Communication for Rural
Development
Asian
countries over the past 50 years have experienced remarkably rapid
economic development and social change at varying levels. Fundamentally,
these changes were driven by dramatic breakthroughs in health and family
planning technology. But this kind of demographic transition has
provided favourable conditions for development and modernisation, which
progressed very quickly in the countries of East Asia.
Global agreement on various development issues and policies was
significantly achieved at many international conferences. It is now very
clear that a good communication and advocacy is vital for any
development on ground as also for behavioural change. Through a skilled
process of communication and advocacy on issues, Governments can forge a
programme of action that reflects a new strategy for development.
The role of communication for development first came into being in the
1960s. Today, in many countries, communication has shown its usefulness
and impact in change and development activities. Nonetheless, it would
appear that the use of communication and advocacy has been limited to
the behavioural goal of getting a policy adopted, not necessarily having
it implemented. Following the model of development communication, public
health communication attracted more donors and friendly policies from
government and communication scholars, institutions to design, implement
and evaluate innovative communication programmes aimed at behaviour
change.
Communication forms the basis for creating awareness, consensus
building, generating participation in the processes of change and
development, making informed decisions and resolving conflicts. A series
of world conferences on various socio-economic issues in recent years
have been convened and implicitly called for the use of communication to
help achieve development goals and to help individuals, communities and
societies to accept change.
Barely 20 years ago health communication programmes had broken historic
ground by insisting on strategies based upon the individual’s own
perspective and upon research into the actual perceptions, needs and
practices of people. India, the first country to have adopted population
policies in the early 1950s, used the print media and other means to
promote its family planning programme. In 1984, India began broadcasting
the first soap opera with social content titled Hum Log (We People). The
programme included promotion of family planning and elevation of the
status of women through famous actors and characters. Broadcast for over
17 months, the episodes of this serial achieved viewer ratings of 60 to
90 per cent. Research conducted by Everett Rogers and Arvind Singhal,
then of the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern
California, revealed through a sample survey that 70 per cent of the
viewers indicated that they had learned from the soap opera that women
should have equal opportunities, 68 per cent learned that women should
have the freedom to make their personal decisions in life, and 71 per
cent learned that family size should be limited. Among other things, the
programme stimulated over 400,000 people to write letters to the Indian
television authority as also to various stars in the programme, stating
their views on the issues being dealt with, or asking for help and
advice.
Social change is linked to concerted public action. Be it in population
programmes, protection of the environment, proper use and conservation
of natural resources or increasing food production, communication can
introduce change among large numbers of individuals in society in the
way they live and work, thus making a difference.
While working on ground for last 25 years, Development Alternatives (DA)
has successfully used various forms of development communications. For
critical issues like drinking water, water management for agriculture,
climate change adaptation, women empowerment, environment protection,
etc., it has been experienced that communication plays an important role
in communicating the message and bringing about a change. Bundelkhand, a
semi-arid region of central India where DA is working extensively, is
always faced with challenges that hinder implementation of development
plans. Challenges vary from non-receptive audience and social barriers
to unfriendly government policies. These challenges can only be dealt
with good communication strategy and advocacy at all levels. Selection
of communication tools is critical in this kind of a situation.
For decades, popular and advocacy strategies have been information based
and source oriented. They were driven more by an enchantment with media,
segmented audiences, materials development and the goal of awareness
creation rather than development messages. Looking at the 30-year
history of family planning Information, Education and Commercial (IEC)
materials, the shift in focus has tended to centre around the issue of
which medium or technology would be more powerful and effective,
including audio-visual aids with field personnel, mass media, small
media, folk media, entertainment-education approaches. At times, great
emphasis was placed on small media such as flannel-graphs or the use of
puppets. Then the interest turned to slide-and-sound presentations and
film strips. The use of video was heralded at one stage as a
breakthrough technology. During the 1990s, the bells were ringing for
radio and television ‘enter-educate’ programmes and soap operas.
While designing the communication strategy for a project dealing with
creating awareness for climate change adaptation, the team was very
careful in choosing the communication tools. Instead of choosing regular
communication tools traditional tools like village theatre, folk songs,
community radio, wall paintings were used. The impact evaluation of the
situation presented a very promising picture. The result shows that a
combination of traditional and modern communication tools and
entertainment based information delivery has been accepted quite
positively by the rural communities. There is better chance of creation
of recall value among the audience. For effective rural communication,
the development messages may contain entertainment-education
performances of folk media, including puppetry, street theatre, ballad
songs, poetry and riddles intended to stimulate dialogue between
communities, policy makers and service providers.
There is strong evidence in a number of countries that the mass media,
particularly the entertainment broadcast media, have played a
significant role in bringing about changes in practices. The
entertainment-education method, has recently demonstrated impressive
behavioural impact. In developed as well as developing countries, there
is still considerable skepticism as to whether providing access to
information and communication technology (ICT) can play a significant
role in bringing behavioural changes. Certainly, ICT cannot by itself
bring an end to the problem. ICT is simply a tool, and no single tool or
set of tools can solve a global problem having multiple and extremely
complex causes. ICT is not a ‘magic bullet’, but depending upon how it
is employed it does provide powerful ammunition in the fight against the
problem.
From the above discussion it might seem that communication alone could
solve all the problems of social change and development. However, people
may be fully motivated and willing to change, but if the physical
possibilities for that change are not present, the process will remain
stillborn. A farmer may be ready to adopt climate-friendly irrigation
methods, but if the services are not available locally at a price he can
afford, he will not be able to improve himself. Thus, a combination of
communication and advocacy can help to create demand in certain
circumstances and thus put pressure on the services to perform.
For proper achievement of communication goals, the strategy and action
would call for some radical rethinking concerning the way things are
done and currently organised. Behavioural change takes place more easily
and rapidly when groups, even small ones, become involved in analysing
information, discussing its relevance to their particular situation,
internalising it and making decisions to take action. Also, any attempt
to make communication a part of national development and enable people
to change their behaviour depends on a democratic spirit among decision
makers and on the political will to make it happen successfully.
q
Soma Biswas
sbiswas@devalt.org
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