in order to do so, the barriers associated with accessing the Internet must
be addressed. For example, Bill Theis, one of the leading technology developers for
CGNet Swara described the motivation that drove the design team to explore this form of
rural information system:

The web really started to revolutionize things...when there [were]
contributions from everyone…when everyone becomes a publisher with
blogs, photo, everything, and video sharing, discussing online…And so,
the way we thought was, 'Can you use mobile phones to enable everyone
to become their own publisher of information and also overcome the other
barriers associated with accessing Internet content?' (B. Theis, personal
communication, September 17, 2010).

Similarly, Aadi Seth of Gram Vaani also saw a need to bring social media “to the
village,” and understood the challenges this poses:

The idea behind Gran Vaani, basically, was...'How can we do social media
in rural areas? I mean, things like Google’s Orkut, or Facebook, we know
how they’ve kind of reinforced good politics. Bringing in more
transparency, more voices from the grassroots...SMS, for example, really
toppled governments in Philippines and Hong Kong, and...[blogs] were
especially important during the Obama elections. So, it's kind of easy for
us when we have Internet access and, let's say, all of our friends are also
online...If you want to share a video or a blog, we just...put it out on
Facebook or Youtube or one of those spaces and it gets to everybody. But
then you can’t really do that in rural areas. So, you need a very different
system because its not just about providing Web access, right?...There’s a
lot of illiteracy, plus most of the people are not computer savvy. So, it's
not that you just provide them with the same Youtube or Facebook kind of
stuff. You've got to do things radically differently (A. Seth, personal
communication, June 5, 2010).

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In the second half of this chapter, I will describe three
76
platforms that attempt to
radically re-think the ways that marginalized populations can access user-generated
content opportunities. I will draw out the most significant lessons to be learned from each
of these experiences, with a particular emphasis on what they can teach about
participation, as well as the dependency relationships that constrain or enable
participation.

CGNet Swara: Caught Between Politics and Technology
As discussed in Chapter Three, CGNet Swara is, in many ways, best described as
a mobile phone-based community radio station. Established by Choudhary as a means to
provide local news and information to the underserved and dispossessed tribal
communities (known as Adivasis) in the state of Chhattisgarh, it also provides a platform
for the collection and dissemination of news from the state (which is otherwise often
suppressed).
The Adivasi populations are caught in the crossfire of a civil war between Maoist
insurgents and Indian security forces in the villages and forests of Chhattisgarh. To date,
more than 5000 people have been killed in this conflict, including many innocent

76
There are a number of other projects that I came across in my research that I do not include here,
despite their similar ideological commitment to bottom-up and localized content and an ideological
orientation towards redistributing communication power to the margins. For example, Gaon ki Awaaz, is a
well-regarded pilot project that aims to provide hyper-local news to villagers through their mobile phones.
They hire village reporters to produce daily broadcasts which are shared amongst the system's subscribers.
While it and others fit the criteria of aiming to provide local content and information and to put local people
in control of the production of news, the content creation is centralized with specially appointed community
journalists, not peer-to-peer. Therefore, while these projects have proven that they can provide critical and
needed services that benefit local development, they are not included in this discussion, although the
insights their designers shared with me during interviews informs the overall conclusions expressed here.

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villagers whom the state is quick to label as “insurgents,” regardless of their actual
affiliation. The Adivasi population is particularly vulnerable because they live on some of
the world’s richest coal and iron reserves. The state has used colonial-era acquisition laws
to confiscate tribal land, often at the behest of powerful corporate interests (Sundhar,
2007; Human Rights Watch, 2008; Amnesty International, 2011). Reports from the
residents of Chhattisgarh make clear that many of those killed by Indian security forces
are, in fact, innocent and unarmed villagers. These abuses often go unreported, even
though Chhattisgarh has more than a dozen newspapers and half a dozen news channels
(Choudhury, 2011). Chhattisgarhi journalism fails the Adivasi villagers for many reasons.
First, many of the villages are remote and difficult for underpaid journalists to reach. In
addition, the state’s news agencies rarely, if ever, hire journalists with local language
skills. Because most Adivasis speak ancient languages that lack written scripts, most
journalists are not adequately able to cover Adivasi concerns.
By far, however, the greatest threat to fair and balanced journalism is the fear of
retribution. Because of this, the media houses often align themselves with the interests of
the Chhattisgarhi political and economic elite—the groups that pay their bills and keep
them safe. This has resulted in often compromised coverage of the conflict. In the case of
L. Mudliar, a journalist who had worked in the area for thirty years, he found he was
unable to publish a story about the bad deal villagers had gotten in return for their land
from the National Mineral Development Corporation (NMDC), one of India’s largest
mining firms. “‘The villagers had supporting documents, and my reporting proved their

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claims were true,” said Mudliar. “But the editor refused to carry the story, saying NMDC
would withhold its full-page advertisements” (as cited in Choudhury, 2011). His story is
not surprising—two of the leading Hindi newspapers in the state are owned by companies
that have stakes in power plants and coal mines in the area—holdings that clearly
compromise these newspapers’ ability to report impartially on power plant and mine
construction. Moreover, the fact that 70% of Chhattisgarhi journalists have no base salary
and are paid by commission—based on the sale of a minimum number of advertisements
every month—also helps to create more incentives for journalists to maintain good
relationships with advertisers (Choudhury, 2011).
As discussed in the previous chapter, Choudhary blames poor media
representation, the ban on news, and a general lack of information flows between
villagers in the state and the larger Indian government and populace, for fueling the
Maoist insurgency in the area. His observations of the media systems in Chhattisgarh
indicated that local Adivasi populations had no access to local news, no voice in national
media or politics, and limited means of sharing information and coordinating social
actions or agendas across the dispersed Adivasi communities. Choudhary hopes to
provide a community radio station which would provide locally relevant news coverage
to Adivasi communities, along with a space to document and celebrate cultural traditions,
and a political voice that informs broader audiences both within the state and beyond to

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the nation at large. However, issues such as cost, restrictions on licensing in conflict
areas, and the government ban on news broadcasts, limit the practicalities of community
radio.
Recognizing the ubiquity of mobile phones, their compatibility with oral
traditions, and their potential to circumvent the radio news ban, Choudhary decided to
partner with an MIT computer-science team to create a voice-based phone system to
serve the functions of community radio. With a very simple intuitive IVR system, local
users can call in to listen to news that was recorded and approved by moderators or to
record their own stories. If they choose to listen to previously recorded messages, they
are able to hear the most recent five messages.
77
If they choose to record, they can record
two to three minutes of content. News stories called-in are verified by local volunteer
moderators to ensure accuracy, and then re-broadcast to users via mobile phones and
SMS. Some of the stories, particularly ones that are deemed of national interest, are
posted on CGNet's website (also run by Choudhary), where journalists from across the
country can access the stories and, hopefully, bring national media attention to stories
which would otherwise go unreported.
Some of the stories cover everyday violations, such as abuses by public
institutions or land displacement.
78
Others cover cultural issues or announce events of

77
At the time of interviews, users had to log onto the website to access archives that went back further
than the five most recent messages, but it was hoped that a system of archive and search could be built onto
the audio platform in time.

78
For example, “July 16, Bindeshwari Painkra called to report that village workers had been waiting
three years to be paid by a state-run rural employment program. And on July 28, Savita Rath reported on a
rally in the coal-rich belt of northern Chhattisgarh, where residents were protesting a mining company’s
move to acquire their land and the incarceration of a village activist” (Choudhury, 2011).

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local interest; some are even songs or stories in local languages. Some of the more
harrowing news stories, like extra-judicial killings, would otherwise go unreported if it
were not for the efforts of CGNet Swara.
When two villagers were killed without provocation, for example, the account of
Vijjobai Talami, the headwoman of Gumiapal village, which challenged the official
version of the story, was eventually picked up in papers across the nation. When the
incident occurred, Talami called and left a firsthand report on CGNet Swara’s system,
saying, “The police came and searched our village and burnt our houses and grain. They
shot dead two villagers, saying they are Maoists. But they were defenseless people who
were killed for no reason” (as cited in Choudhury, 2011, para 1) Moderators then shared
Talami’s post on the website, where journalists from across the nation picked up the
story. Said Choudhary shortly after the event:

Two people were killed a couple weeks back. The press reported just the
police version, saying there was a big exchange of fire and two Naxal
[Maoist] commanders were killed, and that they found a pistol, they found
bombs, all these things. But this woman, the sarpanch [village head], she
called up [CGNet Swara] and gave her side of the story, which was that
these two people were sleeping in their room. They were neither Maoist,
neither were they in the crossfire. Police came and burned one house and
killed these people. So, after the story came out on CGNet Swara, it came
out in mainstream newspapers and many journalists have visited this
village. Tehelka has been there. The Hindu has been there. Express has
been there. Times of India has been there. Time Magazine has been there.
79

I read it in Tehelka, I read it in The Hindu, I read it in Times of India. The
Hindu actually gave credit to CGNet Swara [for breaking the story]. (S.
Choudhary, personal communication, June 5, 2010).

79
Tehelka, The Hindu, Indian Express, and The Times of India are all major national dailies.

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CGNet: Citizens’ Journalism or Community Media?
CGNet Swara has been described as both a citizens’ journalism project and
community media system. The distinction matters in that each format implies a different
degree of openness. While journalistic platforms (even those for citizen journalism) favor
news stories with journalistic merit, community media systems are characterized by a
wider range of creative, as well as journalistic, expressions and content. Most of the
media coverage CGNet Swara has received has described it as a citizen journalism
platform, and indeed, Choudhary himself—a former BBC journalist—also commonly
talks about CGNet Swara as a primarily journalistic endeavor. However, it has also been
described as a community radio station, albeit one that does not actually use a radio
transmitter.
CGNet Swara’s journalistic roots are evidenced by the system used to moderate
content which—as Choudhary described—was established primarily to aid in verification
and to assure good journalistic practice. A moderator might decide not to approve a
posting, he said:

If it is too personal, if the facts are actually wrong, if it is actually accusing
somebody using malicious language, that kind of thing. If somebody
wants to misuse the platform for their personal propaganda, we won’t post
it. It's normal journalistic practice. And we will also not use news which
we are sure is being picked up by mainstream media. If there was a bomb
blast and 76 people were killed by Maoists, it will be in the paper
tomorrow. It will be. So we don’t take those kinds of stories; we
discourage them (S. Choudhary, personal communication, June 3, 2010).

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Despite these clear vestiges of journalistic editorial practices, however,
Choudhary also insists that the platform can and should allow for broader cultural
expression as well, echoing community media activists who argue that cultural exchange
and preservation, not just news, is an integral function of a community media system
(Rada, 1978). Choudhary, in fact, hopes that access to a space for cultural expression and
content-sharing will help strengthen the community and provide opportunities for people
to identify and organize around collective aims:

People are sending songs, poetries. We want to do more of these.
[Adivasis] and their knowledge [are] outside the digital world. Their info
and knowledge is not coming to mainstream audiences…Now this
knowledge can come to [CGNet Swara] and be recorded in a digital
form…We see a break down of communication in [the Adivasi]
community. There are four million Gonds, but only 2.7 million Gondi
speakers…There is nothing in their language—no newspaper, nothing to
hear, nothing to watch. So, we hope [CGNet Swara] will bring them
together. I went to Norway and met people from the Sami
community...They were divided in many countries—Sweden, Russia,
Norway—so radio brought them together. I hope this platform will bring
tribals in India together like that. This solves the problem of localization
of the media, and the problem of language. I hope that it will make them a
community [and] help enlarge it. When they go to a market to exchange
information, it is only thirty villages that are present. But CGNet Swara
will be across the state...bringing that whole community together (S.
Choudhary, personal communication, June 3, 2010).

Clearly, in Choudhary’s vision, such a platform can provide a space for
the discursive activities of envisioning social goals and organizing for change. In
other words, it can, he hopes, help the Adivasi community come together in wider

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numbers through storytelling to determine those things which they “have reason
to value.” The more of the community that can be brought together, the more
powerful its voice and the stronger its ability to leverage it. Thus, these functions
offer great promise for providing voice and supporting participation.

CGNet Swara’s Dependency Relationships
Current political and technological realities have created a number of significant
challenges for CGNet Swara by shaping the structures through which it promotes
participation and offers opportunities for the expression of voice. The extreme political
context within which it operates brings the dependency relationships that both enable and
hinder its operations into sharp focus. In particular, CGNet Swara’s operations are
characterized by two critical and interacting dependency relationships. First, it is
dependent on technologies, and, more importantly, on certain companies that design and
host those technologies. Second, it is dependent on the government to provide an
enabling regulatory environment. As discussed previously, the government’s concerns for
national security are often used as a broad-reaching justification for censorship,
restrictive communication policy, and abuse of the government's control over
communication resources, all of which have negatively impacted CGNet Swara, not least
of all by the fact that a community radio license is likely out of reach for the project.
The tight control over communication both in and about the state of Chhattisgarh
concentrates political communication power in the hands of the national government.

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This power is sometimes exercised directly against CGNet Swara in the form of subtle
threats and coercion of its members. At other times, however, the exertion of power is
indirect and is, in fact, enacted by the technology companies who, fearing government
reprisal, have denied CGNet Swara services.. One World South Asia at first agreed to
host the service and even offered a discounted rate before suddenly demanding
considerably more money, in what some CGNet activists believed was a ploy to avoid
hosting the controversial system. CGNet has had similar issues with the host server for
their mobile platform.
The CGNet Swara’s server was, for a time, hosted at the Indian research institute
of a leading global software company, but the server was shut down with no warning or
explanation after a prominent bus attack that brought a lot of media attention to the
conflict in Chhattisgarh. Although it is unclear why this happened, it appears that the
company may have been responding to actual or anticipated government pressure.
The pressures on CGNet Swara’s members and supporters come in many forms,
said Choudhary:

This [the web forum] became a platform for exposing human rights
violations…[Middle class members] were susceptible to police pressure.
What we expect happened with One World South Asia is nothing drastic,
maybe just a phone call saying 'What is your connection with CGNet?'
[Government officials] came twice to my house asking 'What is your
source of income? Show me your income taxes.’ If I am not a strong guy,
I would say 'My God, they are coming in my house. I must stop this work.'
So that kind of thing started—nothing drastic, all subtle. Our last meeting,
we were around 200 people. Five of them got calls that police had visited
their house for some old case or the other. We thought there [must be]

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some link between them coming to [a] CGNet discussion forum meeting
and the police coming to their houses (S. Choudhary, personal
communication, June 5, 2010).

Although subtle, these pressures are intimidating and have a significant impact on
the willingness of individuals to participate in the production of content or even to be
seen as associated with the effort. Choudhary continued,

We see the middle class people from the state slowly dissociating
themselves [from us]. It happened in phases. First, they became a bit quiet
on the forum. Then they started pulling out. They would unsubscribe.
Third, they would abuse CGNet in public forums. I would go to Raipur
and see someone was very active on CGNet, then suddenly they would
avoid me physically. Or someone would say ''Don't call my mobile
phone—call me on the landline so it is not detected.' Or, 'Don't call me at
all—just come over.' Some started not picking up their phones. I would go
to their home and know they were at home. They would send a text
message saying, 'We are not at home.' I run into them in the town, they
would say ‘You are doing good job, but you understand, we have to live
here. My mother got a message from police headquarters asking me not to
be active with CGNet, otherwise I will be in trouble. So, I left that post in
the forum abusing you. I actually don’t mean it, but I wanted to do it in
public’ (S. Choudhary, personal communication, June 5, 2010).

