“Wealth is not new. Neither is charity. But the idea of using private wealth imaginatively, constructively, and systematically to attack the fundamental problems of mankind is new.”
~ John W. Gardner, former US Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare; and founder of Common Cause

Philanthropy and social responsibility in India are witnessing an evolution. Led by corporates, these are now viewed as an essential and integral functions and the business community is engaging actively and willingly in this exercise.

India is a country with structural and deep-rooted inequities in society such as poverty, malnutrition, access to education, high infant mortality, etc. Issues like water scarcity, pollution, and agrarian distress have exacerbated the hardships that communities face despite government-led development programs. In a large and diverse country like India, the challenges faced by communities are complex and often unmanageable for any single agency to tackle. Lasting social change requires stakeholders with relevant competencies to come together to catalyze sustainable, equitable, resilient, and inclusive change.

This requires a strong corporate/NGO partnership, one that takes development initiatives from transactional to transformational. As corporates evolve in their approach to social responsibility, a shift toward associations with credible NGOs is harnessing a synergy led by relative competencies.

The future of social change will depend on collaborations between nonprofits and corporate entities to lead the way to a more equitable, resilient, and inclusive society.

The Need for Synergy Between Corporates and NGOs

More corporates are realizing the need to change their approach from working for the community to working with the community to create positive change. Welfare activities require them to create the necessary infrastructure, allocate financial resources to hire employees, devise conflict resolution mechanisms, maintain governance and transparency, and have the vision to achieve community benefit.

Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives have transformed welfare into a strategic practice that requires adequate ground-level expertise. NGOs offer unique benefits that can enhance the philanthropic goals of corporations. NGOs have deeper and stronger ties with communities. Ground-level experience enables them to efficiently identify goals that align with the business vision. In addition to grassroots experience, NGOs offer technical expertise and knowledge of deeper community interactions.

Thus a successful partnership between corporates and NGOs leads to greater authenticity and a commitment to social initiatives that create measurable social impact. The very nature of the status of NGOs is voluntary and nonpartisan, which lead to an effective transparency and governance. The alignment also leads to enhanced visibility and strengthens trust with businesses, governments, and communities.

Building a Successful Partnership

Without a single model for success, multiple and diverse ways can build successful partnership projects/ relationships to create meaningful change. Some corporations have partnerships as part of their business strategy, while others view them as a conduit to better corporate governance and responsibility. The most compelling element of the success of an NGO and corporate partnership offers something positive to each party.

Some parameters of a successful partnership that draw from mutual strengths:

Conclusion

United Nations 2005 adopted a resolution “Toward Global Partnerships” that recognized the joint role of the private sector and NGOs in the eradication of poverty and national development.

The resolution recognized the role of non-governmental organizations, civil society, the private sector, and other stakeholders in national development efforts through collaborative partnerships. As countries realized the joint role of NGOs and corporates in promoting development, the merger of corporate responsibility to society was finally being appreciated. This union of NGOs and the business sectors through synergistic partnerships was now a reality with the promise to make changes for community benefit.

Businesses do not necessarily possess the know-how needed to carry out and integrate successful community projects into their business models. NGOs, with their structural advantages, possess skills for an accurate allocation and dissemination of resources leading to better uptakes and greater benefit for communities.

S M Sehgal Foundation: Driving Grassroots Programs and Development through Partnerships

S M Sehgal Foundation (Sehgal Foundation) is a sustainable rural development NGO in India engaged in five key program areas: Water Management, Agricultural Development, Local Participation and Sustainability, Transform Lives one school at a time, and Outreach for Development. Established in 1999 as a charitable trust, S M Sehgal Foundation has a skilled and dedicated team that creates and implements sustainable programs to address rural India’s most pressing needs. These programs are backed by a skilled research team that engages in participatory research, impact assessment, and interactive dialogues to determine informed actions to achieve sustainable results.

