IN A country like India, where illiteracy isrampant and each region has a dialect of 'its own, it is essential to develop visualaids to help impart information. This isespecially true of rural India. A projectfunded by the , Ford Foundation,New Delhi, sought to study the affectivity of both current-and traditional waysof disseminating agriculture -basedinformation through visual media inrural Rajasthan (The Ford FoundationBulletin, Autumn. 1995).
Governmental and non-governmental organisations have been communicating with the rural populationfor introducing better farming techniques. A variety of media, ranging fromposters and leaflets to illustrated booklets is being used. I But a lot of information is in text form, which is highlyunsuitable for interacting with illiteratepopulations. There are other innovativeapproaches such as the use of village puppets, local drama groups and kisanmelds (farmer fairs) which follow the,seeing is believing'-theory. Videos andfilms are, also used, but these again aremade by urban literates and may not beeffective. The communication techniques that have been used so far wereunidirectional as the farmers werenot involved in the process of materialcollection and ways of dissemination.
The objective of the project undertaken by Anthony Latham, a media production consultant from the UK andLaxmi Murthy, a graphics designer fromUdaipur, was to evaluate these communication methods in the agriculturallydeprived areas of Udaipur, Bikaner andjodhpur in Rajasthan. The projecthoped to come up with a way to determine the appropriate media for certaingroups of farmers, keeping theirneeds in mind. Latham and Murthy alsowanted to discover artistic. styles andtalents existing at the village levelwhich could be used for creating theeducational material.
A technique known as participatoryrural appraisal' was used for the surveywhereby the villagers were encouragedto draw 'familiar everyday objects intheir own way. The resultant picturesshowed a marked similarity to eachother and there was high recognition ofeach other's drawings. But to a literateoutsider, the pictures looked somewhatobscure. After the villagers had completed their drawings, a governmentartist was recruited to draw the subjectsin his own style. Then he drew the pictures using the characteristic features ofthe village pictures. This set of three pictures was made to test picture recognition ability of the farmers and to find out which picture was - best likedby them. In another exercise, thevillagers were shown a sequence ofsix images depicting a story.What seemed a logical order to theliterate urbanite Was incomprehensible to the villagers. 0nly two of the60 farmers who were shown thepictures, could follow the sequencecorrectly. While for others, the mosteasily identifiable picture caught theirattention first and then they let theireyes wander till they fell on the nexteasily understood picture.
From the survey, Latham and.Murthy came to very interesting conclusions. The villagers preferred the mixedperspective Pictures to their own drawings. The former appeared to haveclarity of message, image and sequence- the three most important tools ofadvertising.
The object size was found to have agreat influence on the villagers: largerobjects made more sense than thesmaller ones. Also, a filled in objectholds more meaning than a simpleline drawing to the farmers. Symbolssuch as ticks, crosses and arrows haveno meaning to them. In fact, theycomplicate the pictures in the minds ofthe illiterates.
Latham and Murthy conclude . thatvideos offer the best medium for information dissemination, but they add thatthe people who produce them shouldundergo training. The relevance of content, context and vocabulary, both oraland visual is essential. They feel thatvideo screenings should be followed bythe print media to help reinforce themessage through images and serve asreminders.
A sub-survey revealed that womenin the most marginalised communitieshad very limited or no access to anyform of media and were unable torespond to it. Thus, it has been suggested that attention needs to be focussedmedia support for rural women.Working in close association with thetarget group is important and oneshould take into consideration, age,literacy levels, gender, wealth, rank andland holdings. A blanket approach isleast cost-effective and will bearminimal results. It is important formedia persons to know that ruralcommunities have a sense of their ownneeds and a way in which they perceivethem. Communication is a two-wayprocess with no standard solutions forall rural communities. It is thus important to involve the target group in theprocess of producing both messages andvisuals, and media can prove to be thekey factor in reaching out to them.