These dependency relationships and the direct and indirect control over
communication resources that they enshrine, have very real implications for the shape
and the design of the technological system itself. As Choudhary lamented, CGNet Swara
is “torn between politics and technology” (S. Choudhary, personal communication, June
5, 2010). If not for India's ban on the use of Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to call
overseas numbers, for example, CGNet Swara could have been hosted at MIT, where the
system software was designed and built. VoIP technology would have been used to allow
users in India to dial a local number (and thus, pay only local call charges) to call the

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system, which would then connect through VoIP to the servers in the US. Although large
telecom operators are exempt from the VoIP rules, Choudhary and his team ultimately
rejected the idea of approaching these companies for help because they were wary of the
concomitant dependency on an outside company. They were afraid of a situation in which
service might once again be vulnerable to being shut down. “What we suspect happened
with One World South Asia, what happened with [the software company hosting the
server],” he said, “can also happen with Airtel”
80
(S. Choudhary, personal
communication, June 5, 2010).
Finding a safe and welcoming home for the server has not been easy. CGNet
moved it to the Bangalore-based research institute of the software comaby, but the
company soon insisted that it be removed. Project members then considered shifting the
server to Chhattisgarh, so that the users would not have to pay the long distance call fees
to reach a server in Bangalore. However, the political situation in Chhattisgarh was
judged too volatile, and project members feared that a server in the state might be shut
down, or confiscated by government officials.
At the time of interview, CGNet Swara planned to build its own server, so as to
reduce its dependency on commercial hosting services. Choudhary no longer wanted to
feel at the mercy of others' interests. Equating the dependency relationships with the
disempowering relationship between tenant and landlord, he complained that relying on
companies for the project’s technology needs is “like you are living in somebody’s house

80
Airtel is one of India’s largest mobile telecommunication operators.

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on rent and you get kicked out because your landlords don’t want you to live there” (S.
Choudhary, personal communication, June 5, 2010). Building and hosting their own
server was thus a route to independence. Although it was not a perfect one, as he mused,
“now we are owning our own house. But then our house can get confiscated.” Even if
they were to build an independent server, the server would still need to be wired to four
or five phone lines. That means they would have to enter into a service contract with at
least one telecom company, thus establishing another dependency relationship that could
leave the system vulnerable to shut-down. Choudhary described how they hope to create
redundancies to reduce dependency on any one telecom company:

We should try to be more self-reliant as and when we can. We are trying
to make our own server…At first, we were thinking about going to one
company and getting all the four or eight phone lines from one company.
But now we are thinking—it sounds crazy—to have four or five lines from
different companies coming to the laptop. [We] have to do these kinds of
crazy things so if one company goes down, there are three more….I hope
the chances of all four companies saying ‘no’ to us at the same time are a
lot less than one saying ‘no’ to us for all the lines. So, for the future, if we
make a laptop server, we will make sure the lines are from different
companies. These are kinds of precautions we are taking now (S.
Choudhary, personal communication, June 5, 2010).

The need for these kinds of solutions underscores the extent to which
CGNet Swara— “torn between politics and technology” —must weigh issues of
usability and cost against political constraints. More frustrating still is India’s
telecommunication regulatory environment, which is convoluted and antiquated,

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and thus often discourages innovation in design or deployment of systems (Price
& Verhulst, 1998). These constraints also affect the capacity to create media
systems that allow for content production from the bottom up. As we will see in
the following chapter, these realities also posed considerable challenges to
Breakthrough during the design of the Chatpati Chat system and, in many ways,
these concerns shaped the final design and deployment.

CGNet Swara’s Financial Sustainability
CGNet Swara started with very little funding and was mainly run on the volunteer
efforts of Choudhary, the technology designers, and a number of local activists and
advocates in Chhattisgarh. Choudhary and his work were supported by a Knight
Foundation Fellowship, through which he was able to cover some of the initial
investment costs. At the time of writing, CGNet Swara was experimenting with a “call-
back” feature such that if a user placed a “missed call” to the system, the system would
call the user back. Since incoming calls are free in India, the cost of the usage would then
fall to CGNet Swara, not the end user. However, without a steady revenue stream or
consistent funding, the cost of this air time is a serious financial burden on the project. At
the same time, asking users to absorb the call usage fees privileges the voices of only the
upper levels of a population where many people struggle to find the forty cents needed
for their next meal.
This dilemma opened discussion among project members about whether the

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service should continue as a free-to-user service, or whether it should transition to a pay
model. Some in the team felt that unless users paid for the system, there would be no way
to measure the value that the system delivered and whether the users valued it enough to
warrant the expense of running it. On the other hand, however, Choudhary argued that
there were a lot of potential users that were not getting exposed to the system in the first
place because they were unable or reluctant to pay for the cost of the call to try the
platform.
At the time of our interview, there was no clear business model to address these
cost concerns, and it seemed that a number of possibilities including grant funding, user
fees, and advertising were all on the table as possible sources of support to maintain the
platform. Given the user profile of the system, certain advertisers may find CGNet Swara
appealing because of its reach to previously unreachable markets. However, in order to
appeal to companies seeking BoP market access, CGNet Swara would have to
demonstrate that it has large scale and reach in the state. As Theis noted, a key question
that will determine its appeal to advertisers is:

How many do we reach? What’s the purchasing power of these people?
That’s a big question…Right now there are fewer advertising
channels…in these local languages for these local communities. So, it
could be a big opportunity (B. Theis, personal communication, September
11, 2010).

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Of course, there would also be challenges to this approach: the political nature of
the service may repel certain advertisers. In addition, if CGNet Swara could not
demonstrate a large cumulative purchasing power among its users, advertisers would
have little incentive to step up. Hence, pursuing an advertising strategy would necessarily
create a dependency relationship that would push the project to pursue scale, and to target
users with demonstrable purchasing potential. This strategy, in turn, would both shape the
profile of the user and shape the ways in which the platform is used.

Spoken Web: A Voice-Based Analog to the World Wide Web
Spoken Web, a project currently under development by IBM Research India, is an
effort to create a voice-driven ecosystem that is parallel to that of the World Wide Web in
order to increase rural and illiterate people’s access to information services. The Spoken
Web allows users to create their own “Voice Sites,” which, as IBM’s research articles
described, “can be thought of as a parallel to a Website, but which can be accessed by
dialing a phone number and information can be listened to rather than being read or seen”
(Agarwal, Kumar, Nanavati, & Raiput, 2009) These sites are hosted on a network of
Voice Sites which are interconnected with each other through “voice links” (analogous to
hyperlinks) that allow users to jump to other Voice Sites with content related to that
which they are browsing. The developers argued that such a voice-based service
analogous to the Web would allow would allow underprivileged people to access, create,
host, and share information and services at lower cost and with greater efficiency

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(Kumar, Rajput, Chakraborty, Agarwal & Nanavati, 2007), just as the Internet does for
more privileged users.
IBM India’s research team launched Spoken Web as part of their efforts to
explore information needs and possible software solutions for users at the BoP. While
done out of the research team’s interests and commitment to enabling bottom-up content
generation, they also saw it as beneficial to the institution as a whole. Mapping potential
users would offer insights into the needs, services, and technologies that could be entry
points to tap into emerging BoP markets.
Unlike CGNet Swara, for example, Spoken Web was not created with a specific
development goal, community, or use in mind. Like the World Wide Web, Spoken Web
is an open platform that has any number of applications, depending on the needs and
interests of the users. As one member of the team described:

The…thing about our platform is that it is a very generic platform. So, it is
not like we have a solution for health care so we will look for partners in
the health space. It is like the World Wide Web. If somebody wants to
make a website, they can make their website, whatever the content might
be (A. Jain, personal communication, June 9, 2010).

Spoken Web’s Dependency Relationships
Since it is difficult for technology design and research teams to access rural end
users directly, they rely on NGO partnerships to help them gain and maintain the
relationships with the communities necessary to conduct research and user trials. As a

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result, the pilot case studies that Spoken Web had conducted by the time of my meeting
with them had all been done in concert with NGO partners, who had largely dictated the
goals for which the technology was to be used.
More often than not, what the NGO wanted to do with the technology was related
to classic development goals such as increased economic inclusion or dissemination of
agricultural information. Many of the envisioned applications that the IBM research team
has discussed in their studies are related to economic inclusion and support to SMEs. For
example, virtual communities or cooperatives could help mom-and-pop retailers to
compete with the ever-increasing number of chains and malls by collectively sourcing
products and otherwise increasing their efficiency (Kumar, Rajput, Agarwal, Chakraborty
& Nanavati, 2008). In a second possible use-case scenario, one person in a village or
community could be a designated information mediator tasked with gathering crucial
information (train times, meeting schedules, etc) and posting them on a voice site. As
such, they would be serving many of the information needs that a community radio
station might serve, while the Voice Sites can also help businesses to liaise with
customers (Kumar, et al 2007; Kumar et al 2008). While the pilots have been concerned
with more traditional development goals, Spoken Web also presents a lot of opportunity
for promoting voice, creative engagement and discursive storytelling at the community
level. Even in some of the deployments that are more oriented towards economic
inclusion, researchers noted that Voice Sites intended for posting advertisements for
services quickly evolved into a general message board, and that locally-generated content

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was extremely popular. While users used it most commonly for advertising their own
local goods and services, other interesting content began to appear. For example, a man
uploaded his profile information to invite marriage proposals, and another person later
posted a “response advertisement,” commenting on his profile. Young parents recorded
their child’s voice for the grandparents to listen to, and a politician posted a thank-you
message after winning a local election (Agarwal et al 2009). These organically generated
uses demonstrate that, as the Agrawal et al concluded, “Even though they may have never
heard of social networking on the web, the need for social networking is natural and
compelling” (Agarwal et al 2009, p. 64). Spoken Web’s emphasis on providing the
necessary tools for content production to this population expands the opportunities for
voice and community participation in development. It also shifts the categorization of
“beneficiaries” away from one where they are mere consumers of content, services, and
goods, to one where they are understood as active citizens who can engage in the content
production process. One of the research team members described the ways in which
Spoken Web understands the subject positions of the users in our interview:

In societies like India and Africa, traditionally,…knowledge passes on by
word of mouth from generation to generation. So, these people have really
great knowledge and wisdom. Just because they cannot put it in the
written form, one should not undermine what they are capable of...No
matter what small society you go to, there will be people there who advise
others…And the thing is, by doing this [Spoken Web] we are enabling this
advice to reach much more broadly. So, we think of [users] primarily as
content creators and knowledge creators rather than pure consumers…In
fact, that is what is not only unique, but I think is the true value of Spoken

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Web: the way it empowers these people. It really gives them the right kind
of dignity [and] respect. (N. Singh personal communication, June 9,
2010).

If Spoken Web can truly empower users to be producers in this way, then the
possibilities of its use to create community media systems that support discursive
storytelling activities are great. However, Spoken Web is still in the development phase—
a stage in which, arguable, the application can be used in more freely. Research
institutions such as IBM Research India have, as Amit Modi, a member of the design
team, described it, the opportunity to of imagine and design “blue skies” possibilities. In
such stages of conceptualization and pilot, there are few concerns about profitability or
monetization so it gives them the flexibility to think creatively about innovative
technology solutions, since not everything that comes out of the research initiatives has to
translate to profits. Questions of profits and monetization will only come into play later,
when the business side of the company develops the business model for the technology.
The benefit of this is that dependency relationships regarding funding do not drive the
development of the technology in the way it might for other projects that do not have the
“blue skies” innovation mandate. However, the down side is the lack of control over the
deployment of the final product and uncertainty about if and how it might be offered to
the BoP populations it was designed to benefit.
Regardless of the final business model, it is clear that there is profit potential in
such an effort, and it is clear that it will eventually attract the corporations that may want
to reach its BoP users. Because people feel it is only a matter of time until everyone is

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somehow digitally connected, said Modi, once people in developing nations are on the
platform, “then all the people who want to sell to them will also want to have a presence”
there. Even the biggest corporations— “the Pepsis,” he said—will participate because
“they need a channel to get to these people,” (A. Modi, personal communication, June 6,
2010).
While the Spoken Web team may find that financial dependency relationships are
less of an issue during its “blue skies” design efforts, the team is still somewhat tethered
by strong dependency relationships with NGO partners. As noted above, typically direct
access to rural users is impossible for a technology development teams like the Spoken
Web. Instead, they have partnered with NGOs who have stronger connections to BoP
communities in order to gain access to testing sites. Modi described the relationship in
our discussions:

I think what is happening is an eco-system is emerging…there are companies, and
there are universities, and there are NGOs, right? Typically what is happening is
the technologies are coming from the universities and the companies. The market
is the end user, and the best way to reach that end user is through the NGOs. So
typically, in the last five years, what I have seen is that companies like us (or the
universities) have to work with the NGOs in order to deploy something or pilot
something with the BoP (A. Modi, personal communication, June 6, 2010).

These NGOs often heavily influence the kinds of applications that were devised for
Spoken Web in its pilot deployments, because, said Modi, the NGOs almost always had
their own ideas about what they wanted for their beneficiaries. Although the researchers

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would educate the NGO staff about the technology and its capabilities, and the NGO staff
and Spoken Web researchers would together brainstorm on what might work, the final
action plans were often “based on the things [the NGO] already had in mind” (A. Modi,
personal communication, June 6, 2010).

Awaaz De
One deployment of the Spoken Web system was Avaaj Otalo, a partnership
between IBM Research, India, and an NGO in Gujarat that works with rural farmers to
improve agricultural practice. Upon completion of this deployment, Neil Patel, one of the
project team, set up a commercial venture called Awaaz De, which offers the Avaaj Otalo
platform to NGO’s as an off-the-shelf solution that they can customize to their own
needs. Awaaz De is voice message system that allows for the creation of online
communities that, from the user’s perspective, are entirely managed and navigated
through voice over the phone. The company offers this software to its NGO partners as a
turnkey communications solution for organizations looking to engage their constituents
and encourage bottom-up information sharing and content creation. Awaaz De provides
the support needed for NGOs to set up and host interactive audio platforms that are
accessible to users from even the most basic phones. The system can be used to
disseminate informational voice messages, collect feedback, conduct phone surveys, and
facilitate the exchange of knowledge and ideas between community members.

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Patel explained that the inspiration behind Avaaj Otalo, the predecessor to the
Awaaz De system,
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was the inversion of the traditional top-down model of agricultural
extension work. In India, rural farmers typically access information about farming
practices from one-way and top-down sources such as television, radio broadcast, or
extension workers (employed by the government to train and assist farmers). Rarely is the
information localized, nor does it acknowledge the expertise held by the farmers
themselves. Recently, there have been a number of mobile-phone based interventions to
modernize agricultural extension work through the use of mobile telephony. For example,
the fertilizer and agricultural products company Monsanto has created an SMS-based
information service to help farmers maximize crop yield (while, of course, building brand
loyalty among farmers). IFFCO, one of India’s largest agricultural companies, runs a
similar agricultural information service. I also interviewed one of the principal designers
of Ek Gaon, a SMS-based service that provides farmers with information on how to
increase their agricultural output, who described the ways in which they customize the
information based on the farmers yields and other personalized data. In addition to these
SMS-based interventions, other mobile applications for farmers have incorporated voice-
based applications like LifeLine that allow farmers to ask questions of human operators.
The operators then obtain the answers from the relevant expert and leave the answer as a

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Awaaz De is a commercial venture that grew out of a project called Avaaj Otalo, which was done in
partnership between IBM Research India and the Development Support Center, a NGO based in rural
Gujarat.

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voice message for the farmer.
Many of these platforms, like those of Monsanto and Ek Gaon, are “push”
services, delivering information from a centralized server or expert to the farmer without
the farmer having to request the information. “Pull” services, such as LifeLine, instead
provide information in response to particular queries from the users. While more
responsive to individualized questions the farmers might have, such pull services are still
quite expert-driven and do not place a high value on local content. Avaaj Otalo, on the
other hand, works on the assumption that peer group information might be more relevant
and in-touch with current local situations than top-down information from outside
experts. Avaaj Otalo is one of a few efforts that seeks to involve the farmers themselves
as part of the agricultural education process.
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In our interviews, Patel explained why
voice-based solutions were the natural choice for meeting the goal of facilitating peer-to-
peer information sharing:

So we started thinking about non-top-down solutions and along with that
we started thinking about what kind of platform we could use to facilitate
peer-to-peer sharing and that immediately brought to mind the phone,
because the main reason is it’s perverseness and familiarity…From our
experience, every farmer—or most farmers—had phones and they knew
how to use them, so we were naturally attracted to using the phone in
someway (N. Patel, personal communication, January 20, 2011).
One Awaaz De feature that can be customized for different clients using the
system include question-and-answer forums. A moderator can direct a question towards a

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The other notable effort (and one interviewed for this study) is the Digital Green project which has
aimed to democratize agricultural information through participatory video and interactive viewing
workshops at the community level.