With support from donors and partners across geographies, S M Sehgal Foundation’s grassroots programs and development interventions have already reached three million people across India, empowering individuals and communities in need to escalate and enhance their development.

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India’s vaccine program, one of the largest in the world, was just taking off when the second wave of COVID-19 turned into a tsunami and hospitals and crematoriums were inundated. With such a large population, the fight against an unfamiliar enemy could only be won through mass vaccinations, a fact corroborated by top virologists. As the noise regarding the lack of vaccine availability reached a crescendo, another pressing issue started to unfold, that of vaccine hesitancy in rural India.

With the government aiming to vaccinate the entire eligible population by December 2021, vaccine supply is only half the dilemma. With almost 60% of the Indian population in rural areas, issues of accessibility and lack of manpower and infrastructure arose. The wall of suspicion, fake news, and rumors are still having an impact on vaccination rates in these areas.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/coronavirus-news-and-updates-live-january-13/liveblog/80242557.cms

Some of the Issues

Public Health Facilities: Although public health facilities have come a long way and played a primary role in managing the Covid-19 pandemic in rural India, there still are fewer takers than expected. Primary Health Centers in some areas are inadequately staffed with substandard infrastructure and facilities.

General Mistrust: People of rural India fear going to the vaccination center as they fear they will be subjected to testing and, if found positive, be incarcerated, never to return home.

Cultural and Religious Perspectives: People form opinions based on their deep-rooted beliefs that appear to clash with their cultural systems and values. Vaccine hesitancy in this context is often the result of inherited religious views that are seldom questioned.

Misinformation on Social Media: Dissemination of information through social media, especially fake news or fake information, is shared with vested interests or by miscreants. With the social media revolution using smartphones, it becomes a challenge to curb fake shares that further ignite vaccine hesitancy in rural India.

Side-effects and Questions on Efficacy: The media has played a stellar role in reporting issues faced in rural areas during the pandemic. However some reporting on side effects caused by the vaccines (i.e., clotting) led to a scare among those in rural areas. Reporting on the process of clinical trials and questions of efficacy has only added to the issue.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2021/03/08/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy-is-worse-in-eu-than-us/?sh=4400e6b7611f

Curbing Vaccine Hesitancy in Rural India

The first and second waves of the pandemic led to an enormous loss of life and livelihood. Unemployment and economic growth has been stalled in its tracks. With the impending third and subsequent waves, the only safeguard is vaccination. While the nationwide rollout saw urban India accept immunization with open arms, rural India has lagged far behind due to hesitancy and availability.

With the government promising to vaccinate the entire adult population by December 2021, tackling the hesitancy is urgent. As history tells us, immunization programs like “Mission Indradhanush” have yielded encouraging results in tackling hesitancy and increasing acceptance. The way forward is through massive outreach programs through a PPNP (public-private, not-for-profit partnerships) framework to derive maximum value in the shortest-possible time. A multipronged strategy should look to –

To improve vaccination uptake and coverage, health education approaches and initiatives will be the most effective in changing attitudes. Some outreach programs that were used earlier and some new strategies that can be used are:

Stories on the Ground: The New Age CORONA WARRIORS

Community radio stations across India have braved lockdowns and played an important role in ensuring awareness about COVID-19 in rural communities. The mainstream media has poor reach in rural India, and rural community radios help to bridge the last-mile gap. To identify concerns of the public and provide authentic and genuine information, these stations have played an instrumental role as community media in India during the pandemic. The local flavor of these stations ensures that this mass media service has a unique position in rural hinterlands.

Alfaz-e-Mewat community radio station, an initiative of SM Sehgal Foundation, has been doing stellar work during this pandemic to spread awareness on public health. As per government officials, only 75,225 people of the 14-lakh population of Nuh were vaccinated before May 31, 2021, and there is concern among many to ramp up the drive. Nuh, one of the most “backward” areas in the country, has always looked at immunization programs with suspicion, driven primarily by lack of awareness among the people. Recently, the district administration of Nuh partnered with Alfaz-e-Mewat community radio to fight myths and disseminate information, using positive messaging to assuage the fears of communities.

