Engendering Growth Through Creative
Strategies for Rural Communications

 

The need to understand the challenges that rural communities face regarding lack of information and livelihood concerns is imperative for communication service providers. Communication providers can play an important role by driving a hyper-local strategy without simply repeating what has worked in urban settings.

In India, the mainstream media is unable to cater to the true information needs of the rural community, as it is primarily market driven and operates with profit-maximising motives. About 75% of the Indian population is not able to access the mass media due to illiteracy and more than 90% of entertainment is through the electronic medium. Hence, large chunks of population, especially in rural India, remain un-served and ignorant of the choices that can change their life.
Further, mass media campaigns would not work in these settings and innovative thinking is required to overcome the lack of access to technology like TV, isolated rural settings, cultural differences and to cater to local dialects. Growth goals cannot be reached without disseminating information to the larger group, for whom the development schemes are created and enabling them to access their entitlements and claim their rights.

Strategies that include communication for rural development as a significant aspect of rural development are essential. Communication for growth is a critical driver for securing the necessary participation, ownership and accountability for achieving development goals. Dialogue is at the heart of such a communication strategy. Development is thus engineered to be bottom up by engaging the community, both with the identification of their challenges and the solutions. The aim of the strategy of rural communication for growth is to ensure that the media has the capacity and capability to provide channels for dialogue to generate information that rural communities want and need. Dialogue platforms for vulnerable and marginalised groups to discuss and voice their perspectives on the issues that most concern them can play a crucial role in engendering growth in rural areas.

The platforms need to be created in such a way that information should reach the marginalised sections of society and they are able to engage in dialogue with each other and experts, going beyond a traditional chaupal. The participatory communication medium is one such way where marginalised people can participate at every step. Initiatives like community radio, satellite communication of Indian Space Research Organisation’s Village Resource Centre and other village resource centres managed by franchisees to encourage decentralisation and to reach remote areas are helping rural people to raise their voice and participate in discussions on matters affecting the community. Other innovative programmes such as Lifeline projects using mobile phones for providing information in the field, local village gatherings where entertainment, theatre forms, focus group discussion and participatory rural appraisal with experts are conducted on specific themes such as adaptation and climate change or eco habitat have been working successfully.

These methods are allowing rural communities to develop their communication skills in the language and idiom they choose and understand. These methods facilitate rural community involvement at all levels of decision-making and programming, ensuring that their voices and concerns are part of the agenda. Additionally, they become part of the solution, allowing it to be applied more effectively as they had a choice in its creation.

There is an urgent need to encourage and support initiatives that help the poor and non-literate meet their communication needs, both through the development of technology for use by the non-literate and through cheaper technology. Media support and media capacity development of rural communicators should enable them to better respond to and reflect the information and communication needs of these groups.

At this stage, there is no perfect participatory model but with the development of the capacities of rural communicators who understand the needs and the ways of engaging with their own communities and continual co-experimentation with new rural media models will no doubt result in greater community participation for their own empowerment and growth. q

Indira Mansingh
imansingh@devalt.org
 

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