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particular responder and the person who asked the question will receive an alert when the
answer has been posted. Others in the community can post comments to that question as
well. The system also offers announcement boards where the NGO can post audio
recordings of the latest content they want to feature, and, if the NGO wishes, settings can
be configured so that anyone else in the community can also post, as well as comment on,
announcements. These spaces can easily be used for creative content as well as more
formal, informational content. It is also possible to archive audio content such as radio
shows, audio skits, and things of that nature that listeners can browse and comment upon.
As a start-up venture, Awaaz De hopes to become self-sustaining through
assessing hosting fees to its NGO partners. Currently, they fund each deployment
differently, depending partially on the partner organization’s resources and preferences.
Most of the Awaaz De partners fund their systems with grant money, either by securing
specific grants for the technology platform or by re-allocating small portions of grant
money from other projects. One of the key determinants of costs is the NGO’s decision
regarding whether or not the user will be charged for their call to the system. The phone
lines that support the platform can be set up as traditional lines—for which the user will
have to pay their mobile carrier usage fees—or a toll-free line that places the burden of
the cost of the call on the NGO. The toll-free line, while encouraging participation, can
end up raising the NGO’s operational expenses significantly. In addition, some have
argued that a free service encourages people to record too freely leading to insignificant
or meaningless posts. Nonetheless, a number of NGOs, worried about the cost burden for

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their constituents, have opted for a free-to-user approach and then tried to recover the
costs through their project grants or other revenue streams.
One potential means of cost recovery is advertising. However, for an NGO,
advertising may be antithetical to their non-profit goals or may be perceived as
jeopardizing their legal non-profit status. As Patel described,

It’s tricky with the partners we work with in the civil society non-profit
sector. If there are non-commercial goals of the system, then it is hard to
justify bringing in commercial sponsors, but I think that is definitely a
possibility in terms of sustaining a line—having a line paying for itself.
But in our experience thus far, our partners have not been keen on it,
mainly because they want to maintain the non-commercial status of their
organization and reflect that in the system (N. Patel, personal
communication, January 20, 2011).

Given this, it is likely that most NGO deployments of Awaaz De will continue to
be grant-funded, although, as I have already discussed, grant funding brings with it its
own set of dependency relationships that serve to encourage NGOs to perpetuate
mainstream development agendas and approaches, rather then to innovate or seek ways
of expanding the discourse.
Awaaz De is an open platform that puts the power of content production squarely
in the hands of the user. Its peer-to-peer features also allow users to converse amongst
themselves about content that is posted by their fellow community members. However,
the system can be configured to fit various degrees of openness, depending on the needs
and desires of the NGO partner. Each message board on Awaaz De, for example, can be
configured in such a way that users can either a) only listen to content, b) listen and post

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comments, or c) listen, post comments, and post original content. Hence the degrees of
participation can be set by the NGO as it configures the system.
In addition, the system allows for a moderator. The moderator is something like a
radio jockey who invites participation from users by posting new content, sending
messages out to the phones of that broadcast post either by the organization or other
users, and directing user questions to qualified participants (either peer or expert) who
can address the questions. But, depending on how heavy-handed they are, moderators can
also filter or stifle participation.
While Awaaz De’s technology was designed to allow for peer-to-peer sharing
among rural users in the hopes of inverting top-down development paradigms, this goal
could not always be realized. First, the organizations themselves are often reluctant to
give control over the content to the user in this way. In the Avaaj Otalo pilot, for
example, Patel reported that the NGO “felt strongly that they wanted to have control over
all the content that went through the system…not just the questions, but also answers,
because their name is behind the system.” Partner organization preferences have also
forced Awaaz De to move away from some of its bottom-up goals:

So far, we’ve decided to…go with what our partners want and our partners
have kind of concurred with a sort of a perpetuation of the top-down
paradigm. So some of the time, especially with Avaaj Otalo, it’s basically
evolved (or devolved, depending on how you are looking at it) into…an
information access service from [the organization]. It is not peer-to-peer
information sharing. Farmers call-in, they leave a question, somebody
from [the organization] is going to answer that question and the farmers

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are going to get an answer from that person. Very little farmer-to-farmer
interaction is happening (N. Patel, personal communication, January 20,
2011).
Second, even the users themselves may not place the same value on peer-to-peer
information as the Awaaz De team does. In the case of Avaaj Otalo, for example, many
of the farmers felt they could trust so-called “expert” information more than peer-
generated information. For example, Patel, Chittamuru, Jain, & Parikh (2010) quote one
farmer who sums up the common attitude that, if they are paying for the service in terms
of airtime usage fees, the farmers wanted to feel they were getting real expert value for
their money. “I want a real agricultural expert to answer my questions,” one of the users
shared, “someone who is trained in such things. Then I shall be happy with AO [Avaaj
Otalo]” (as cited in Patel et al 2010, p 43). In my interview with Patel, he confessed that
changing this mindset has been a challenge for him, personally, especially given his own
commitment to empowering people through bottom-up content generation:

At the end of the pilot, we asked the farmers whether they prefer answers
coming from other farmers or from the NGO, and overwhelmingly they
said they wanted answers coming from the NGO...The reasons they gave
were basically that other farmers were not accomplished or smart enough
to answer their questions, the NGO gives real scientific knowledge…[This
makes] the work…difficult because...often times we are still…outsiders
bringing that idea of “bottom-up” to communities…Farmers, they want an
answer from [an] NGO. They say flat out, ‘We don’t want answers from
other farmers.’ So, given that, what can we do? I mean we want to
encourage farmer-to-farmer sharing, but they are telling us that they would
rather have answers from the top down, so how do you move forward?
That is the real concern (N. Patel, personal communication, January 20,
2011).

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In this case, both the community members themselves, and the NGO implementers take
part in perserving the status quo of communication power in development. This
demonstrates the ways in which discursive regimes perpetuated by top-down practices
are internalized and hence reinforced by the very people that are controlled by these
discourses.

Chapter Five Conclusion
As India enters the “mobiles for development” era, it is clear that the dominant
paradigm of top-down information dissemination still prevails, despite the powerful
opportunities that mobiles offer for content production by end users. Nonetheless, there
are a number interesting new initiatives that are attempting to bring the power of content
creation and dissemination to people outside the middle and upper class users who
typically populate online social media in India. The most promising of these emphasize
audio services and voice interaction to increase inclusivity across languages and literacy
levels.
While many of these programs are at nascent stages, they do promise new
opportunities for participation and voice, yet, as the case studies in this chapter suggest,
these possibilities are influenced by issues of scale and financial sustainability,
technological policy and infrastructure, and dependency relations that all influence the
design of the platforms and the ways in which users can interact with them. In the next
chapter, I will look at Breakthrough’s Chatpati Chat program—which similarly set out to

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construct a platform to bring social media to audiences previously excluded from these
online spaces—and how the forces mentioned above have similarly impacted the
organization’s efforts.

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CHAPTER SIX
BREAKTHROUGH’S CHATPATI CHAT

I wrote this poem about the Ram Mandir disputes between Hindus and Muslims:
After thinking so little; after thinking so little; you lift your blade and brothers cut brothers’
throats; I speak the truth when I say that this storm will divide all hearts.
-Recorded on Chatpati Chat by Neha Jaswal, 12 April, 2011

I’d like to share a poem:
Today I’m happy that I’m here on this earth; like a new seedling.
I will become a tree and provide shelter for all.
I will save you from harsh sunlight; I will make you cool.
But in my mind a question arises when I see a tree cut down; I wonder, will you spare me?
Or will you also cut me down?
Will you destroy my body to make your palace?
How will the next generation live? Have you ever thought of that?
This is not just my question; this is the question of all of nature, whether trees, wind or earth.

I wrote this poem for the environment, but it is also about female infanticide. Like a girl child that
is killed in the womb, a tree that’s cut before it can grow can’t reach its full potential.
-‐ Niti Kushwaha, describing the poem she posted on Chatpati Chat, January 15, 2012

The two poems above were written and posted on Chatpati Chat, Breakthrough’s
mobile community media platform, by Neha Jaswal and Niti Kushwaha, two Rights
Advocates from Lucknow who took part in the pilot program that launched in March of
2011. By recording their original compositions on Chatpati Chat, Neha and Niti were
able to express their creative voice as well as their views on key social issues with others
in their Rights Advocates (RAs) peer group, which, as they both shared during
interviews, sparked a number of conversations about women’s rights and human rights
among the RAs. Such conversations allowed the RAs to get to know each other in new
ways, deepened existing friendships and, as Niti and Neha reported, offered the

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opportunity to meet RAs that they did not know before (N. Kushwaha and N. Jaswal,
personal communication, January 15, 2012).
The Chatpati Chat program was the result of my fourteen-month collaboration
with Breakthrough, during which I (as participant observer) provided the technical advice
and capacity building the organization needed to set up the technology while also
documenting the organization's process and the pressure points that influenced its ability
to design and deploy a participatory platform.
The Chatpati Chat platform consists of an IVR system (accessed via a toll-free
number) through which RAs can post their own content, as well as listen to and comment
on content posted by other RAs. Breakthrough conceptualized it as a community media
system that would provide RAs with a platform to express their voice and discuss issues
of concern within their community of advocates. Similar to the “social media for the
village” initiatives described in the last chapter, Chatpati Chat aimed to put the power of
content creation and peer-to-peer networking in the hands of users who did not have
reliable access to online social media tools.
In this chapter, I will narrate the process that was followed to design and
implement the project, including key decisions about the project's audiences and
objectives. I will discuss how they fit into Breakthrough’s larger vision of social change,
with particular reference to issues of voice and participation. I will then explore the
behind-the-scenes decisions and discussions that affected the form of the platform that
was ultimately presented to the RAs. In so doing, as in previous chapters, I aim to explore
the ways in which dependencies, constraints, negotiations, and compromises affected the

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opportunities for participation and voice that the deployment of the technology ultimately
offered. Specifically, many of the key challenges that shaped the platform described in
the previous chapters (e.g, community radio as well as the participatory mobile and social
media platforms discussed in Chapter Five) also affected Breakthrough. I explore these
key tensions and themes that marked the design process, including technological
constraints, financial sustainability, and decisions over how much control the
organization would maintain over the user-generated content, and point to ways that this
affected the experience of participation for users of Chatpati Chat.
To fully understand the goals of Chatpati Chat and the ways in which it dealt with
concerns such as technological constraints, financing, and modes of participation, it is
first necessary to describe Breakthrough, its organizational vision, and the wider range of
initiatives that address gender-based violence in India, of which Chatpati Chat (and
Breakthrough’s efforts with mobile more generally) are an integral part.

Breakthrough: The Organization
Breakthrough is a human rights organization with the mission to use “media, pop
culture, and community mobilization to inspire people to take action for human rights”
(www.breakthrough.tv, 2012). Breakthrough’s programs are currently concentrated in
India and the US—the world’s two largest democracies—and address a range of human
rights issues, including women’s rights; sexuality and HIV/AIDS; and racial justice and
immigrant rights. The organization was launched in 2000 with the release of Mann ke
Manjeere, an award-winning MTV music video produced by Breakthrough that raised

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awareness about domestic violence in India. The video presented the real-life story of a
woman who left her abusive husband and began work as a truck driver, a career that
strongly challenged traditional gender norms.
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Since then, women’s rights and violence
against women have remained a central focus for Breakthrough’s India programming.

Building a Human Rights Culture Through Voice
Breakthrough’s approach to addressing violence against women emphasizes the
deep cultural engagement through popular culture, folk forms and long-term community-
level interventions. This emerges from Breakthrough‘s underlying theory of change that
articulates certain relationships between human rights, culture, and social change.
Chatpati Chat must therefore be understood as it fits into this larger vision. In this vision,
the question of human rights is more than one of national and international-level policy
prescriptions and enforcement. Breakthrough argues that human rights must also be
practiced, protected, and promoted by non-state actors, including social institutions,
religious institutions, communities, and individuals. The true realization of human rights,
Breakthrough believes, requires that all these actors participate in ‘building a human
rights culture’ by preventing violations and creating enabling environments where rights
can be equally enjoyed. The organization’s aim is to challenge and transform the social
values and norms that work to reinforce various forms of discrimination and oppression.

83
Mann ke Manjeere was followed by two additional MTV music videos that addressed themes related
to violence against women – Babul (released in the same year as Mann ke Manjeere) demonstrated that
domestic violence crosses class lines, while Maati (released in 2004), exposed the linkages between
violence and women’s vulnerability to HIV.

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Central to Breakthrough’s efforts to shift social norms is the understanding of
both culture and rights as continually evolving concepts that are integrally intertwined.
For example, Breakthrough articulates its vision in a living and evolving document they
call their Theory of Change. It articulates culture as continually contested, echoing the
scholarly traditions of symbolic interaction and of social constructionist approaches to
theories of culture which conceptualized communication as an ongoing process through
which people create meaning and construct social realities (Carey, 1989). Thus, in
promoting the ‘building’ of a more enabling culture, they hope to convey the idea that the
process through which culture is constructed is an ongoing discursive one where the
notion of rights and the values pertaining to social exclusion or inclusion, gender, and
identity are negotiated, questioned, and re-defined. Human rights, in short, as
Breakthrough approaches it, do not live only in treatises and are not merely a collection
of UN proclamations, but are part of the every-day communicative practices by which
communities define themselves and their norms of practice vis-à-vis justice, equality,
basic needs, and their priorities for change. Hence, the construction of a ‘human rights
culture’ is also about voice, in the same way that, as described in Chapter One, voice is
integral to the processes through which communities narrate their identities and construct
what they have ‘reason to value’ in development.
For Breakthrough, however, there is also an emphasis on using popular culture to
express alternative voices, attitudes and norms in society. Communication, pop culture
and artistic expression are heavily imbricated in this process of cultural contestation and
are hence often sites through which human rights norms and priorities for change and

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development are debated. Pop culture (and folk culture, I would argue), for example, is
often a site where existing norms are reinforced and the bourndaries of social inclusion
are defined. Indeed, cultural forms of communication—be they traditional folk practices
or modern popular culture—have long been recognized as conservative forces that
transmit and propagate traditional values throughout a culture. For example, in his
analysis of rhetoric in pre-literate cultures, Kennedy (1998) described speech in ritual
settings as serving the function of strengthening cultural identity through reinforcing
traditional beliefs. Gerbner’s cultivation theory asserts that television has a
“mainstreaming” effect through which viewers are gravitationally pulled towards a
common socio-political outlook (Gerbner et al, 2002), while the Frankfurt School took a
darker view that popular culture serves to create homogenized consumer culture (e.g., see
Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972).
In contrast, art and cultural expressions are often the sites for the construction of
subcultures and cultural resistance where alternatives can be expressed and explored,
posing challenges to mainstream hegemonic discourse (Gramsci, 1971; Hebdige, 1993;
Kelley, 1996). In the context of development communication, entertainment-education
strategies have demonstrated that popular culture can be used to promote dialogues about
social norms and model new ones (Chatterjee, Bhanot, Frank, Murphy & Power, 2009;
Frank, Chatterjee, Chaudhuri, Lapsansky, Bhanot & Murphy, in press; Lapsansky &
Chatterjee, in press; Singhal, & Rogers, 1999; Harter et al, 2007).
Breakthrough recongizes the ways in which communication is deeply intertwined
in our daily lives and cultural meaning. “Over the last decade,” reads its Theory of

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Change, “dramatic transformations have taken place in areas of entertainment, media, and
technology, and these have become an integral part of public life. This is as true in rural
communities in India who may watch TV on a shared set through satellite signals as of
urban teenagers in the US, for whom daily life is intimately linked to the Internet”
(Breakthrough, 2011). Indeed, Breakthrough’s works seems to be guided by an
understanding of the importance of communication in creating a sense of shared identity
and belonging, in much the same way that many communication scholars have argued for
the power of mass media to construct collective identities (Anderson, 2006; Friedland,
2001; Hilmes, 1997). For example, Sonali Khan, the Vice President of Breakthrough,
describes the role she sees for Breakthrough’s mass media and popular culture work in
the process of promoting change:

If you and I are seeing the same set of information, that is also very
empowering, because then that builds up a shared sense of values—or a
shared questioning of accepted values. So, you are watching the same
program I am watching about, say, early marriage. Then both of us start
questioning it, and then when we meet next, we say, ‘Did you see that
program that was questioning these things we take for granted?’ It creates
a shared set of questions, or verbiage. It is something that helps because
otherwise we don’t have a shared starting point for talking about these
difficult issues (S. Khan, personal communication, April 20, 2011).