Senior health officials on condition of anonymity told the Hindustan Times that villagers were reluctant to take the vaccine due to several rumors that it is poisonous and may lead to impotency. “When health workers visited some villages to appeal to the locals to take the vaccine, the villagers emerged with sticks, threatening to attack them. Some even assaulted them and pushed them out of the village, alleging that the vaccine is poisonous.”

Nuh deputy commissioner, Captain Shakti Singh, spoke highly of the efforts of the community radios work in collaborating in this endeavor. He shared that officials and volunteers have been on the ground, motivating people; and to widen our outreach, rural community radio is the best way to do it. “We want to use their audience base to communicate with the people and disseminate information around COVID and the vaccine.”

Alfaz-e-Mewat radio has a reach of 225 villages and is being used to reach locals to transmit information about vaccination from the district administration, chief medical officer and other influencers. Six to seven programs are dedicated to COVID-19. The station also broadcasts messages from the senior officials, including the deputy commissioner, easing fear around the vaccines.

Officials claim the initiative has helped increase the number of villagers reaching the vaccination centers in the district. Organizations such as UNICEF and Community Radio Association are also supporting projects on COVID-19 prevention, vaccination, and COVID-appropriate behavior.

The idea has been to reach out to maximum villagers and bust the myths, so that more and more people get vaccinated. Community media in India and the rural community radio broadcasting has helped in a big way, and the numbers are increasing. The coming together of district administration and radio stations has played a proactive role in creating awareness about the COVID-19 pandemic and the significance of vaccination, leading to an increased turnout.

The mainline print media covered the work being done by Alfaz-e-Mewat, S M Sehgal Foundation’s brainchild in this regard.

The local administration asked the rural community radio stations to reach out to the inhabitants who are resisting the vaccine due to various myths. Vaccine hesitancy due to illiteracy, misinformation, and rumors have been quite a challenge.

The efforts of the two radio stations in the district having dedicated programs on COVID-19 are gradually helping people to ease fear around vaccination and follow COVID-19 appropriate behavior.

The war against COVID-19 will be won and lost with all of us following COVID-appropriate behavior, as the pandemic plays out in the coming times. With public health systems gearing up in the urban areas, vaccination drives have to now pick up the pace in rural India. We cannot afford to be lax in this regard; and how we deal with rural India will have major implications in the future direction of India and its economic growth.

After all, we do not want this pandemic to end like the 14^th century “Black Death,” when millions met their end, especially when we have the tools (the vaccine) to fight it. Now the time has come to use innovative strategies and partnerships to ensure that hesitancy issues are put to rest.

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By Sonia Chopra

Technology is ever-changing. Digital communication technologies connecting people across the globe have become easier and faster. Platforms such as Zoom, Room, Google hangouts, Microsoft teams, WebEx, and many others are buzzing virtual world spaces to connect and share. Social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, FaceTime, and all other high-end applications on smartphones have also shown us how technology has changed the world.

THE IMPACT OF DIGITAL INDIA ON RURAL DEVELOPMENT

Launched in 2015, a dream project of the Indian government, Digital India was to transform rural India into a digitally empowered society by gaining digital access to government services, and dissemination of information. The visionary step of the government was to motivate and connect rural India to a knowledgeable world through a backbone of a high-speed internet.

The vision of digital India was threefold –

Besides the creation of manufacturing infrastructure, the Digital India Program was conceptualized on nine pillars and in the rural context. The key areas were:

The impact on rural India has been slow, yet steady. In such a large and diverse country, some impact areas have been:

E-Governance. Projects such as e-District, Common Services Centers (CSCs), Kisan Call Centres, Jagriti E-Sewa, Mobile Seva, etc., have led to better service delivery, transparency and accountability, and improvement in government efficiency. The empowerment of people through information, although slow, is definitely spearheading rural India to contribute to the next phase of growth in the economy.

