Media and Marginal Communities - I

The situation of media education is very pathetic. Mass Communication experts like any other experts are to busy talking about the new fad called Information Technology and its applications in their area in particular and the development in general. Development Communication or Cultural Communication are not the areas that would find significant space in the syllabi of Journalism and Mass Communication. However you could find Journalism and Mass Communication Departments in various University giving more and more emphasis on Information Technology. So much so that some university have changed the nomenclature of their degrees and they call it Master of Communication Science.

I feel that the only way to bring development communication back to its legitimate place in Media education would be to associate ourselves, the media educators, with various communities that are passing through a process of development. This is specially true for the media educators in developing countries.

Development can also be seen as an act of communication. It requires an understanding of the cultural life of communities to whom it is addressed. The development that has taken place all over India in last fifty years or so has largely remained insensitive to the cultural aspirations of such communities. Devoid of such sensitivity it has remained vertical or top-down communication. It has attempted to fulfil the dreams of the ruling elite and has deprived the communities from their participation in the whole process. There has been no attempts to give voice to voiceless. The education system, the literacy mission and other developmental projects have not empowered people perhaps in the absence of community participation. It seems that these development projects have not made any significant attempt to understand the culture and communicative patterns of this community. Orality is the dominant mode of communication and many other forms of folk and traditional communication exist, but except for kabirpanthis (followers of great reformist saint poet of India, Kabir) not many have tried to establish contacts with this community with the help of such forms. On the other hand, the projects relating to the preservation of cultural heritage, specially that of the tribes and poorest of the poor, are not concerned with the role of culture in transforming societies. They have tried to isolate the culture and preserved them in museums. Hence, they have not bothered much about development. We have development communication and cultural communication as areas of studies, but not much has been done in these fields. Development communication in most cases does not look at the problem of development in light of culture, nor does cultural communication attempts to link itself with the development of societies that leads to a definite change in the culture and communication practices. For example, the developmental activist will have less to do with the language and cultures of these communities and the expert like linguist and folklorist would study the language and culture of these communities but would largely remain silent about the political or developmental interpretation of thier study.

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