With days to go before elections in Nepal the battle for votes is being fought over the air waves as radio stations, many backed by political parties, beam campaign messages to the farthest corners of the Himalayan nation.
Social media may now dominate political campaigns in the West, but in Nepal, where fewer than one in five people has access to the internet, radio is king.
Community radio exploded in the early 1990s as Nepal's monarchy began to loosen its grip on power, liberalising the media and allowing popular elections for a new government.
It grew with the mobile revolution as cheap handsets with built-in FM receivers became widely owned, allowing news to reach areas of the landlocked mountainous country where newspapers can take days to arrive.
Now the young republic of 29 million people has over 550 radio stations, nearly double the number of commercial FM stations in neighbouring India.
But some fear that a medium once seen as a beacon of democracy has become overly politicised.
The vast majority of stations, by some estimates as many as 90%, are now backed or owned outright by politicians or prominent supporters.
"Community radio (in Nepal) has always been the most powerful means of communication. They reach the largest number of people... the political parties have understood that," said Kunda Dixit, editor of the English-language Nepali Times newspaper.
"What we've seen in the last five years is political encroachment into that space, meaning local units of the political parties buying into the radio stations."
Dixit said many stations had now become mouthpieces for local political parties.
"Especially at election time they are really misused," he added.
Gopal Guragain, chairman of the Ujyaalo Network which syndicates national news to 220 radio stations across Nepal, says politicians increasingly see radio as "a tool to motivate and manipulate the people."
"Radio has become like another wing of the political parties," he said.
But prospective voters say that makes for little clarity about what candidates really stand for.
"Most of the local radios in my district are loyal to a political party or are influenced by a party," said Shiva Khatiwada, a teacher in Dhading district in central Nepal.
"But I don't think that the radio ads are helping people understand the candidates."