Education. Initiatives such as Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyaan PMGDISHA have begun with the target of making six crore people digitally literate in rural India. Rural education in India is crucial for the next phase of growth, and projects like SWAYAM are spearheading e-education by offering Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). Swayam provides a platform that facilitates hosting all courses taught in classrooms, starting from the 9th standard, till post-graduation, with an open access.

Also Read – Urban And Rural Development

Financial Inclusion. Financial inclusion with the help of Digital India, has been accelerated through schemes such as Digital India, UPI payments, direct benefit transfer, Rupay, etc. The Jan Dhan–Aadhaar–Mobile has positively affected the banking sector in the country. The benefits have percolated to the rural areas, and the financial literacy has significantly improved since the rural population got integrated into the system. Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) has created a major financial impact for the rural communities by plugging leakages and accelerating the distribution of pensions, subsidies, and other benefits under various schemes. All this has led to a positive economic outlook in rural India.

Adverse situations reshape the world and cause turning points that bring about vital new lessons. The social sector welcomed and adopted virtual and remote working models to an extent, and, as the lockdown relaxed, face-to-face conversations and on-ground activities resumed on a smaller scale.

As the pandemic accelerated, India witnessed one of the highest adoptions of digital technologies and solutions by health and human services (HHS) organizations among the countries surveyed, according to a new survey from EY and Imperial College London’s Institute for Global Health Innovation. Fifty-one percent of respondents in India had increased their use of digital technologies and data solutions since the outbreak of the pandemic. (Mint Newspaper, March 18, 2021).

S M Sehgal Foundation has been using Zoho CRM for four years. In the pandemic, the software helped to send mass emails to database contacts. Its built-in email templates are convenient for sending out event schedules. An important outcome is that CRM technology provides the analytics that helps to constantly refine email communication with organization contacts. CRM software provides a complete picture of how email communications fare and also integrates social media platforms, which can be linked to CRM to generate leads for the organization.

FAQs

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Their lives move on roads, they go wherever work is available, set up their hamlets, and live. They are not homeless, but they have no permanent address. Staging plays and performances in villages, they take on various roles to entertain and tell stories. This impressionist community, known as Behrupiyas, are practitioners of an age-old ancestral art of impersonating and storytelling. This rich art form, once commonly practiced in rural hinterlands of India, is slowing dying, and its practitioners are failing to receive their much-deserved recognition.

Emotions are at the heart of these acts, and contemporary issues make the soul of the wit and humor of these local artists who pack the content of their performances with powerful dialects and sometimes puns.

Reviving the traditional art

In order to provide a platform to these artists and also highlight their struggles, community radio Alfaz-e-Mewat FM 107.8 in partnership with Drishti (an NGO based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat) launched a new radio series titled “Ghar Ghar Ghumati Zindagi” that is focused on the Behrupiya community in district Nuh, Haryana. The series talks about the rich cultural history, art, and local folklore of the tribal nomads, and also highlights their challenges and needs. According to a Behrupiya community member from village Pinangwa, Nuh, “We migrated from Rajasthan in search of livelihoods. Our ancestral profession is performing arts; Behrupiyas used to perform plays, sing songs in emperor’s courts. We do not know any other skill. It has been over fifteen years now that we are in Nuh. There has been a change in people’s perspectives toward us. People shun us and treat us like beggars.”

Challenges galore

While the radio series tries to capture the voices and showcase their acts, listeners also get to understand the challenges faced by this community. Some of the Behrupiya families have their Aadhar identity cards (citizen recognition unique id) and voter ID cards, but they do not avail benefits under government programs, including public distribution system, integrated child development services, etc. Their children either do not attend school or
they drop out very early, leading them into rag picking.

Their identity crisis results in their negligible participation in local governance, even though they have been living for years together in the region. “People do not treat us a part of their communities. We stay separated from the village community; the art form is now on a decline with most of us living in poverty,” shared a Behrupiya community member who often dresses as a police officer, performing a satirical act woven around the disparities in society. He adds, “In this digital era surrounded by online digital devices, we are failing to attract the interest of society in local art.”