Breakthrough sees this creation of shared questioning and the dialogue it provokes as a
necessary precondition in order for people to feel empowered to change or challenge
accepted norms.
Furthermore, Breakthrough recognizes that many different voices are involved in
the contestation of culture and that marginalized identities and groups need to be given

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greater voice in this process. The organization therefore uses its media and
communitcation work to place some of these alternative views into mainstream dialogue.
For example, in its Bell Bajao campaign, which will be discussed below, they sought to
highlight actions and behaviors that were already existent among men in the populations
they were targetting, but which to date had not been acknowledged or given visibiliy. Its
mission is to engage such communicative spaces, including pop culture, media, and
traditional folk forms, while simultaneously challenging the more regressive tendencies
of such cultural expressions.
For example, the organization often uses traditional folk theater forms but
reinvents them to challenge gender norms. Breakthrough has trained all female troupes
that challenge traditional gender norms by performing Yakshagana in southern India and
puppetry in northern India, art forms that were formerly the sole domain of men (in the
case of Yakshagana, Breakthrough’s troupe is probably the first female group to ever
perform the art form). As one of the lead female actors in the troop shared with me,
classic religious and mythical themes that characterize these performances are often
retained, but re-cast to draw attention to the role and treatment of women in both classical
and contemporary times (M. Jyothigudde, personal communication, April 24, 2010). The
Yaksahagana troop shows that not only does the content of the performances challenge
audiences to examine taken-for-granted expectation about women, but women’s visibility
as performers will also reinforce an overall message about shifting gender norms and
create a larger context from which to deconstruct hegemonic norms and suggest
alternatives.

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For Breakthrough, “building human rights culture” is, thus, at its core, about a
collective communication activity that identifies injustices and provides spaces to
imagine alternative values as well as norms of interaction that can uphold human rights.
While there are many competing voices in this process, Breakthrough sees its human
rights media and communication programs as one way to portray the concerns of women
and other marginalized groups in the popular and folk culture spaces where they are often
silenced or degraded. Initially, they did this through messages crafted by the
organization, in partnership with advertising agencies and media professionals. As shifts
in technology occur, however, they create additional spaces and opportunities for people
to speak for themselves, as Khan described:

If you look at the social development sector before, we didn’t have ways
we could get people’s voices out there…Now, with new technologies,
there is the possibility for people to actually participate [in influencing
media and culture] directly. So, we need to make good on what we said
before: earlier we said that people didn’t have voices. We were
representing their views for them, as people with more privilege who had
opportunities [to influence the media]. Now when those opportunities to
give people voices are here, we need to jump in there and make sure that it
happens (S. Khan, personal communication, April 5, 2010).

Consequently, in the last few years, Breakthrough has been experimenting with
social media and community-based video reporting as methods for increasing the volume
of the voices of their constituents. While the mass media was used to spark dialogue at
the community level, the organization now sees an opportunity to use social media and
the viability of mobile phones in sustaining dialogue and providing spaces for the
communities themselves to convey the messages to each other. As Khan stated:

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The issues we are working on are very tricky. They are problems that are
deep-rooted and social norms [about gender] are so difficult to push. It's
not just about creating the dialogue, it's an issue of sustaining it…Mass
media, pop culture, and community mobilization are key avenues to create
the conversation and dialogue in the community that is required to push
the envelope. Now we are integrating new technologies with Chatpati
Chat which was based on the fact that people should have conversations
and dialogue with each other that we hope will result in noise that leads to
advocacy. With Chatpati Chat, we hoped to see if mobiles could help to
support and sustain that dialogue (S. Khan, personal communication,
January 16, 2012).

As the quote above suggests, Breakthrough’s model is based on the assumption
that sustained dialogue, especially when there are spaces for articulation of alternative
views, is critical to the social change process, and that it is a necessary complement to
mass media activities that can serve to introduce new ideas into the public consciousness
for debate. Indeed, a number of studies in recent years have shown the ways in which
mass media and interpersonal dialogue reinforce each other to increase the impact of
media messaging and to bring about change (Chatterjee et al, 2009; Valente, Kim,
Lettenmaier, Glass & Dibba, 1994).
The ways in which Breakthrough operationalizes these theories of change is best
understood by analyzing its work on domestic violence in India over the past few years,
but first some basic background on the issue more broadly is needed.

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Domestic Violence in India: The Flawed Implementation of the 2005 Protection of
Women From Domestic Violence
Violence against women and girls is a global epidemic and one of the most
pervasive forms of human rights violations.
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India is also greatly affected by this
epidemic; a survey by the government of India found that 35% of women aged fourteen
to forty-nine have experienced physical or sexual violence in their life (International
Institute for Population Science, 2006). In response to the growing recognition of the
problem, parliament passed the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act
(PWDV), which recognizes the rights of women to live free from violence. Key elements
of the law include the prohibition of marital rape and the provision of protection against
husbands and partners who are emotionally, physically, or economically abusive
(Lawyers Collective, 2009). The law also requires the appointment of Protection Officers,
who are mandated to facilitate women’s access to the court and provisions under the law.
Although the PWDV laudably offers some progressive measures to protect
women from violence within the household, much remains to be done to bridge the
considerable gap between the letter of the law and the realities of its implementation
(Lawyers Collective, 2009). First, many women are simply not aware of the law, or the
rights that it offers them. Second, patriarchal social norms are so deeply entrenched in

84
As many as one in every three women in the world will be beaten, raped, or otherwise abused during
her lifetime (United Nations Development Fund for Women, 2003). The most pervasive form of violence
against women is domestic violence, which includes sexual, physical and emotional abuse perpetrated by
intimate partners (Shane & Ellsberg, 2002). Reports estimate that between a quarter to one half of women
have suffered violence at the hands of an intimate partner (UNICEF, 1997). This is not only a direct
violation of women’s fundamental human rights, but an increasing amount of research highlights the health
burdens, intergenerational effects, and demographic consequences of such violence (Kishor & Johnson,
2006; Shane & Ellsberg, 2002; United Nations, 1997).

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many communities in India that women may feel that men are entitled to commit acts of
violence against women in their families, not recognizing such incidents as rights
violations. For example, an independent evaluation conducted for Breakthrough by the
Centre for Media Studies in India, found that an alarmingly high number of women
agreed that men had a right to hit their wives if their behavior “justified” it (Centre for
Media Studies, 2008). In addition, unequal property laws and lack of opportunities for
income-generation ensure that women have limited access to resources of their own,
making it difficult for them to stand up to the men upon whom their livelihoods depend.
For all these reasons, women often find it difficult to articulate and access their rights
under the law. However, even if a woman should choose to exercise her rights under the
PWDV, improper or incomplete implementation of the law can have devastating negative
consequences for her.
Consider the story of Shamshad,
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a woman in Southern India who sought help
from Breakthrough Rights Advocates when she decided to speak out against the brutal
violence her husband regularly inflicted on her. When she first went to the police, they
ignored her, sending her away with a dismissive statement “go kill your husband for all
we care.” She became so desperate that she attempted suicide twice. Then, in July of
2009, she met RAs in Karnataka, and learned about her rights under the PWDV, which
gave her strength to keep fighting for her legal protections. Even when she appeared at

85
Unfortunately, Shamshad passed away before I began this field research. Hence, the following
account of her ordeal is pieced together from interviews and informal conversations with Breakthrough
staff both in Delhi and in the field offices that worked closely with Shamshad. For a video about
Shamshad’s story, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXVaLC_LJyE.

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the police station, her face bruised and bloody after being doused in kerosene by her
husband in an attempt to burn her alive, the police continued to ignore her. With support
of Breakthrough, she finally approached a protection officer who, under the PWDV, is
responsible for helping her register a complaint and facilitate court procedures. The
protection officer, however, refused to help, keeping her and her kids waiting for over
four hours before ultimately agreeing to file the complaint. Four months later, however,
frustrated and in despair because of the lack of follow-up action on her complaint,
Shamshad committed suicide. Her note for the police read, “Unable to bear the violence,
I set myself ablaze. My husband is the reason for this. I request you to take legal action
against him” (Centre for Media Studies, 2010).
Shamshad’s case, though extreme, exemplifies many of the common challenges
that contribute to the inadequacy of the PWDVs implementation. The Lawyers Collective
(a legal advocacy organization with a long history of women’s rights legal assistance in
India) for example, has been documenting the experiences of women who have sought
protection under the law, as well as the experiences of NGO service providers who have
attempted to support women in activating the mechanisms of the law (Lawyers
Collective, 2009). They have found that protection officers are typically under informed
about their duties and inadequately equipped to meet them. There is often poor
communication and coordination between the local organizations that provide services to
abused women, the Protection Officers and law enforcement, and the courts, meaning
that women often have to navigate a convoluted maze of institutions before they can
receive the proper support. Gender insensitivity among police and other local government

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officials is rampant, and social norms that paint domestic violence as both a private
family affair and the prerogative of the husband collude to discourage officials from
taking action. The same social norms can also lead to severe social consequences in the
community, leaving women who choose to speak out ostracized and socially isolated. It
is not uncommon for a woman who has found the courage to leave her abusive husband
to find that her natal family will then refuse to take her back, leaving her without shelter
or income (Lawyers Collective, 2009).
I began my research with Breakthrough just a few weeks after Shamshad’s
suicide, and it was clear what a profound impact her story had on the organization. As
Breakthrough staff shared with me, for them it provided a stark illustration of what they
had long known to be true—that the law alone is not enough to protect the rights of
women (U. Gandhi & S. Menon, personal communications, February, 2010).
Empowering women to speak in the absence of good support mechanisms and
functioning legal processes can in fact place them in an even more vulnerable position.
Breakthrough has since turned Shamshad’s story into an advocacy video, which they use
to argue the importance of better implementation for the PWDV and the need for the
establishment of an enabling environment in which women can feel safer speaking out.
Specifically, according to Breakthrough’s vision of change, this kind of enabling
environment requires a shift in social norms such that violence is recognized as a rights
violation and community members are willing to intervene to stop it and support women
who speak out.

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Advocating for PWDV Through Media and Communication

In order to promote these changes in social norms that Breakthrough identified as
key to an enabling environment for the protection of women against domestic violence,
Breakthrough launched the Bell Bajao (“Ring the Bell”) campaign in India in 2008. Bell
Bajao is a 360-degree media campaign aimed to help create an enabling environment
where violence is prevented by community actors and where women can feel safer
demanding their rights. The Bell Bajao media campaign aimed to promote individual
responsibility and direct intervention to prevent violence. Breakthrough’s baseline study
for the campaign showed that few people felt it was appropriate to intervene in situations
of domestic violence, in keeping with cultural beliefs that violence in the home is a
private family matter, but it also showed that most of those who would intervene were
men, and that there was an existing practice among a minority of men to stand up to other
male abusers. Thus, in their campaign, they sought to highlight this already existent, yet
under-recognized male practice and to propose it as an alternative.
Their strategy was based on a social norms approach, which challenged the social
norm of ignoring incidences of violence. To shift this norm, it is necessary to take on the
notion that domestic violence is a private family affair in which others should not
intervene. Success stories such as the Soul City soap opera series in South Africa have
shown that using media to shift these social norms can be a successful strategy. In 2000,
Soul City, a public health organization that is a pioneer in the field of entertainment-
education, debuted a series of episodes of its Soul City soap opera in which neighbors
responded to an incident of domestic violence by banging pots outside the home where

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the abuse was taking place. The community’s intervention communicated their
unwillingness to accept domestic violence as a norm and their rejection of the cultural
belief that it is a private affair. Following the show, the behavior was then mimicked and
spread throughout parts of South Africa (Usdin, Singhal, Shongwe, Goldstein &
Shabalala, 2004). Similarly, Breakthrough’s campaign asked others in the community to
interrupt violence, shifting away from the notion that it is better to stay out of “private”
family matters.
Breakthrough’s work in India on addressing violence against women is advanced
by their three core strategies: mass media (and increasingly online and social media)
campaigns; community-based interventions (that includes a leadership development
program, as well as capacity building with influential local entities like police or CBOs);
and the deployment of a traveling Video Van, which brings elements of the community-
level work and the mass media productions together. The organization’s work around the
PWDV act is largely organized under the umbrella of the Bell Bajao campaign, a
multimedia campaign that calls on people, especially men and boys, to respond when
they see violence taking place in their community.
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Here I will briefly describe how each
of these strategies has been used for Bell Bajao.

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Bell Bajao’s emphasis on involving men and boys is indicative of Breakthrough’s larger emphasis on
ensuring that men are included in efforts to end violence against women. In doing this, Breakthrough is part
of a larger movement within feminist circles, as well as public health efforts, to involve men in promoting
gender equality and women’s health. This is a critical aspect of Breakthrough’s work, but a full analysis of
this is beyond the scope of this study. I have written on this elsewhere (see Lapsansky & Chatterjee, 2011
and Lapsansky & Chatterjee, in press).

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Mass Media and Social Media
Bell Bajao sought to involve men and boys in the fight to end violence by
modeling the ways in which they could serve as agents of change. The public service
announcements (PSAs) created for this campaign featured a strong call to action, asking
men to ring the door bell of any house where they hear abuse, so as to interrupt the
violence. For example, one ad featured a group of teenage boys enjoying an afternoon
game of cricket, until they are interrupted by the screams of a couple fighting in a nearby
apartment. As the sounds of struggle and the women’s screams escalate, the four boys
approach the apartment, and ring the doorbell. At the ringing of the bell, the sounds of
abuse stop. A surprised man comes to the door, at which point the boys ask him to return
their cricket ball which, they explain, must have landed in his apartment. After he
searches the house and returns empty handed, he begins to tell the boys that there is no
ball in his house, only to see the eldest boy bouncing it in his hands as he holds the man’s
gaze. The seriousness in the boy’s eyes indicates that the boys are no longer playing, but
are purposefully intervening to show their awareness and disapproval of the violence.
The screen goes blank, and the audience is asked to “Bring Domestic Violence to a Halt.
Ring the Bell” (Bell Bajao, 2008). Breakthrough released three PSAs of this theme in
2008 and an additional three in 2010. Through a partnership with India’s Ministry of
Women and Children, the ads were disseminated nationally across India. The PSAs were
accompanied with ads in major print outlets, billboards, posters, and radio spots.

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The mass media efforts were reinforced with an active social media campaign
which included Facebook, Twitter and an interactive Bell Bajao blog to which visitors
could contribute.

