"Fourth World" Communication

BY BG Verghese| IN Community Media | 13/10/2006

           Reprinted from the Deccan Herald, September 16, 2006

  B.G. Verghese

 The National Readership Survey, 2006, has some interesting data. The country¿s 230 million TV viewers (in 112 m TV homes) now exceed its 203.6 m newspaper readers while cinema-going has declined from 51 million to 39 million filmgoers a month. FM radio listeners now total 119 million. Indian language newspaper readership is fast growing, especially in the Hindi belt, while the comparable figure for English dailies has been stagnating around 21 million.  

If these figures tell any story, it is that rural India, and  disadvantaged "Fourth World" groups among them, remain information poor, disempowered and unable to participate effectively in local governance or national affairs.  

Radio remains a poor relative of Doordarshan while most FM radio channels are urban-entertainment oriented. AIR¿s External Services and DD International are sadly in limbo even as the Government is now giving consideration to creating a Global (TV) Presence for Strategic Purposes to portray India¿s culture and national interests through a projection of  "soft power". This is a laudable object in itself. But why jettison Prasar Bharati rather than give it the true autonomy it needs to be a really effective public service broadcaster?  

The extension content of Prasar Bharati has declined and the guidelines for community radio, which would genuinely reach down to the grassroots, is still too narrowly conceived and hedged around. In the bargain, India is losing a most powerful tool for local governance and empowerment.  

However, the print media is thrusting out into the remoter countryside, albeit slowly. Among the many inspiring experiments under way is that of Janvani, an interactive Oriya newspaper that has taken on a Fourth World Mission to cater to the State¿s many dalits, tribes and OBCs through rural reporters drawn from their ranks and trained for the job. The National Institute of Social Work and Social Sciences, founded by Radhakant Nayak, M.P and former IAS officer born to SC and ST parents, aims to foster social entrepreneurship to transform our present inegalitarian and feudal society. To this end he established the Janvani Trust, run entirely by women, to launch Janvani three years ago 

The daily is produced in Bhubaneshwar but circulates in 14,000 of Orissa¿s 52,000 villages and enjoys a circulation of  just under 24,000 copies a day. It has 150 active barefoot reporters and 1450 less frequent correspondents who double up as social animators and conduct community discussions through Readers¿ Circles. Running the paper with insufficient  production staff, lack of advertisements and infrastructure, and meeting operational costs continues to be a challenge. But Janvani struggles on bravely.   

Following another track, Anupam Srivastava, a communications graduate, kept wondering how he could reach out to hitherto unreached rural audiences. He tumbled upon an idea waiting to be exploited. He persuaded the Patna Dairy Cooperative that there could be synergy in his publishing a fortnightly wall newspaper that would carry news and information relevant to a rural readership, including messages about livestock health, animal feed, and other matters that the Dairy wished to propagate. In return, the Dairy should carry the wall newspaper to the 950 villages (with a population of 35,000) in the  four districts of Central Bihar falling within its twice-daily milk run and hand it over to the Milk Union Secretary to paste and distribute to potential subscribers at the milk-pouring counters.  

A deal was struck and, after some pre-testing, Pratibadh ("Commitment") was born in 1996 as a double-broadsheet. The Hindi used was simple and the type-size large. Village milk union secretaries took on the role of animators to pass on local news and report on community issues. Publication of these items evoked live interest in the paper while responses to grievances enhanced its credibility as a vehicle for social communication. Subscribers began to write letters, initiating an interactive dialogic process.  

Subscriptions are flexible, ranging from 20-50 paisa and upwards, and are collected by milk union secretaries through deductions from individual subscriber¿s milk sale proceeds. Locally drawn cartoons and illustrations are popular.   

Answering a need, Pratibadh trained local reporters and today has a band of 350 village reporters who in some 20,000 villages that it now reaches through seven State Milk Unions in Bihar, West Bengal, Uttranchal, Haryana, Punjab, Maharashtra and Goa. It is currently printed in Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi and Marathi. Given an average of 50-60 members per village milk union, Pratibadh has a readership of over half a million.  

Now that a reliable mechanism of two-way communication has been established, Pratibadh or its clones could reach out countrywide through other state milk cooperative unions. Here is a  unique and perfect mechanism for vending rural papers that could carry a variety of messages or reading matter. 

There are over a million primary milk unions in the country with a combined population of around 90 to 100 million living in these filalges. One large corporate has offered to take advertising space at the rate of Rs 150 per square cm. There is a viable revenue model here to tap the vast, awakening rural market not merely for goods and services but for knowledge, education, information and empowerment.