Sohrab, the radio presenter at Alfaz-e-Mewat, shared his experience of working with the Behrupiya community, saying that Behrupiyas do not feel a part of the society; they no longer enjoy the same patronage as in the past.

While these performers in villages live in deplorable conditions, the same art forms in a repackaged version are gaining immense traction in urban settings.

When members of the Behrupiya community were approached to share their stories on radio, they said they would be happy to share as much as they can if this could help revive their art. “Art is like worship to us, it is our being,” said a Behrupiya from village Azadpur, Nuh.

The Alfaz-e-Mewat team feels committed to helping to revive the culture of performing arts in the villages.

(Sonia Chopra is program leader, Communications, at S M Sehgal Foundation)

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Rajasthan is the state with the most people affected with fluorosis. ¹ Haryana’s Nuh district, being close to Rajasthan, faces the same issue. Fluorosis is a crippling and painful disease caused by the intake of fluoride. Fluoride can enter the body through drinking water, food, toothpaste, mouth rinses and other dental products, and drugs and fluoride dust and fumes from industries using fluoride containing salt and hydrofluoric acid.

A majority Haryana’s population uses groundwater for domestic, irrigation, and industrial purposes. Due to the high concentration of fluoride in groundwater, dental fluorosis has become a common disease in the state, and symptoms of skeletal fluorosis are prominent among adults in several districts of Haryana. But people in Nuh are unaware of the symptoms or causes of fluorosis and have neglected the issue for a long time.

Community radio Alfaz-e-Mewat has worked in the region since 2012 to bridge the communication gap and provide a platform to the people to address their concerns and discuss their problems on radio. A listener feedback program titled “Tere Mere Mann Ki Baat” broadcasts listener feedback and airs grievances shared by the community. Radio staff screens the 50+ recorded calls the station receives daily and compiles them for the episode. When the team received a call from a nearby village, Khedi Khurd of Nagina block, Nuh, about a persistent problem of joint and dental pain among the villagers, they took special note of the issue.

As the conversations continued, the team simultaneously consulted with the medical team at Al-Aafia Civil hospital, Mandikheda, who agreed to visit the village to check on the complaints. The district-level fluorosis consultant visited the village and found the complaints to be true and asked teachers of the village school to convince parents to bring their children to the general hospital for further diagnosis and treatment. He took water samples from the village that showed the particles per million (ppm) at 14 against the normal permissible value of 1 ppm.

The school in Khedli Khurd took responsibility, and all the children went through a thorough check up at the civil hospital. The result of one listener’s proactive action to share a grievance led to identifying the magnitude of the problem and subsequently taking remedial action. Alfaz-e-Mewat played a key role in helping to reach the right stakeholders, bring their problems into the public domain, and seek appropriate solutions.

¹ https://medium.com/@fluorideindia/the-state-of-fluoride-in-india-83d6b4373e87

Dispelling myths and finding solutions

Sahil, a twelve-year-old boy, has a disfigured leg from a genetic disorder. A doctor from a nearby village had asked to operate on the leg, but Sahil’s mother feared that an operation might make it worse. Her fear illustrates the need to spread greater awareness among the people to help them overcome false beliefs about medical treatments so they will reach out for medical help for their children.

In order to build awareness about fluorosis, the Adaptive Technologies-water team at Sehgal Foundation is testing water samples from four locations in each village across all blocks of Nuh to assess areas with high incidences of fluorosis. Together with the community, the team is now promoting the plantation of moringa and the intake of right nutrition rich in calcium, iron, vitamin C, and antioxidants to prevent further deterioration of patients suffering from fluorosis. Communication materials and information dissemination through the Citizen Information and Support Center, a toll-free helpline for villagers in Nuh, along with community radio programs, plays, and jingles are driving home the message to overcome the looming fluorosis and dispel myths related to fluorosis.