Community-level Interventions
The core of Breakthrough’s community-level mobilization efforts is the Rights
Advocates Program, which reaches out to youth, government bodies, media
professionals, NGOs, and CBOs working with marginalized communities. While
Breakthrough’s mass media and social media efforts (including the Bell Bajao
advertising campaign and online outreach) have reached millions of people, the Rights
Advocates Program deepens the impact of media messages through sustained
interpersonal and community-level interventions in two states in India: Uttar Pradesh in
Northern India, and Karnataka, in Southern India. It is an intensive leadership
development and capacity-building program to mobilize communities to challenge
unequal power structures, change cultural norms and bring about and sustain change in
their social worlds (be it their community, their school, or their institution). In addition to
issue-based trainings on rights, gender and sexual health, the RAs are trained in
interpersonal skills, workshop facilitation, and communication and mobilization
strategies such as puppetry, street theater, comic arts, or the organization of public events
and rallies. They youth stay involved for a year or more, and apply their skills to conduct
awareness raising activities in their areas, and to intervene to help protect the rights of
women. For example, quite a few RAs had stories about young women in their families

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who were being pressured to marry in their teens. Many of these RAs were able to speak
out against this to the elders in their family, something that they would not have
considered doing before their RA training, they report. In some cases, they have been
successful in delaying the marriage dates, but even when not successful, the willingness
and ability to challenge this in the family structure is a critical skill, and might spark
critical dialogues within the family that are a first step towards change.
In addition to including youth and community members, the Rights Advocate
program also trains staff partner organizations who then take their training back to their
organizations so as to mainstream gender in the organization’s programming.
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Breakthrough also seeks to impact those with influence and decision-makers who have
the resources to bring about change through public education efforts with police,
protection officers, media personnel, teachers, lawyers, medical professionals,
corporations, senior government officials, and non-governmental professionals who
provide services to women.
Over six thousand people and hundreds of organizations have been trained by
Breakthrough. However, the core strength of the Rights Advocate program is the
mobilization of young people, and by far the largest number of Rights Advocates are
young adults between the ages of eighteen to twenty-four. Through leadership
development, the youth gain stronger analysis of social issues and the skills and

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For example, CARDTS from Karnataka and FPAI from UP which focus on the medical aspects of
HIV/AIDS and contraceptive use have now incorporated gender and women’s rights into their core
approach, adapting their service delivery and advocacy work accordingly. CARDTS has developed an
overall organizational gender policy for the first time in their organization’s history and FPAI now
addresses the intersection of gender-based violence and HIV/AIDS in their service delivery.

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confidence to advance them in their community. The Chatpati Chat program was
designed with the youth RA program participants in mind.

Video Vans: Taking Bell Bajao to the Grassroots

In order to ensure that Bell Bajao media can be seen in the peripheral towns and
villages that mass media often does not penetrate, Breakthrough constructed a mobile
video van with a stage, a PA system, and televisions to screen media. The video vans
travel through small towns and villages in a given district, carrying a mixed gender
troupe of fifteen to twenty Rights Advocates. These young people use songs and
interactive contests to draw a crowd, and then perform street theatre dramas on issues of
domestic violence and male involvement in promoting women’s rights. The
performances are followed by video screenings of the Bell Bajao PSAs, or other relevant
video clips. The performers then interact with the crowd, often giving advice and
resources to community members who want to know more about stopping violence, or
engaging them in dialogue about gender relations and inequality.
Existing gender dynamics in India are such that women often enjoy less access to
public spaces, especially in semi-urban or rural India. Since the video vans are best
equipped to draw crowds in public spaces such as central markets, town centers, or main
roads, video van audiences are often anywhere between 80% and 100% men,
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thus
serving as an effective tool for reaching and engaging men further with the Bell Bajao

88
Although Breakthrough has not conducted formal studies of the video van audience composition,
field staff reported these numbers based on their own counts. My own participatory observation of the
video van roll out between February and April 2010 corroborated this.

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campaign. Breakthrough intends the male members of the theatre troupe to serve as
models for the local community for the ways in which men can become advocates of
women’s rights (and indeed, during my time traveling with the video van, I observed that
the male troop members were often approached by other men with questions, concerns,
or requests for advice), while the presence of female troupe members is intended to help
break stereotypes about the role of women and their access to public space. Hence, these
video vans have, in Breakthrough’s assessment, proven to be incredibly effective venues
for engaging directly with male audiences through entertainment education, and giving
visibility to local role models.

Bell Bajao and Communication Infrastructure Theory
The Bell Bajao campaign thus works at three levels to create an enabling
environment: by engaging culture through mass media, through its mobilization work
with community institutions involved in its RA program, and at the individual level by
engaging youth in the RA program. The levels at which it works are conceptually similar
to the Communication Infrastructure Theory’s (CIT) model, which postulates that
storytelling networks consist of three interrelated actors: the media, community
organizations, and individuals (Ball-Rokeach et al, 2001; Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a).
Indeed, after I did a brief presentation on CIT to Breakthrough staff, a series of
conversations followed in which we discussed the ways in which the model could be used
to describe communication between and among actors concerned with domestic violence.

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CIT research by the Metamorphosis Research Project (described in the
introduction and Chapter 1 for their work on CIT) suggests that communities have issue-
specific storytelling networks (e.g. a health storytelling network) through which
information, beliefs, attitudes, and values regarding that issue are circulated and
constructed. When these issue-specific networks are well-integrated (i.e., when all the
actors are well-connected to each other through strong lines of communication), a
community is better able to access the information they need to respond to these
challenges.
Breakthrough acknowledged that while they had been successfully engaging all
the actors in the network, their efforts to strengthen connections between the actors had
been comparatively weak. These conclusions later informed the goals for Chatpati Chat,
as the organization brainstormed ways that it could be used to not only facilitate
storytelling among RAs, but also between the various actors in the community who are
(or should be) involved in responding to domestic violence or implementing the PWDV.
Thus, the proposed platform was an opportunity to test whether mobile participatory
media platforms such as Chatpati Chat could contribute to the maintenance and creation
of domestic violence-specific storytelling networks.

Chatpati Chat: Audience and Objectives
The platform that would later become Chatpati Chat was first envisioned as a
mobile phone experiment. Breakthrough’s goal was to bring the community-based
stakeholders into conversation with both the organization and each other, strengthening

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the links between all of them and deepening Breakthrough's on-the-ground connections.
Previously, Breakthrough had experimented with mobile phones as a component of its
campaigns, but was frustrated that they had only yielded a largely one-way style of
engagement until that point.
Shortly after arriving at Breakthrough's office to commence my research in
January, 2010, I delivered a presentation of some of the projects I was involved with,
including the Mobile Voices project. Mobile Voices is an open-source mobile storytelling
platform that allows migrant workers in Los Angeles to create and share digital stories
about their daily lives using the multimedia messaging (MMS) function on their mobile
phones. An online Content Management System (CMS) stores these stories on an online
web portal and facilitates their dissemination to the mobile phones of other users. This
community media system allows for the circulation of these stories to others in the
migrant worker community who can receive and view them on their mobile phones. By
using low-cost, available technology, Mobile Voices hoped to provide this marginalized
community with the means to self-representation and a site for sharing experiences and
concerns related to their struggles for social justice (Brough et al, 2011; Gonzales,
Robbins, Bar, Brough, Lapsansky & Stokes, 2011; The VozMob Project, 2011). The
Mobile Voices project resonated with Breakthrough staff, who were excited by the
possibilities of a mobile platform that would enable many-to-many communication, not
just between Breakthrough and community stakeholders, but among the community
members themselves. Breakthrough then asked me to provide some leadership and
organizational capacity building for replicating Mobile Voices (or a similar platform) as

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an experiment with community media and participatory content generation through
mobiles.
The ultimate outcome of this work, Chatpati Chat, was designed for and piloted
with the RAs in Lucknow. However, the audience for the program changed a few times
in the process. Originally, the mobile community media platform was to be designed for
Anganwadi workers (female rural health care providers) in Southern India
89
as a way to
link them to both a larger network of Anganwadis as well as officials and community-
based service providers that could be mobilized to assist an abused woman. Because
Breakthrough’s head office was in Delhi, more than a day’s journey from the district
where the Anganwadi workers had been organized, the plan proved unrealistic. While
Breakthrough has an office in Karnataka, this field office did not have the capacity or
technical skills to manage the implementation of a mobile reporting program. Besides the
issue of distance, managing such a program from Delhi posed linguistic challenges, since
none of the staff in the head office was proficient in the Southern Indian languages
spoken by the Anganwadis.
Breakthrough also considered piloting the platform with a group of women living
in a refugee camp in Kashmir with whom they had previously done some work, but
designing and launching a program in this troubled region posed security concerns as
well as impracticalities of distance. Finally, for practical issues related to cost and ease of

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In many cases, Anganwadi workers may be among the first people that an abused woman will turn to
for help, thus they have an important potential role in helping women navigating the complicated system of
legal and social services to redress their problems. Yet they are typically under resourced, overworked and
under-trained, and are forced to work in relative isolation without any technical or social support. This
leaves them ill equipped to respond to domestic violence.

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access to the pilot site, we decided to work with the group of RAs in Lucknow. Lucknow
is accessible to Delhi in a day trip, and Breakthrough has considerable field staff presence
with program coordination capacities onsite. The language in Lucknow is Hindi, which
allowed Hindi speaking staff from the Delhi office to interact directly with participants.
For the purposes of my research, my Hindi skills helped facilitate relationships with
participants in Lucknow, unlike in the South of India where Hindi was of little help, and
there is a greater availability of quality translators from Hindi to English than there are
from South Indian languages to English.
But whatever audience we considered, the broad goals were the same: first, to
strengthen discursive ties within the community of users and, second, to connect them to
a network of other actors in the community. Both of these were of importance to the RA
community in Lucknow. As the director of education programs in Uttar Pradesh
expressed, the RAs, like the Anganwadis, often felt isolated in their efforts to promote
women’s rights and social change. In particular, these young people were often asked to
be champions of views which were not widely accepted in their communities or often ran
counter to the accepted social norms and values with which they had been raised (U.
Ghandi, personal communication, October 4, 2011). This frequently put them in direct
conflict with authority figures, such as the case of Krati Prakash, a former RA who is
now part of the community organizing staff in Lucknow. When Prakash was conducting
one of her first trainings on gender equality and sexuality as an RA at her university, one
of her professors walked out in protest as she talked candidly about issues of sexual
health and rights. She recounted to me how that made it emotionally challenging for her

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to continue her trainings on campus (K. Prakash, personal communication, January 25,
2012). Another RA told me about his fifteen-year old cousin for whom his family was
arranging a marriage, despite her unwillingness to marry so young and her ambitions to
finish school (M. Mukesh, personal communication, March 30, 2010). The RA wanted to
help his cousin reject the marriage, but was unsure how to confront the elders in his
family. Both RAs eventually found guidance and social support from others in the RA
network, which gave them the encouragement they needed. Prakash is now one of
Breakthrough’s senior trainers in Lucknow and the young man was able to convince his
family to delay the wedding by a year so that his cousin could finish high school.
Urvashi Gandhi, Director of the Rights Advocate program in Uttar Pradesh,
described the ways in which the trainings RAs received on issues of gender and sexuality,
for example, catalyzed a process of change that could put them at odds with the dominant
patriarchal values:

This change process is tough because it means you are in a constant
conflict. You are struggling to keep a fine balance between what you learn
from Breakthrough—which is often different from [how you were]
socialized—and the values you have been brought up with. There is a
constant tussle within [the minds of our RAs]. They face situations where
they don’t know what to do and they require a place where they can talk to
others facing the same struggles (U. Gandhi, personal communication,
January 10, 2012).

Although Breakthrough’s field staff in Lucknow began organizing monthly
meetings for RAs—in part to answer this need for social support—they found that there
was still a need to keep the RAs engaged with each other and strengthen the ties between

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them outside these meetings. Additionally, some RAs were unable to attend meetings
because of distance or work schedules, and Breakthrough needed a way to connect them
to the rest of the group as well.
Beyond the clear need for a mechanism to maintain ties within the RA network, in
interviews and focus groups conducted as part of my research, a number of RAs also
expressed a need for closer connections to the service provider organizations that could
aid them in assisting abused women who might approach them for help. The RAs felt that
they did not have an adequate understanding of the complicated maze of organizations,
nor did they know where to refer women. They also expressed a desire to work more
closely with the media in order to garner coverage for their community actions and, in so
doing, help the media frame the issue of domestic violence in ways that were more
productive and less sensationalistic.
With these concerns in mind, Breakthrough and I conceptualized the mobile
platform as a participatory, user-generated, content-driven platform that would promote
three goals:
1. Foster a stronger sense of community among RAs.
2. Enable RAs to express their voice in discursive storytelling processes through
which they could define, debate, and reinforce human rights values related to
rights, gender equality, and justice.
3. To connect the RAs to other actors in the community (including media
institutions, local officials and community organizations providing service to
abused women) to strengthen a domestic violence storytelling network.

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Chatpati Chat: Key Tensions and Challenges

The degree to which the platform was ultimately able to meet these goals was
greatly shaped by certain key questions, tensions, and considerations with which the
organization wrestled throughout the year of design. These factors, in turn, greatly shaped
the form, style, and opportunities for participation that the platform ultimately offered to
the RAs. In the second half of this chapter, I will review some of these tensions and
challenges, many of which parallel the experiences and concerns of the various
participatory platforms that have been discussed in previous chapters (i.e., community
radio and mobile social media platforms).

Technology
India’s technological environment—the sum of the available technology,
telecommunication policy, and technology usage patterns—ultimately had the greatest
impact in shaping the Chatpati Chat platform and the ways in which users interacted with
it. Most significantly, Chatpati Chat had first been envisioned as a platform to share
multimedia digital stories with a heavy emphasis on video and photo, but the realities of
cost, technological capacity, and usage in India made this untenable.
Initially, we had planned to replicate the Mobile Voices platform, which utilized
Multimedia Messaging (MMS) that supports text, audio, and visual content. In the United
States, mobile carriers usually route MMS messages through an email gateway. That
made it both easy and cheap to design software that could convert the MMS to posts on
the Mobile Voices CMS, from which the messages could be re-distributed to the phones

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of other users. However, in India, the mobile carriers did not use this gateway, and
building a system that could capture an MMS message on a Content Management System
would have been a complicated and expensive endeavor that none of the technology
developers approached for this project could take on within Breakthrough’s budget.
In addition to the problems of managing incoming MMS content, MMS also
posed serious barrier to the user. The cost of MMS in India was quite high at the time of
writing, ranging between seven and ten cents per message. When compared to the cost of
a text message (less than one cent) or a voice call (around two cents a minute), this
certainly put MMS out of reach for many low-income users. Additionally, sending MMS
from a mobile phone requires the phone have certain configurations enabled. While these
are easily downloaded in the US, in India, the process is much more convoluted. It took
me nearly two weeks and many hours on the phone with my mobile carrier’s customer
service line to properly configure my own phone. It was unrealistic to think that potential
users to the system, many of them with less technological experience than I, would be so
motivated to properly configure their phone.
These concerns, together with the serious practical and technical barriers to
integrating MMS into the system, made a voice-based platform the most viable option.
We thus commissioned a technology developer to build us a system that would integrate
the Mobile Voices online CMS with voice-recording functionality such that audio would
be the central medium for content creation and sharing. According to initial plans, MMS
capability was to be added at a later stage for motivated users who could afford the

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service. However, the final designs did not allow for this expansion, locking the
organization into a purely audio-service.
The shift from the visual content platform that had been envisioned to an audio-
service arguably had the widest-reaching impact on how users would experience the
system and the ways in which they could participate. As any radio producer would attest,
audio stories are conducive to a very different form of expression and storytelling than
visual ones, leading to a very different possibilities for the kinds of content that users
could produce or share. While Breakthrough was hoping for the more multidimensional
form of storytelling that a visual medium would have allowed, the greater ease with
which users could produce audio content likely reduced barriers to participation better
than a multimedia platform would have. In sum, a number of factors related to MMS use
in India, including consumer usage patterns, telecommunication company pricing
schemes, and technical concerns about the ways MMS could or could not be integrated
with the CMS of the platform all colluded to determine that users' participation and
content production would be audio-based rather than visual. Of course, whether one is
better or worse than the other is a subjective judgment, but the use of one over the other
certainly greatly affected the kinds of participation and the kinds of storytelling that the
platform allowed.
The approach and capacities of the technological developers with whom we
partnered also shaped the ultimate form of the platform. Although our initial design, an
adaptation of Mobile Voices with greater voice functionality, had been conceived in
partnership with the tech developer, halfway through the project, they unexpectedly

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pulled out. Left to identify a new technology design firm, we soon discovered that the
strongest technology developers in India are typically reluctant to merely implement
someone else’s design, preferring to adapt their own solutions or designs that they want
to test or pilot when working with a client. More difficult still was the fact that not all
firms shared the vision of participation and bottom-up content generation that inspired the
project. Instead, their own visions drove the technology solutions they proposed to us—
most of which were therefore largely inappropriate. One firm, for example, strongly
advocated that the platform’s chief value was in providing access to BoP markets (and
thus, revenue) deemed attractive to advertisers. Rejecting our proposal to adapt Mobile
Voices for India, they pitched technology designs that would facilitate the dissemination
of advertisements and offered commercial mobile Value Added Services (VAS). The
profits from the commercial features like downloadable ringtones, they suggested, could
be split between Breakthrough and a mobile carrier partner.
Finally, we commissioned Patel’s company, Awaaz De (see Chapter Five), to
customize the Awaaz De platform (which they were offering as an “off-the-shelf
solution” to NGOs in the development sector) for Breakthrough’s needs. This had some
serious advantages, not least of which was that the Awaaz De system was created with
goals that were similar to those that inspired Chatpati Chat—to empower grassroots
content creation and participatory development. This close match in goals meant that the
software itself was built, first and foremost, with the intention of facilitating dialogue
between users and lowering the technological barriers to participation, not of delivering
the audience to potential marketers.

