A project in Rajasthan involved rural communities to evolve better communication methods by integrating local talents and traditional methods for dissemination of agriculture-based information
IN A country like India, where illiteracy is
rampant and each region has a dialect of '
its own, it is essential to develop visual
aids to help impart information. This is
especially true of rural India. A project
funded by the , Ford Foundation,
New Delhi, sought to study the affectivity of both current-and traditional ways
of disseminating agriculture -based
information through visual media in
rural Rajasthan (The Ford Foundation
Bulletin, Autumn. 1995).
Governmental and non-governmental organisations have been communicating with the rural population
for introducing better farming techniques. A variety of media, ranging from
posters and leaflets to illustrated booklets is being used. I But a lot of information is in text form, which is highly
unsuitable for interacting with illiterate
populations. There are other innovative
approaches such as the use of village
puppets, local drama groups and kisan
melds (farmer fairs) which follow the
,seeing is believing'-theory. Videos and
films are, also used, but these again are
made by urban literates and may not be
effective. The communication techniques that have been used so far were
unidirectional as the farmers were
not involved in the process of material
collection and ways of dissemination.
The objective of the project undertaken by Anthony Latham, a media production consultant from the UK and
Laxmi Murthy, a graphics designer from
Udaipur, was to evaluate these communication methods in the agriculturally
deprived areas of Udaipur, Bikaner and
jodhpur in Rajasthan. The project
hoped to come up with a way to determine the appropriate media for certain
groups of farmers, keeping their
needs in mind. Latham and Murthy also
wanted to discover artistic. styles and
talents existing at the village level
which could be used for creating the
educational material.
A technique known as participatory
rural appraisal' was used for the survey
whereby the villagers were encouraged
to draw 'familiar everyday objects in
their own way. The resultant pictures
showed a marked similarity to each
other and there was high recognition of
each other's drawings. But to a literate
outsider, the pictures looked somewhat
obscure. After the villagers had completed their drawings, a government
artist was recruited to draw the subjects
in his own style. Then he drew the pictures using the characteristic features of
the 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 liked
by them. In another exercise, the
villagers were shown a sequence of
six images depicting a story.
What seemed a logical order to the
literate urbanite Was incomprehensible to the villagers. 0nly two of the
60 farmers who were shown the
pictures, could follow the sequence
correctly. While for others, the most
easily identifiable picture caught their
attention first and then they let their
eyes wander till they fell on the next
easily understood picture.
From the survey, Latham and.
Murthy came to very interesting conclusions. The villagers preferred the mixed
perspective Pictures to their own drawings. The former appeared to have
clarity of message, image and sequence
- the three most important tools of
advertising.
The object size was found to have a
great influence on the villagers: larger
objects made more sense than the
smaller ones. Also, a filled in object
holds more meaning than a simple
line drawing to the farmers. Symbols
such as ticks, crosses and arrows have
no meaning to them. In fact, they
complicate the pictures in the minds of
the illiterates.
Latham and Murthy conclude . that
videos offer the best medium for information dissemination, but they add that
the people who produce them should
undergo training. The relevance of content, context and vocabulary, both oral
and visual is essential. They feel that
video screenings should be followed by
the print media to help reinforce the
message through images and serve as
reminders.
A sub-survey revealed that women
in the most marginalised communities
had very limited or no access to any
form of media and were unable to
respond to it. Thus, it has been suggested that attention needs to be focussed
media support for rural women.
Working in close association with the
target group is important and one
should take into consideration, age,
literacy levels, gender, wealth, rank and
land holdings. A blanket approach is
least cost-effective and will bear
minimal results. It is important for
media persons to know that rural
communities have a sense of their own
needs and a way in which they perceive
them. Communication is a two-way
process with no standard solutions for
all rural communities. It is thus important to involve the target group in the
process of producing both messages and
visuals, and media can prove to be the
key factor in reaching out to them.
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