Finally due attention is being drawn to the long-standing issue of fluorosis that is prevalent in the community. Community media continues to play a vital role in highlighting such needs and serving as a pulse of the community.

(Shweta Kapoor, student of bachelor in business administration, IP University, interned with the S M Segal Foundation in the month of June 2018)

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By Julia Thomas

On most weekday evenings, a live program is aired on Alfaz-e-Mewat community radio station. This program is sometimes a mix of songs requested by listeners, other times people share their reflections on a recorded program. A team member with headphones on awaits calls, simultaneously taking notes and chatting with folks. The surrounding community of Ghaghas has fallen quiet, but the station is abuzz with activity, signaling that people are keenly listening in.

As part of a yearlong, experiential research project on grassroots media in different countries, I was lucky to have the opportunity to spend approximately one week with the team at Alfaz-e-Mewat. An article in the popular English daily, Hindustan Times, published in September, made me very curious about the nuances behind the station’s programming and its day-to-day operational processes; so I decided to learn more about the radio team’s approach to programming and the response from listeners.

At its very core, a community radio station has to shape its programming around the needs of its audience to inspire their active engagement. Effective community radio, as defined by José Ignacio Lopez Vigil, a member of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters, is when the programming “fosters the participation of citizens and defends their interests” and “truly informs and helps resolve the 1,001 problems of daily life; and all ideas are debated in its programs and all opinions are respected.” In short, its main purpose is “to build community life.”

Alfaz-e-Mewat seeks transparency in its programming. Topics range from gender issues, education, and agriculture, to folklore, development, music, and so on, along with inviting an exchange with the surrounding community. Watching the staff members interact with listeners, it becomes clear how central this is in the station’s daily operations.

Six years ago, the radio began with a one-hour broadcast; today the station has thirteen hours of daily programming and seems to be widely respected throughout the community.

“Whenever there is a live program, I call in,” Asloop tells me, while we sat outside in his village just a few kilometers from the station. He is lovingly called the representative, or mascot, of the station, as he is one of its oldest and most dedicated listeners. And sure enough, every night at 6:00 p.m., when I sit and listen to incoming calls with a staff member, Asloop rings in, and he brings many others along with him.

The people I spoke with in the community, most of whom were women, said that they enjoy listening regularly to the programs aired on Alfaz-e-Mewat. Some of them have been dialing in for a few years, while others only more recently. An alltime favorite mentioned by several people was the regional folklore program, Kisse Kahani. The program, which encouraged people to avail government schemes for in-house toilets, was extremely effective and continues to make an impact even after its broadcast date. Listeners told me they tune into the program and have persuaded others around them to join in as well. Staff and community members confirm that 80 percent of the households who listened to the program now have toilets in their homes. In addition, while a lack of household toilets is no longer such a looming issue, people told me they think it would be helpful to broadcast the program once again for those still without access to a toilet within the privacy of their home.

Another program aired while I was at the station was based on sexual harassment in the community, an issue that is widespread but taboo and, hence, difficult to talk about. In approaching this story, Alfaz-e-Mewat reporters adopted a well-thoughtout and long-term approach. Over the course of one year, staff members Fakat and Anuradha spent a few days each week with local schoolchildren in their mid-teens; in the course of their interaction, they split them into two groups based on gender. They led discussions and worked over time on team-building experiences, establishing a relationship of open exchange with the students, eventually to the point where they could broach a subject like sexual harassment—even from the perspective of those who had been the harassers. The team was able to record the students as anonymous sources, as well as disguise their voices for the program.

Such attention to community needs is central in Alfaz-e-Mewat’s programming and the very essence of the station. This emphasis laid on building relationships and engaging listeners through interaction seems to be driving the station to produce more programs and bring in more community journalists. Staff members I talked to mentioned that they would like to see even more community members working at the station, but most of the time a rotating group of five members runs Alfaz-eMewat. Moving forward, this sort of inclusion is becoming key to greater participation.