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On the other hand, having to rely on a pre-existing, “off the shelf” technological
solution meant that the specific designs we had already developed based on
Breakthrough’s ideal vision of the platform had to be set aside. The audio recording and
sharing functions that Awaaz De offered were, luckily, relatively similar to those that
Breakthrough had imagined. Users would be able to post their own content, listen to that
of others, and post comments and responses to other people’s recordings. The system also
included mechanisms by which users would receive phone calls or alerts when other
users responded to their post, thus allowing for ongoing conversations to take place on
the platform.
Awaaz De’s structure had one significant shortcoming, however: it did not
support MMS or multimedia content. That meant that we had to set aside the plans to
integrate photo and video storytelling on the platform entirely, drastically changing our
vision of the kinds of stories that users could contribute to the platform.
In sum, the ultimate design of the platform and the kinds of opportunities for
participation and expression of voice that it allowed were greatly determined by a number
of factors in the technological environment, including the limitations of how messages
are handled by the telecommunication company, usage patterns and pricing structures for
MMS, and available technological resources. Most importantly, Breakthrough found that
it was dependent on technology developers and what they were willing and able to offer
in terms of solutions. Despite that Breakthrough was paying the company, the company’s
greater expertise, and Breakthrough’s limited options for quality developers, gave them a
large amount of influence in directing the shape of the platform. Thus, a match between

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the goals of Breakthrough and the ideologies guiding the technology developers’ efforts
proved to be of critical importance, and after a few false starts, Breakthrough was able to
collaborate with company that shared its vision of enabling greater participation, and this
helped to mitigate the potential negative effects of such a dependency relationship.

Mass Media or Community Media?

Within Breakthrough, there was a significant degree of tension among staff over
whether to pursue the goal of achieving “scale” by attracting as large a number of users
on Chatpati Chat as possible, or that of achieving a depth of community engagement.
Mobiles appealed to Breakthrough because they are a “cheap media” that “makes it easier
and more affordable to reach out to large audiences” (P. Battacharya, personal
communication, August 17, 2011), and this motivated Breakthrough to expand its work
in the mobile space to capitalize on the wide reach of the technology. At the same time,
the organization was wary of the technology, given its frustrations with earlier attempts to
use mobile telephony as a mass medium.
Breakthrough had, in fact, been experimenting with different forms of mobile
outreach since 2005, when it launched an SMS hotline for information on HIV/AIDS
prevention and sexuality as part of its then campaign on stigma against HIV+ women.
The service was the first SMS-based hotline in the country. Through a tie-up with a
mobile provider, Breakthrough was able to get a toll-free SMS number that allowed
people to anonymously submit questions on sexuality and HIV/AIDS and receive the
answers on their mobile phones. Breakthrough provided personalized informational

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responses to thousands of users during the hotline's lifetime, but the staff time needed to
manage and respond to the messages was too great to sustain (U. Gandhi, personal
communication, February 4, 2010; S. Khan, personal communication, March 9, 2010).
Since then, Breakthrough has continued to use mobiles for less ambitious mass
SMS campaigns in which messages or announcements are sent to large databases of
users. Unfortunately, the one-way dissemination of information to mass audiences left
Breakthrough with no way to track or monitor the impact of their efforts. Moreover, they
had the sense that broadcasting a message to an anonymous database of mobile numbers
did not make the most of the technology (S. Khan, personal communication, April 17,
2010). Indeed, these efforts did simply replicated top-down forms message dissemination
instead of capitalizing on the possibilities that mobiles offered for user-generated content
production (e.g., Kumar et al, 2007; Kumar et al, 2008; Patel et al, 2010). As Khan told a
potential mobile technology developer, “Who knows if these competitions or the SMS
blasts we are doing matter or make impact? We want to do something different,
[something] that is used to actually engage the community” (S. Khan, personal
communication, March 25, 2010). In an interview with me, she described some of the
organization’s earlier mass SMS or contest efforts as similar to “dropping a stone in an
ocean. There weren’t any ripples, you don’t know where that information goes or lands.
Does it do anything for us? Does it move anything?” (S. Khan, personal communication,
June 2, 2010).
Chatpati Chat was thus an experiment to explore the extent to which mobiles
could engage community-based actors in conversation both with Breakthrough and each

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other. The hope was that better communication would help participants to build
community and address the complexities of domestic violence in ways they could not by
only consuming messages.
However, this goal was in tension with concerns about financial sustainability that
continued to push the organization to strive for greater scale. While at first glance, the
program did not seem beholden to donor agendas, concerns for funding did impact the
program in subtler ways. When asked about the role of donor agendas in shaping the
Chatpati Chat initiative, Breakthrough staff typically stated that they did not feel driven
by this agenda. Indeed, the organization enjoyed a lot of leeway in reframing the goals
and design of the program in response to new technological constraints and possibilities
arose. The Chatpati Chat pilot was funded with grant money from UNIFEM that was
originally intended to fund “mobile outreach” activities as part of the larger Bell Bajao
program. In light of its frustrations with one-way SMS initiatives, Breakthrough
reallocated the money from the SMS messaging campaign originally envisioned to the
creation of a more participatory mobile program: Chatpati Chat. The platform was easily
categorized under mobile outreach, however, and Breakthrough expected very little
funder scrutiny of this relatively small line-item in a larger grant. Financial pressures did
steer decisions about the shape of the project in subtler ways, however. In the same
breath that Khan argued for deepening engagement, she also emphasized the need to
attract users (and potential business partners) to the platform as soon and as cheaply as
possible so they could stay afloat. Breakthrough had begun work on Chatpati Chat
without a clear idea of how it would be funded beyond the pilot phase. The organization

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has since applied for additional grant funding for future roll-outs with the expectation that
demonstrable impact in the form of number of participants—scale—would help garner
the favor of funders. Other avenues for financial sustainability, including selling
advertising airtime on the platform or creating a tie-up with a telecommunications
company,
90
also require scale. Indeed, in a number of conversations, Khan shared her
concern with me that it would be necessary to seek a tie up with a telecommunciation
company in order to sustain the program, but that she felt that they “wouldn’t even look
at us unless we can deliver tens of thousands [of users]” (S. Khan, personal
communication, March 2, 2011). The increased pressure to scale up prompted staff to
brainstorm ideas such as buying databases of mobile numbers from marketers or
partnering with other NGOs and using their databases to increase the number of
participants on Chatpati Chat.
Scale, however, was not always conducive to creating a space where community
members felt safe sharing. In the training that launched the pilot, for example, many of
the RAs expressed concern about their privacy and security on the platform and worried
about the backlash they might face if conservative community members (including

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Creating a tie-up with a telecommunication company is a common strategy for ‘mobile for
development’ programs. The company handles technological practicalities and administration of the
platform that might be beyond the capacities of many of the organizations launching mobile for
development programs, and also provides services at discounted rates, lowering the cost for both the
organization and the end user. The telecommunication company, on the other hand, gains access to new
markets where it can build brand loyalty among new customers, and also ensure a steady stream of business
from the user fees associated with the platform. However, the relationships is usually an unbalanced one,
with the telecommunications companies calling the shots and often driving the direction of the platform
design and its use. Advocates have pointed to the problematic way that this situates the telecommunication
companies as a new center of power, which drives the direction of innovation towards one of delivering
profit to the telecommunication companies, as opposed to developing innovations that best meet the needs
of the poor. For more on experiences of NGOs in partnering with telecommunication companies, see the
proceedings for the M is for Mobile: Exploring Mobile Technology for Social Development conference held
in India, February 28 – March 2, 2011 (Lapsansky, 2011).

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parents, professors, and neighbors, among others) were to hear that they were engaged in
dialogue about such controversial topics as sexual health or women’s rights. “What if I
ask a question about HIV, and then when they [the Chatpati Chat response system] calls
with my answer, my mother is the one to pick up the phone. She will come to know I am
asking about sex” (Chatpati Chat training participant, personal communication, March
24, 2011). Furthermore, they expressed that they would not feel secure knowing that
others outside their immediate RA network, which was considered a “safe space,” were
able to access the system. Indeed, Urvashi Gandhi, the coordinator for the RA program,
echoed their concerns when she worried about the harassment or teasing they might
receive if posts about controversial issues, especially in regards to gender and sexuality,
were to be heard by the wrong people in their communities (U. Gandhi, personal
communication, January 15, 2012).
Staff, then, had to think creatively about how scale could be achieved without
undermining the sanctity of an RA-only space by swamping it with thousands of
unknown anonymous users. They explored models that included expanding to RA
communities in other districts and states, but retaining a separate community space for
each geographic group while carefully moderating interaction between them.
Breakthrough also considered creating designated spaces within the forum for content
from the broader community as well as for NGOs and service providers engaged in
domestic violence or women’s right work, while retaining “RA-only” forums on the
platform.

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Due to the human resources and timing issues discussed below, the program
ended early and these models were never tested. This question of how to achieve scale
while still maintaining the benefits of a closed community will hence carry over to
Breakthrough’s future mobile initiatives.

Content: User-driven or NGO Controlled?

The development of a plan for content creation for the Chatpati Chat platform
brought to light the inherent tensions surrounding the degree of control the organization
should retain over the content versus how open it should be to user-driven themes. We
have seen in previous chapter the ways in which funding pressures and other dependency
relationships exert subtle, or not so subtle, pressure on organizations regarding the
direction of content on their community media platforms. NGOs running community
radio stations in India, for example, must often ensure that content addresses certain
development-related issues such as maternal health or HIV, and thus drive participatory
content to fit into these pre-determined themes. Similarly, as Patel noted when describing
the applications of his system Awaaz De with other NGOs in India, despite allowing
bottom-up content generation, many of their NGO clients have preferred to utilize it
primarily as information delivery services that, in Patel’s opinion, is a “perpetuation of
the top-down paradigm” of development (N. Patel, personal communication, January 29,
2011).
Internally, Breakthrough fluctuated between these two poles regarding content
throughout the project. On the one hand, they wanted to create a space where RAs could
strengthen their social ties and they recognized the importance of many different kinds of

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content—not just development-related messages—to this process. They were also
interested in creating a community media platform where themes and ideas arose from
the RAs themselves. However, they also did feel some pressure to ensure that content be
at least broadly related to its key themes of gender, human rights, sexual health, and
leadership. As one program manager stated, “What they are posting should be relevant”
(P. Battacharya, personal communication, May 18, 2011), begging the question of who
defines what is “relevant.” As the interview progressed, it became clear that “relevant”
meant related to the core Breakthrough program goals as articulated by the organization,
not what the RAs may have defined as relevant.
A number of the staff were aware of the tension between these opposing
tendencies, and were able to articulate the artistry involved in finding the right balance:

All we can do is create the framework, then within that, you let people
operate. We have to be clear that we are not running an open
entertainment thing, although there is an entertainment element…So, you
have to have some structure, but not a water-tight structure. It has to be
porous to some degree (S. Khan, personal communication, December 6,
2011).

To help encourage postings related to the broad themes, Breakthrough seeded
professionally produced content on the platform including plays on themes such as
gender, sexuality, caste discrimination, and relationship violence, as well as contests that
would encourage users to post on certain issues or answer questions posed by the
moderator about social issues (e.g., “Rape is a problem confined to certain caste or
religion. Do you agree or disagree?” or “How should our society respond to rape?”).

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Prizes were often given for the best answer as judged by Breakthrough field staff in
Lucknow.
While usage of the platform would indeed often spike after this Breakthrough
content was posted, the RAs ultimately shared that this content did not always resonate
with them. In reflecting on the program after the close of the pilot, Breakthrough
acknowledged that, in pre-determining content from head office, they were not
responsive enough to the needs and desires of the users. For example, Khan noted:

We started by trying to decide what they [the RAs] would want and to
come up with it ourselves, but we may have been off the mark. The
content needs to come from them. They know best what they like and
what they need, when we try, we get it wrong (S. Khan, personal
communication, November 14, 2011).

Once users started posting their own content, these discussions of control and
moderation continued. While participants posted a number of powerful messages, such as
Neha and Niti’s poems quoted at the start of this chapter or other explorations of social or
personal issues, a lot of other content of debatable value was also posted. For example,
someone outside of the RA community somehow got access to the Chatpati Chat access
number and began to leave lewd messages sexually harassing the female moderator. In
addition to this clearly offensive content, there were a number of posts that included
people recording snippets of songs off the radio or long periods of silence. While some in
the organization viewed these incidents as abuses of the system, others thought that
recording a favorite song might be a form of self-expression, especially for those who
were too shy to speak using this new technology. The silences might simply have

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reflected people experimenting and teaching themselves the system. The question of what
constituted “legitimate” content was never resolved in the office, but the organization
decided not to censor users unless their content abused another user.
The RAs themselves had differing views about content. For example, in the
Chatpati Chat launch training, some felt that the platform should be serious, since they
were often dealing with issues that required serious responses. But in the end, people
were excited to use it for a variety of kinds of content, ranging from the serious, to the
artistic, to the humorous. Indeed, jokes became one of the most popular forms of content
on the system, and RAs who posted the funniest jokes were often commended by others
in the RA user community. However, vulgar content, as well as some of the content of
ambiguous value did discourage participation as some users felt the high volume of this
“nonsense” content put them off of using the system. In the words of one such RA:

Chatpati Chat was good, but some people were using it badly. They were
just talking silly jokes, or not speaking about the specific objectives…I did
hear some vulgar messages sometimes. Someone was using it to abuse
someone else. That was very bad for the project, I didn’t feel like listening
to that (N. Sharm, personal communication, January 20, 2012).

Implementation: Expressions of Voice on Chatpati Chat

The platform launched in March, 2011, with a training of 30 RAs and a plan to
engage these core users in signing up and training the 300 RAs in the Lucknow area. In
the two weeks following the launch of the platform, Chatpati Chat received nearly 60
calls a day. Based on my discussions with others running similar systems in India, this is
a good participation rate for the first weeks of such audio-wiki platforms. However, also

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typical with newly launched sites, a lot of the content was, as noted above, of ambiguous
quality, including hang ups, repeat callers, long silences, or nonsense messages. This
pattern continued for nearly a month after the launch of the platform.
Breakthrough was not surprised by this, given that the platform had launched
before they were able to sufficiently lay out an engagement strategy to solicit content.
“We have the platform,” Khan noted, “but we don’t have a character for the content yet”
(S. Khan, personal communication, April 25, 2011). Unfortunately, however, that
character never fully emerged before the wrap of the pilot four months later, and the
number of substantive posts remained relatively low after the initial excitement of the
first few weeks wore off. In this section, I will briefly describe some of the factors that
contributed to lower than expected participation.
Insufficient content: The RAs shared with me that they felt that content did not
change often enough to encourage them to call in everyday. Often they were frustrated to
hear the same old content still at the top of the cue or bothered by “nuisance” content of
song recordings or long silences.
Lack of moderator engagement: The job description for the moderator included
the mandate to reply to every message posted by users, either by answering the post
directly, by highlighting it in the Featured section, or assigning another user to respond to
the question or comment. Furthermore, the moderator was assigned to keep a lively and
engaging discussion going by posting provocative questions or contests and inviting
people to post on various themes. The organization felt that it was important that the
moderators be from the community to ensure that they captured the pulse of the

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community. Finding a moderator with sufficient technical, facilitation, and moderation
skills to keep the platform up-to-date and active proved challenging, however. Moreover,
the moderator also had other responsibilities in the Breakthrough office and was not able
to dedicate herself full-time to moderating the platform. She also often had to revert back
to staff in Delhi for guidance about the content, rather than being able to take the lead
herself. Gandhi summarized the problem as follows:

I really feel that if someone had been in Lucknow to handhold [the
moderator] a bit, especially someone who had some control over the issue
and who could envision how mobiles could be used…things would have
been different (U. Gandhi, personal communication, January 20, 2012).

