Radio Highway is attempting to create something Manipur has increasingly lost: a shared public space where Kuki, Meitei and Naga voices can be heard together. Operating from the Assam Rifles’ Pallel Garrison, about 50 km from Imphal, the internet-based station brings three presenters from the state’s major communities into the same studio while neighbourhoods outside remain separated by fear, restricted movement and distrust.
The station was launched six months ago under Operation Sadbhavana, with Kuki presenter RJ Grace, Meitei presenter RJ Bon and K Kay, a Naga who works as producer, sound engineer and head of the media team. Station manager Suraj Vishwakarma oversees operations. Their professional collaboration has developed into a friendship, an outcome that is significant in a state where cross-community contact has become difficult and, in some places, risky.
The station’s whiteboard captures its intended breadth. Its schedule includes Gospel music, Manipuri beats, Kuki songs, English music, motivational programming, retro music and a programme called Harmony Express. Music is the largest draw, according to Vishwakarma, with Hindi songs receiving the most requests in the evenings. But the station also carries local news, weather updates and information about government welfare schemes.
That combination matters because a communication platform in a conflict-affected region performs more than one function. It can entertain, circulate practical information and create routine contact between communities. Radio Highway’s contribution is not simply that it employs presenters from different ethnic groups. It is that the station gives their cooperation a regular public form, turning an otherwise private relationship into something listeners can observe and participate in.
Grace’s programme, ‘Eimi Program–Houlim’, meaning ‘Conversation with Our People’, covers hospitality, education, local updates and Kuki music. It includes podcasts in Kuki and English. Bon’s ‘Tamna Gi Khongel’, or ‘Voice of Tamna Bird’, takes its name from a legendary imaginary bird rooted in Meitei folklore. The programming reflects the communities, languages and cultural traditions of the state while providing a common platform for them to coexist.
The need for such a platform is inseparable from the physical geography of the conflict. The report describes neighbourhoods that remain deeply separated, families and neighbours who remain apprehensive, and cross-community travel that can be risky. These conditions affect not only security but also the ordinary systems through which a city and its wider region function: movement, access to information, social contact and participation in public life.
In that setting, the station’s location inside a military garrison is both an operational advantage and a trust challenge. The Assam Rifles provides safe passage, escorting the presenters in its vehicles between their homes and the garrison. This arrangement enables a Kuki, Meitei and Naga team to work together, but it also means that the station’s public credibility must be built in a setting associated with security rather than civilian community media.
The distinction is important. A studio can provide physical safety for its presenters, but it cannot by itself remove the risks and anxieties that shape life outside its gates. K Kay acknowledged this limit, saying that a radio station cannot undo all divisions outside the garrison. At the same time, he said young presenters were building a friendship that crossed community cleavages. The station’s role therefore appears less like a replacement for political or administrative reconciliation and more like a small communications institution operating within the constraints created by conflict.
Its current reach remains modest but measurable. Radio Highway attracts an average of 5,000 to 6,000 monthly listeners and has more than 15,000 Instagram followers, according to the report. Those figures show that the station has found an audience through digital access, but they also reveal the limits of an internet-dependent model in a region where smartphone ownership, connectivity and data access cannot be assumed for every household or village.
The next stage of the project is designed to address that gap. The station has secured approval for a broadcast frequency and is in the process of becoming a full-fledged community radio station. Its management says this could make it the first station of its kind in Manipur. Plans include distributing an initial 1,000 to 2,000 radio sets across villages and inviting more local artists and residents to participate in programming.
That proposed shift from internet broadcasting to community radio changes the station’s potential institutional role. An online station primarily reaches people who are already connected. A broadcast service, supported by locally distributed receivers, can enter homes and villages without requiring each listener to have a smartphone or dependable internet access. The plan is still in progress, but it identifies access as a central issue rather than treating audience growth only as a digital marketing problem.
Community participation will be equally important. At present, the station’s most visible symbol is the relationship among its three presenters. Expanding the programming to local artists and residents could make the platform less dependent on a single trio and more representative of the communities it serves. It could also allow listeners to move from being an audience to becoming contributors, although the supplied report does not establish how that participation will be organised or governed.
The station’s welfare and public-information programming points to another dimension of reconciliation: practical usefulness. In a divided region, trust is not built only through symbolic messages of harmony. It is also shaped by whether institutions provide reliable information about weather, local developments and government schemes. Such programming can give listeners a reason to return regularly while making the station relevant to everyday needs.
The institutional arrangement behind Radio Highway is therefore layered. Operation Sadbhavana provides the framework under which the station was launched. The Assam Rifles provides the secure operating environment and transport support. The station’s management handles programming and audience development. The presenters bring community knowledge and language access. The planned transition to a full-fledged community radio service would add a broader broadcast function, potentially involving residents and local artists.
This arrangement also places responsibility on the station to maintain credibility across communities. The report does not provide details of an independent editorial board, complaint mechanism, programming code or process for handling contested information. Those details are not evidence that such systems do not exist; they are simply not established in the supplied material. As the station expands beyond music and motivational programming into local news and welfare information, the way it manages accuracy, representation and disagreement will become part of its public role.
Radio Highway’s story also shows why communication infrastructure should be understood as part of the built and institutional environment of a conflict-affected region. The station has a physical studio with soundproof walls, noise-cancelling interiors and an extensive microphone setup. It has transport arrangements, a management structure, digital distribution and plans for broadcast hardware. These are tangible systems. But their value depends on social access: who can travel, who can speak, who can listen and who trusts the institution carrying the message.
The numbers available so far describe an early-stage platform rather than a mass broadcaster. Monthly listenership is in the 5,000-to-6,000 range, while Instagram following exceeds 15,000. The proposed distribution of 1,000 to 2,000 radio sets would extend access, but the source does not establish the number of villages covered, the final broadcast area, the frequency secured or the timeline for the transition. Those milestones will determine whether the station remains a protected initiative centred on its studio or becomes a genuinely community-wide service.
The larger urban question is how public life can be rebuilt when ordinary shared spaces become difficult to access. Roads, markets, schools and neighbourhoods are not only physical infrastructure; they are also places where different groups encounter one another. When those encounters diminish, communication platforms can provide an alternative form of contact, but only within clear limits. Radio can carry voices across boundaries, yet it cannot independently resolve security concerns, displacement, political disagreements or the physical separation of communities.
What Radio Highway demonstrates is narrower and more practical. A shared media institution can make cross-community cooperation visible, deliver useful information and create a routine channel for cultural exchange. Its presenters’ friendship is not evidence that the conflict has been resolved. It is evidence that an institution, supported by security arrangements and digital tools, has created a controlled space in which cooperation can continue.
The next test will be whether that space can be widened. The station’s planned frequency, distribution of radio sets and invitation to local residents and artists will show whether its reach can extend beyond connected listeners and its presenters’ immediate networks. Until those steps are completed, Radio Highway remains an experiment in rebuilding public communication in Manipur—small in scale, but significant because it treats social connection as something that can be deliberately supported through infrastructure, programming and access.
