A two-way channel for `development politics'
K. PARAMESWARAN
PRESIDENT A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's article `Media as a partner in economic development' (The Hindu, November 27) has correctly identified the need for greater stress on `development oriented politics' and greater media attention for such developmental efforts. His prescription of a set of missions for the media to carry out is quite practical.
Another very relevant point raised by the President is that the media should act as partners in various developmental programmes such as the Bharat Nirman and the PURA. In the deluge of what he calls `political politics' and its coverage, it is often found that such initiatives go unnoticed by the media at large.
Here, government owned media such as All India Radio, Doordarshan, Directorate of Field Publicity, Press Information Bureau, etc., have a significant role to play. But such media act under certain constraints and they are also perceived as part of the government by the people. Hence, the credibility of the development stories they produce may be questioned by the common man.
In this connection the two-way working of the media should be taken into consideration. The media is not only a framework through which news about developmental initiatives is passed on to the larger field of the common man but also a filter through which the common man's perception of government policies and their implementation is brought to the attention of the government.
The question of credibility of the government media springs basically from the fact that they focus exclusively on the former to the almost total exclusion of the second. Once this anomaly is resolved, the credibility index of the government media should logically increase. The Directorate of Field Publicity is one example of a government media which can be used as an excellent channel of communication from the common man to the government.
One of its principal objectives is "to gather people's reactions to the programmes and policies of the government and their implementation and to report them back for appropriate and corrective action by the government. The Directorate thus acts as a two-way channel of communication between the government and the people."
However, the ubiquitous spread of television has revolutionised the mode and manner of household entertainment, even to the extent of entertainment changing itself into a potent mode for education, donning the garb of infotainment. The appearance of the personal computer and the popularity of the internet which completely turned upside down the way people handled knowledge and information have also made the field publicity department and the way it packages and distributes information and publicity material completely irrelevant.
However, there exists a lacuna in the information network which can be efficiently made use of by the DFP to increase its own relevance. Information from the government and the district or State level administration is available in quite adequate measure. But the government, in the present set-up, lacks an organised and effective system to find out and disseminate the perceptions of the common man about various government programmes and initiatives.
It is in this respect that the DFP can make a real dent and prove itself to be continually relevant. The Field Publicity Officer can be made the main channel for collecting and collating the feedback from the people. For this, the officers and staff of the Field Publicity will have to be retrained in the art of gathering information.
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