As it was, users would often submit a post, but the moderator would not be able to
approve the post right away, so the user would not hear their post for a day or more at
times. These minor hiccups added up to a sense that posts were going unheard or had
little impact after being posted, which discouraged users from posting.
Technology Glitches and Training: Users experienced a number of what they
described as “glitches” on Chatpati Chat, which lead to frustrations with using the system
and discouraged continued participation. As a new system, Chatpati Chat certainly did
have some bugs that needed ironing out. However, as I dug deeper into these technical
problems, it was apparent that many things perceived as glitches were, in fact, human
errors due to insufficient training in the technology. The experience of the Mobile Voices
project has shown that even very user-friendly mobile applications may require
significant one-on-one mentoring in order to ensure that users are truly comfortable with
the platform. Unfortunately, Breakthrough did not have the human resources to support

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this. The moderator was supposed to serve as a mentor that users could call for help or
assistance, but as noted above, she did not have the necessary time or technical skill to
fulfill this role adequately.
Lack of human resources and programmatic timing: Perhaps the most critical
barrier to expanding participation on Chatpati Chat was Breakthrough’s lack of human
resources and the timing of the program. Successful implementation of the program
required a full-time, devoted staff member with significant technological capacities in
Lucknow, but the organization was not able to recruit and support someone for this
position. Moreover, in the head office, most staff had to work on this program in addition
to their already heavy workloads. This had ramifications for the content as well, as
Breakthrough’s limited staff capacity left it unable to develop an appropriate engagement
strategy that would both provide relevant content as well as encourage users to create
their own. As Khan described:

There was no bandwidth to create and seed exciting content, [or] spend
time on what young people want and how they want it delivered to them.
We had to depend on one person [the moderator] to generate content, that
was not the ideal. We should have spent more time understanding what
young people want. We did finally get to do this, but only after it was too
late to implement them (S. Khan, personal communication, December 6,
2011).

Program timing. The staffing issue was magnified by the unfortunate timing
issues that the program faced. Because of the pull-out of the first technology developer,
the launch of the Chatpati Chat program was delayed by four months. It finally launched
during the roll-out of the video van activities in Southern India, a very intensive activity

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that required the undedicated attention of a large proportion of Breakthrough’s staff. As
Khan described:

Chatpati Chat was short-changed because we didn't have human resources.
The team was only so many people, and the same team was developing a
very time-intensive program [the video van], so the resources were
limited. We could not staff everything, so [Chatpati Chat] became a
byproduct. The team was stretched. The young people would say, ‘We
want to do this, this, and this,’ or some exciting thing with the [Chatpati
Chat] platform, but there was no one in the team to execute it (S. Khan,
personal communication, January 4, 2011).

Thus, they were not able to dedicate the necessary time and oversight to managing
the Chatpati Chat program. Furthermore, the delayed launch date meant that Chatpati
Chat was launched at the start of university exam period in India, an intensive three
month testing period in which college students devote all their available time to test
preparation. As a result, most of the RAs for whom Chatpati Chat was launched were, as
they later shared with me, too preoccupied with studies and work to have time to
experiment with a new system.
Folding the program too early: Largely because of the human resource
challenges described above, the program was put on hold just short of five months after
its launch, despite plans to pilot for 6-8 months. Across the organization, both staff and
RAs felt that the pilot period was too short to address all the bugs and fully evaluate the
outcomes. As Gandhi noted, “The pilot was too short; it was just 4 months, and those
four months coincided with exam period, too. There were so many good components, but
it did not have enough space to bloom” (U. Ghandi, personal communication, January 20,
2012). Khan, also concurred, noting the ways in which the program delays contributed to

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a human resources crunch that made it impossible to continue running the program for
the full length of the pilot:

It took time to build up the knowledge and capacity [needed for the launchof
Chatpati Chat] and we had tech delays…But there are no shortcuts; we had to
invest that time. But we could not change the schedule of the other programs like
the video van, so we couldn’t keep up with Chatpati Chat…because it needed that
time investment. Because of the [Chatpati Chat] launch delay, it clashed with the
rest of our work cycle. If they had matched better, I think the outcomes would
have been a little different (S. Khan, personal communication, November 19,
2011).

Chatpati Chat's Successes: Creating Community

Despite the many barriers that led to lower levels of participation than expected,
Chatpati Chat also led to a number of successes which indicated the potential of such a
platform to increase the kind of dialogue and discursive storytelling that can be part of a
meaningful process of participatory development.
Most importantly, it served to be an important opportunity for self-expression for
many of the RAs. In evaluation interviews, they shared with me that they had posted a
variety of content, including poems, commentary, jokes, information, and news. While
this content was often related to social issues, they also posted on current events, news, or
personal announcements such as weddings or engagements that helped to foster a sense
of community among the RAs. Niti Kushwaha, who posted one of the poems with which
this chapter opened, described Chatpati Chat as a space where “I can show off my skills
and talents. I can share my own problems with others, which I did, and I can spread my
own message among people, so it was really enjoyable for me” (N. Kushwaha, personal
communication, January 20, 2012).

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The evaluation interviews also indicated that the posts did effectively spark
dialogue about social values and social change priorities, thus helping the RAs to debate
and define values and strategies for change within the groups. One RA, for example,
posted a comment about the importance of using “male empowerment” to involve men in
promoting gender equality. Since “everyone is talking about women’s empowerment,”
she shared, “a lot of people were surprised I was talking about male empowerment. I got
very positive response to it and lots of people talked to me about the idea” (N. Sharm,
personal communication, January 20, 2012). Similarly, another RA, Archana Singh, also
used Chatpati Chat to discuss strategies for intervention, using a real life incident to
invite users’ responses. Singh met a young girl on the train who had run away from home
because her parents were forcing her to marry. She planned to go to Delhi and work on
the streets for money. Concerned, Singh took the girl to her own home and called two
local women’s support NGOs who helped the young girl file a claim against her parents
with the police. However, intimidated by the police, the girl retracted her story and
claimed that Singh and the women’s rights organizations had coerced her into filing a
false claim. The girl then returned home, leaving Singh unsure if she had been right to
intervene in such a manner. Singh shared the story on Chatpati Chat and asked users
whether or not it was right to bring the girl to the police, and what other actions she might
have taken in this case. It sparked a lively and useful debate among the RAs about how
best to respond to tricky issues and when and how it is right to intervene.

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The evaluation interviews also indicated that Chatpati Chat had in fact
strengthened the ties between RA, creating a stronger sense of community. For example,
“before starting the Chatpati Chat project,” one RA described:

People didn’t know that much about each other, one RA didn’t know who
that other RA was. But people started to give their own opinion on
Chatpati Chat and then when they met at their colleges, they came to know
more about each other—like, 'Oh, you are the one who left that message
on Chatpati Chat!' So, it was a good way for us to get to know each other
better (N. Jaswal, personal communication, January 14, 2012).

Krati Prakash, a senior RA who is now one of the field organizers for the RA community
in Lucknow, stated that the system was also used to share personal greetings and
congratulate others on milestones. She, for example, received a number of “friendship
messages” after her engagement, which, she felt, helped her to feel part of the larger
community and increased the bond between her and the other RAs.
It seems then, that Chatpati Chat served as a virtual meeting and greeting spot
where community news could be shared over the proverbial backyard fence. This was an
important service given that RAs lived in distant parts of the city and mobility issues for
youth often constrains their ability to engage in such informal socializing in person.
Unfortunately, as Prakash described, the sense of community on Chatpati Chat was just
developing when the pilot ended, having a dampening effect on the RAs' bonding
process:

The youth are giving us a lot of pressure to restart the project...They feel
that something is missing—like the information they used to get from
Chatpati Chat about whatever is going on, like about any trainings coming

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up. But right now there isn’t any medium where they can make that
contact with each other, so that is what they are missing” (K. Prakash,
personal communication, January 20, 2012).

While it is unfortunate that the end of the pilot left this need unfilled, the gap felt
in Chatpati Chat’s absence does indicate its importance as a tool for connecting the RAs
and fostering a sense of community and shared identity through the discursive
storytelling it enabled.

Building Breakthrough’s Capacity

Hopefully Breakthrough will launch a new mobile program for RAs in Lucknow
shortly to meet this demand. Currently, they are collating the lessons from Chatpati Chat,
raising additional money for mobile programming, and exploring other mobile
technologies they can use to expand on the platform and increase its functionality and
impact. The new energy behind mobile program design in the organization may in fact be
one of the most significant outcomes of the Chatpati Chat experience. When the program
was first conceived, most staff in the organization knew little about mobile technology
and could not envision a mobile program beyond SMS campaigning. As Gandhi said, “It
was tough, because I could not envision a platform that people could use in this manner
to connect with each other—how it would roll out, how it would work, what the
challenges would be—because obviously this was the first time we were trying anything
like this” (U. Gandhi, personal communication, December 14, 2011).
When we commenced the program design, I took the lead in managing technical
aspects of the program but, over time, the staff took up these functions and developed a

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sophisticated understanding of mobile project design. Khan, the Country Director,
described the changes she observed in the staff during the course of the year:

There are people whose capacity has monumentally grown. They are
always on the look [out] for best practices, things that are working, new
models, [etc.], and they are asking the questions. They are not, like before,
just saying ‘Let's do another SMS campaign.' But they are thinking on
what could be more strategic. That’s where the headspace is in our team
now; they can question and look for the right kinds of information.
Everyone is tuned into it now” (S. Khan, personal communication,
January 10, 2012).

Chapter Six Conclusion

A number of factors along the way, including dependency relationships with
technological developers and funding sources shaped some of the critical features of the
system that ultimately influenced the ways in which the RAs could participate in terms of
the medium through which they could contribute (audio vs. visual), the degree of
freedom to post “off message” content, and the number of other users on the system and
their background (e.g., restricted to RAs vs. open to broader actors in the community).
All of these tensions that the organization had to negotiate in the design stage of the
project shaped the user experience for the RAs when Chatpati Chat was ultimately
launched.
On the balance, Breakthrough considered the Chatpati Chat pilot a success in
building the capacity of staff to envision and manage mobile programs that enabled
deeper engagement through participation, as well as in demonstrating the benefits of a
mobile phone based community media platform that allows users to create their own

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content and express their own voice. Thus, the organization now feels equipped to build
out a mobile program to engage RAs in its different project areas, building on the
Chatpati Chat model and the lessons learned.
However, the human resources issues proved ultimately damning for this pilot and
the program was shuttered after only 4 months, well before there was a chance to expand
it to include more RAs in Lucknow or to integrate other actors from the domestic
violence storytelling network onto the platform. The user experiences suggested that
Chatpati Chat did successfully foster the expression of individual voice as part of a larger
collective process of discursive storytelling within the RA community, allowing them to
debate issues surrounding rights and social values to help construct a shared sense of
identity and to debate “what they have reason to value” in the social change process.
However, without having created those ties with other actors in the network, who was
listening to these community expressions? As noted in the introduction, listening and
being heard, not just speaking, are also critical to the concept of “voice” (Bickford, 1996;
Crawford, 2009; Couldry, 2009, 2010; Dreher, 2009; O’Donnell, 2009). Hence, is it
ultimately enough for the RAs to merely be listening to their own stories, or is a larger
audience necessary to ensure that their voice has some valence? These will be crucial
questions to tackle when Breakthrough is ready to launch the next version of Chatpati
Chat, or whatever mobile system it evolves into. When the next version goes live, the
RAs will be ready. As one RA expressed, “I am waiting for the program to re-start as
soon as possible. It was a powerful experience, and I am waiting, waiting, waiting for it”
(N. Jaswal, personal communication, January 20, 2012).

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CONCLUSION

This exploration of technology, development and communication power began
with a question about the role of communication in shifting gender norms. While the
project ultimately became much broader than that, I would like to return briefly to this
question in this conclusion because feminists (and others concerned with women’s rights)
in today’s shifting communication environment will have to wrestle with these broader
questions about technology and communication power.
While traditionally, technology has been understood as gender neutral—as a tool
that can provide equal potentiality to both men and women (Rathgeber & Adera, 2000), it
has long been accepted that technology is highly gendered and reflects the gendered
economic, social and cultural contexts within which it is created and used (Huyer &
Sikoska, 2003; Rathgeber & Adera, 2000).
On the most basic level, for example, women’s differential access to
communication tools is a continued problem (Hafkin, 2002; Huyer & Skoska, 2003). As
discussed earlier, for instance, gender affects an individual’s relationship to technology
on many dimensions—including the technologies that are available in their particular
communication ecology (e.g., see the discussion by Skuse et al [2007] about differing
communication ecology maps of men and women as discussed in Chapter One of this
study) and the skills and training to use them.
In India, especially, women’s access to technology is often highly controlled, and
it becomes yet another site through which women’s actions and freedoms are policed. As

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just one example, consider Lank, a Village in Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, that
banned unmarried women from using mobile phones because of fear that they will
arrange forbidden marriages (“Indian village”, 2010). In this area of India, marriages are
arranged and tightly controlled by parents and the consequence of breaking marriage
taboos are severe—often punishable by death even—and “honor killings” by beheading
of couples who elope are not uncommon. The Lank Village council, in fear that young
people were using mobile phones to arrange elopements, banned their use among
unmarried women. Unmarried men were still allowed to use mobiles, albeit with
increased supervision by parents and elders (“Indian village”, 2010). Although clearly it
takes the involvement of both a man and a woman to elope, the unmarried women in
Lank were more heavily disciplined and restricted by the decree than the unmarried men,
and the mobile ban became yet another way to police their behaviors in the name of
protecting the morality and honor of young women. This is similar to the gender-
discriminatory consequences of the infamous MMS incident at the Delhi Public School
discussed in Chapter Four. Although both the girl and the boy were involved in the sexual
activities caught on MMS and distributed to other students, it was the girl who was
expelled, catching most of the heat of the disciplinary measure, despite the fact that it was
in fact the boy who recorded the video and distributed it. In both cases, mobiles became a
site for debate over sexual mores and a way for authorities to control and discipline the
actions of young people, with girls and young women facing the harshest consequences
and the greater degree of surveillance.

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Beyond the question of mere access and control, however, it is also important to
shift the contexts from which technologies are designed and their uses defined. Gender
norms that define science as a male-dominated realm often leave women excluded not
only from accessing technologies, but from contributing to the design processes that
determine their form and shape (Gajjala, 2002). The effect is that technologies are often
viewed as highly masculine and therefore inaccessible or irrelevant to the concerns of
women (Gajjala, 2002; Youngs, 2002). Recognizing this, Breakthrough feels that it is
critical to experiment with feminist uses of emerging technologies as early as possible.
As they argue, media and communications are critical sites for shifting the mainstream
dialogue about gender, but such shifts are not possible if women (and, for that matter,
others engaged in feminist work) do not make some claim to the technologies. As Khan
noted:
When a new technology comes, we need to deal with it, or we will miss
out… At the end of the day, women are supposed to be technologically
retarded, so we have to counter that view… and say that ‘No, feminists
need to access technology and make it their own.’ Otherwise, all the time
it’s being appropriated by others with different kinds of agendas, and then
later we say, ‘Oh my god, advertising has become so patriarchal, and the
media industry has become so patriarchal, and they don’t have anything to
do with women’s rights or concerns.’… You expect a woman to be doing
health training, but you don’t expect a woman to be doing social
networking. We have to change that, its about getting into that technology
space and claiming it and making sure its representing our voices
adequately, so later we’re not complaining, ‘Oh my god, somebody ran
away with the agenda’ (S. Khan, personal communication, April 20,
2011).

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This question of claim to the technological space is important, but it is
challenging in a country where women’s rights activists and feminists have long had an
ambivalent relationship with technology. For example, DAWN, a feminist collective,
describes the ways in which communication technologies such as telephone and fax were
critical to the great expansion and growth of the feminist movement in the 1980s (Sen &
Grown, 1987), but at the same time, increasing accessibility to technologies such as
ultrasound were enabling a whole new horrific form of violence against women—sex
selective abortions. Since then, feminists in India have been wary to the ways in which
technology is used to entrench patriarchal practices (Sen & Grown, 1987). However,
ultimately, technology cannot be ignored and, as Khan’s quote expresses, it must be
claimed for feminist purposes or it is more likely to serve patriarchal ones.
The critical question in so doing, however, becomes how to shift emerging
technology from being a site of control and discipline over women’s bodies and
freedoms, to being sites that enable dialogue, debate, questioning and re-envisioning, and
are maximally inclusive of a diversity of voices, including the most marginalized.
Initiatives such as Hilary Clinton and Cherie Blair’s mWomen and other efforts to bridge
the mobile gender divide are critically important towards this end. Yet it is important to
recognize that it is not just about getting the technology into the hands of women. At the
end of the day, advancing the cause of women’s rights will require not just the
involvement of women, but also the whole community, including men and broader social
institutions that are part of the larger social processes through which gender norms are
constructed and maintained. Breakthrough, along with an increasing number of other

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organizations and feminist efforts, is committed to working with men and boys and
recognizes the importance of male involvement (Lapsansky & Chatterjee, 2011;
Lapsansky & Chatterjee, in press; Shane & Ellsberg, 2002). Thus, Breakthrough’s
Chatpati Chat platform was a platform for and about the advancement of gender equality
and women’s human rights, but, it was for a mixed gender community to spark larger
dialogues that involved all members of the communities in which abused women must be
enabled to speak out. I see the Chatpati Chat platform as an acknowledgement that
feminist work requires not just empowering individual women, but changing the whole
conversation in the community and society at large. The deep cultural shifts such as those
needed to promote greater equality between men and women are best supported by
creating spaces for new ideas to be voiced from the margins and those ideas to then
become part of the process of debating and defining collective identities and norms of
practice, including what the community values in the processes of social change around
issues of gender, or more broadly, development.
This is, ultimately, as I have argued, a process of storytelling that is best enabled
when the actors in the storytelling network are well integrated and where individuals
have the ability to exercise their right to voice in that network, by both speaking and
being heard.

The Need to Strengthen Infrastructures for Storytelling and Voice
Communication Infrastructure Theory usefully demonstrates that an integrated
network in which actors (especially those who are typically excluded from

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communication processes) can both speak and be heard in the storytelling network
requires that the network be embedded in an enabling communication action context.
Investing in strengthening communication infrastructure in this way can help to increase
the ability of all members of a community to take part in discursive processes that are
critical to ensuring voice in the development process and catalyzing participatory
development. Unfortunately, even though so many donors and agencies have shifted to a
rhetoric that calls for participatory development, few of them are willing or able to
support the development of communication platforms that enable this sort of bottom up
agenda setting. As demonstrated in the community radio chapter, for example, programs
are often financed by grants to address specific development outcomes and agendas,
limiting their usefulness as sites where the community can determine for itself what it
‘has reason to value’ (see the discussion of Sen and Couldry in Chapter One). There is,
then, still a great need for funding sources that will support programs that contribute to a
communication rights agenda by creating the spaces for the users to define the
development priorities.
Such an approach would not only be a critical contribution to enabling voice and
participatory development, but it would also likely be an investment in infrastructures
and environmental conditions that would later make it easier to address specific pressing
development issues. For example, Figueroa, Kincaid, Rani, & Lewis (2002) pointed out
that investment in the construction of a community meeting house, school, or other
buildings to serve as central gathering points in a community can help create space for
community members to collectively gather and address social issues. Such an investment

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will then make it easier to spread key health or behavior messages at a later point, as well
as to gather community members to engage them in mobilizing around key issues of
concern. Figueroa et al (2002) further suggested that as communities come together to
solve one specific problem, they are also building and strengthening the communication
ties, resources, and collective capacities through which future issues can be addressed.
These strengthened community capacities then facilitate mobilization around the next
specific goals that, in turn, increases the capacity for collective action, touching off a
virtuous cycle. CIT theorizes a similar relationship with a model of civic engagement that
includes two-way effects between the integrated storytelling network and civic
engagement (Kim & Ball-Rokeach, 2006a, 2006b). It suggests that civic engagement can
strengthen the connections between storytelling agents that, in turn, produce positive
civic engagement outcomes. Just as investing in community buildings can help catalyze
this virtuous cycle, so, too, can investment in community media or other platforms that
create the space for open communication, dialogue and circulation of key messages
around pressing issues.
For donors to invest in physical infrastructure (meeting halls, etc.) and community
media infrastructure to enable debate, dialogue, and the expression of voice, they must
shift their perspective on grant-making. It needs to go beyond the siloed grant portfolios
that typically guide their work such that they can fund a platform for its cross-cutting
contributions to creating the conditions which support communities in pursuing their own
change goals, rather than supporting communications for specific pre-determined issues.
It also requires they incorporate a longer horizon for social change, as the benefits and

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outcomes are not likely to be measurable in the typical two- to three-year grant cycles. In
addition, it also calls for some degree of renunciation of privilege and power in setting
development agendas, allowing them to, instead, be shaped by beneficiary communities.
However, the ability to make such a shift is threatened by features of the
development field, including its discursive trends, financial sustainability and other
dependency relationships between actors in the field. The case studies presented here, for
example, have shown how a number of factors such as government policies, financial
dependencies and the technological environment (inclusive of social determinants of
access and use as well as policy and pricing structures and design practices) greatly affect
and often limit the degree of participation and the kinds of opportunities for expression of
voice that the community end-users ultimately experience.

The Neoliberalization of Development
One of the most troubling features of the development field that serves to limit
participation is the increasingly strong influence of neoliberalism in the development
discourse. Thanks to neoliberal logic, program beneficiaries are increasingly painted as
“consumers” rather than as “citizens” or active agents in the production of ideas and
knowledge.
Oscar Gandy (2002) suggested that the ‘real digital divide’ may not be between
the so called “information haves” and “information have-nots,” but rather one between
the citizen and the consumer. He tables the concern that new media “is widening the
distinction between the citizen and the consumer” (p. 452) and that the marketization of

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our media systems (in particular new media and the economy of the Internet) understands
and constructs Internet users as consumers, shoppers and market segments, rather than as
citizens who both need to access public interest information as well as partake in its
production. The development discourse is arguably undergoing similar shifts in how it
understands program beneficiaries. There is a move towards “client” oriented approaches
that understand the beneficiary to be a consumer of health products and social services,
emphasizing their individual needs and interests. This is in contrast to viewing program
beneficiaries as citizens who are part of larger collective social arrangements and who
hold both rights and responsibilities in regards to active participation in setting social
agendas. The rise in popularity of the BoP concept has further entrenched this view by
constructing below poverty line populations as consumers whose problems can best be
solved by through the market.
The ICT4D sector in India, like the larger development sector, is preoccupied
with reaching this BoP market. It hence furthers this division between citizen and
consumer that Gandy suggests. More troubling still, it seems likely that the patterns of
exclusion that give the middle and upper classes greater access to content production may
further entrench lower income and marginalized population in India in the role of
information consumer. Tepper and Ivey (2012), for example, describes how new media
opportunities are creating “pro-ams” who can network, create content, and engage
culturally online. But at same time, “those citizens who have fewer resources—less time,
less money, and less knowledge about how to navigate the cultural system—will
increasingly rely on the cultural fare offered to them by consolidated media and

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entertainment conglomerates” (p. 373). In India, the race to reach the so-called ‘bottom of
the pyramid’ market with mobile phone services and goods is largely (with the exception
of a very few projects like those discussed in the second half of Chapter Five)
preoccupied with one-way delivery of information, services and advertising to this
market. Meanwhile, however, the upper-middle classes, encouraged by a rise in the ethos
of the ‘social entrepreneur’, is finding greater ways to express themselves online. Thus, it
seems that while the urban middle class might enjoy increasing opportunity for
participation and online voice, the so-called BoP will be increasingly saturated with top-
down commercial content and the “pro-am” content created by society’s creamy layers.
This is similar to the effect that McChesney (1999) describes as the “rich media,
poor democracy” paradox. Even as our environments are increasingly saturated by media,
our access to and opportunities to participate in meaningful public interests debates and
dialogues have decreased. While here McChesney and other political economists have
largely been concerned with the effects of media commodification, “poor democracy”
also arises from a lack of opportunity to participate in shaping and making the debates in
the public discourse.
The desire to reach the BoP has created new relationships between NGOs and
development planners on one hand, and telecommunication companies and tech
developers on the other. In the many conferences I attended during this research, industry
representatives from telecom companies and handset manufacturers were heavily
represented, and sat side-by-side with non-profit development initiatives. The
development sector feels they need industry to provide the technological infrastructure

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(in the form of both connectivity and hardware) on which they can deliver their social
development mobile apps or platforms. The industry, for their part, recognizes the
challenges in reaching ‘the next billion subscribers’ who sit at the bottom of the pyramid
and know that they will need NGOs, development workers and community advocates to
help them understand the needs of this market segment and to gain the trust of these
isolated or rural communities. The Breakthrough experience in soliciting bids for a tech
developer and the ways in which the tech developer partnership shaped the final Chatpati
Chat platform demonstrate some of the complexities of such relationships, as did its
ambivalence about partnering with a telecommunication company.
However, efforts like Chatpati Chat as well as programs like CGNet Swara and
Avaaj Otalo demonstrate the ways in which the right match between a tech developer and
goals of development planners can create exciting new platforms where voice can be
expressed, even as they struggle to answer some of the challenges that limit the
technologies’ potential.

The Role of Communication in Development
I have argued that communication is a process of defining and constructing our
communities and cultures and our understanding of our identities within them. It is thus
the process through which communities come to a common understanding of the norms
and values that constitute their cultural practices and guide how members of the
community interact with one another, and what priorities they set for development.

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While there are many indicators and definitions of what development is, I choose
a perspective on development that is based on a human rights framework. From this
perspective, the benchmark of success is the degree to which social structures 1) allow
for the basic human dignity of all individuals, and 2) provide access to the resources
needed to achieve this (water, food, shelter, citizenship, etc.). This view of development
distances itself from the modernization paradigm of development, which pursues
ambitions to transform “backward” societies to more closely resemble the models of
‘advanced’ Western nations (Narula & Pearce, 1986). In addition to putting equitable
economic practices in place, development strategies also need to tackle power
differentials in the existing social structures and imagine alternatives. This challenge is
well articulated by Schiller (1976) in the following passage:

…how do women, races, classes, and nations overcome the domination to
which they have been, and are, subjected?… Without fundamental system-
questioning, alternative social models cannot be imagined, much less
introduced. In the struggle against domination, the first need, after
awareness itself, is the enunciation of alternative social forms (p. 83-84).

In the old paradigm of development, mass media is a means of persuading passive
audiences to adopt “modern” values and modes of life. Under this paradigm, mass media
is a “vehicle for transferring new ideas and models from North to the South and, within
the South, from urban to rural areas” (Thussu, 2000, p. 57. See also Lerner & Schramm,
1967). For example, in Roger’s early conception of diffusion theory, innovations
necessary for the modernization of a people are diffused throughout the population
through media and interpersonal communication. Here the notion is that mass media

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merely needs to transmit the correct message in order to transform populations in ways
that Western society has defined as beneficial.
However, I would argue that “progress” is greater access to resources necessary
for achieving human rights standards. In this paradigm, media and cultural expressions
such as entertainment and popular culture become places where dialogue about the
cultural standards of justice and equality can be critiqued. Although Schiller viewed the
media as a site of cultural imperialism, it can also be place where the “alternative social
forms” for which he advocates can be enunciated. Or, as Breakthrough describes it,
where building a culture of human rights can be undertaken.
However, care must be taken that these alternative social forms are projected in
empowering, rather than exploitative ways. Another critical concern in the way the
development discourse affects the opportunities for the expression of voice is the
possibility for these participatory platforms to be used to reify imbalances of power in the
flow of communication. For example, as more and more NGOs and activists groups use
social media to bring visibility to the issue of marginalized people, we run the risk of
displaying the realities of these groups as a spectacle for middle and upper class social
media users, thus replicating a problematic colonial gaze that has characterized so much
of philanthropic and development related advocacy communication (Brough, 2012; Gurd,
2006; Halttunen, 1995; Klarer, 2005). Often, in the hopes of creating greater awareness
among more privileged social classes, social media is used to put the plights of poor
and/or rural populations on display, rather then giving them opportunities to talk for
themselves. Breakthrough struggled with this during its Anganwadi workers programs.

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Breakthrough invited a number of bloggers and Twitter users to a gathering it organized
for more than 500 rural Anganwadi workers to share their practices and concerns. The
event was followed on Twitter, Facebook and various blogs by a number of
Breakthrough’s online fans, providing the opportunity for the organization’s online
followers to learn about the concerns of rural women’s health and rights that were
discussed at the forum. While the Anganwadis were proud to know that their activities
were of interests to people in Delhi, Mumbai or other urban centers, they were unable to
view the post written about them or the comments the posts received, and they had no
opportunity to join in the conversations that followed in the weeks after the event.
Breakthrough’s concern about the Anganwadi’s inability to represent themselves on these
platforms was one of the things that encouraged them to investigate ways to make social
media more accessible to its offline constituents through efforts like Chatpati Chat.
Indeed, platforms like Chatpati Chat that allow users to talk about themselves on
the platform (rather than being talked about) are a crucial step towards righting the
communication imbalances of philanthropic and advocacy related communication. The
challenge is to ensure that social media is in fact always a two-way dialogue. As Basu,
the non-profit social media consultant, described:

When I talk about…bridging this gap between rural and urban, I also at
the same time say that it has to be two way. If I take an interview of a
village woman today and I put it up…on some website…I should then go
back to this woman and show it to her and say, ‘Look I took your
interview….and this is what people are saying [about it. These are the]
comments it has got. Your video is here and these people are saying this or
that about you.’ This kind of connecting back to the original source is very
important—but it hardly happens…. (S. Basu, personal communication,
August 15, 2010).

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This question of representation is a reminder that expressing alternative social
forms means very little if no one is listening. As noted in Chapter One, being heard is as
critical an aspect of ‘voice’ as speaking, but how one is heard also matters. The challenge,
then, is to create platforms that connect the community’s discursive activities and
dialogues about collective goals to broader centers of power, but does so in ways that
give the communities agency to represent themselves and to talk back to those who are
listening and responding.

New Technology and Old Social Relations
The central question for this study then becomes, do new technologies, especially
mobile phones, create such space for alternative social forms to be expressed? Can they
shift the balance of power regarding who can speak about development? Do they enable
forms of listening and being heard that empower communities with agency? I have
principally engaged these questions through the concept of voice, or the right to speak
and be heard within a larger storytelling network that enables communities to co-
construct their collective identities, values and priorities for change.
Recently, the emergence of the Internet, mobile phone, social media and Web 2.0
technologies have created great excitement about the promise of stronger democratic
participation. However, I have attempted in this dissertation to demonstrate some of the
ways in which “new technologies travel on old social relations” (Shiva, 1998).
Longstanding practices of social exclusion influence how inclusive the platforms are and

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old relationships and modes of funding create pressures for implementers that constrain
how they can deploy the technologies. Additionally, trends towards neoliberal approaches
to development and the need to answer to market logics also influence the shape of such
efforts.
Ultimately, at their core, such programs, to various degrees, engage the larger
question about who has the power to speak about development and with what authority
and what kind of communication interventions have the potential to increase voice. In
particular, these questions are about the shift from seeing program ‘beneficiaries’ as
‘targets’ or ‘consumers’ towards seeing them as producers of knowledge and active
citizens.
While there is often excitement that new technology will right the imbalances and
usher in greater democracy, I argue that, in fact, their use and deployment is so deeply
shaped by larger structures of the development field and its discourses that they cannot do
so alone. To make the most of the possibilities offered to us by these powerful new
technologies, the development sector and all its players will need to do an honest critique
of its practices and re-envision the way it does business so that new uses of the
technology can not only be imagined, but also funded, implemented and sustained.

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