Though programming revolves around the voices and issues immediate to the community, external experts frequently speak on the program too. After a midmorning, live panel on International Human Rights Day, questions and discussion centered on the theme of rights and the possible actions to be taken to secure them, such as: what are the rights of senior citizens? Why do we celebrate human rights? Why can’t people exercise their rights in rural India? Alfaz-e-Mewat poses questions and encourages discussion to find answers to the questions.

By spending a week listening in, visiting community members, spending days and evenings with the staff, and traveling by motorbike to neighboring villages, the extent of the work and the dedication to this labor of love was clear to me as part of a much larger goal. As in journalism, in community development, this fusion is both rare and powerful. A big thank you to Sehgal Foundation and the team in Ghaghas—Fakat, Mufeed, Sohrab, and Mubina—for allowing me to participate and experience the community love that is Alfaz-e-Mewat.

(Julia Thomas, Watson Fellow, visited Alfaz-e-Mewat from December 6–10, December 14–15, 2017)

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The adage “change starts with you” holds true for the whole team at community radio Alfaz-e-Mewat FM 107.8, an initiative of S M Sehgal Foundation, as they ventured into a new domain of gender programming on radio—a journey of change—in thought, perceptions, and sometimes self-belief. As the team expected at the very beginning, the transformation was not overnight. The journey started two years ago when a women’s rights organization and media and arts collective joined hands to work with community radio stations across India to work on issues of gender.

Operating in an area with low development indices, especially the low literacy rate, as well as within a strong patriarchal culture, the radio team was apprehensive about even participating in the orientation training to embark on this collaborative journey. Two male radio reporters attended the training, which still stands afresh in their minds because it took them out of their comfort zone.

“Training is fine, very relevant for the times we live in, but would we be able to talk about gender issues with the community and make programs for radio? We were really unsure,” wondered radio reporter Fakat, a local middle-aged community member and father to two boys and two girls.

Fakat incorporated many new concepts and ideas into his own life after undergoing a series of trainings to build his capacities for working in gender programs. He was closely involved with the research and development phase of the series based on community learning program methodology, facing a lot of challenges, and making the gradual changes that transcended various facets of patriarchy and conservative tradition. Starting with his own perceptions and thought processes, Fakat said he almost underwent a mental revolution since his first association with the program. His emotions hovered between guilt and pride as he realized how far he had come in his own psychological journey. He shared that his wife was the first person to notice a change in him after he began the training, a change he attributes to his ability to understand and relate to the views and opinions of his wife, something he was not as sensitive to before.

The group was very apprehensive in the beginning to talk about the various kinds of physical, social, and emotional changes in adolescents, but trust building with the adolescents paved the way for conversations. Fakat remembers the first time he organized a group discussion and the doubts he had about how to approach the students. He would go to the school, seek permission from the teacher to talk to a small group of boys about a radio program and give them just enough information so that no objection was met.

When the discussion began, the boys bit their nails and wondered what the team was up to, but even so there was eventually a willingness to talk about how changes in adolescence affected them. Initial discussions were one-sided with not much sharing. Then a few boys asked, “When will you come next?” Slowly, meaningful interactions started to happen.

After reporter Anuradha Dubey met with a girls group, she said, “The girls told me ‘Please don’t talk about all this. Let us talk about something else.’ I understood and stopped probing further. But once we started to become friends, the girls shared without me asking them to do so.”

Based on what they gathered from community discussions, Fakat and Anuradha are now confident that their work focusing on changes experienced by adolescents was entirely appropriate and much needed.

Continuing with the response received during the series on adolescents, the team plunged a further with a second series, discussing “eve-teasing,” bullying, etc., that falls under the purview of sexual harassment. The goal was to work with the same groups of girls and boys as earlier, and this succeeded to some extent. A few girls stayed and so did the boys.

The response from community members was so overwhelming for both series. Fakat sometimes had to cut calls short. He also observed that the progressive views shared by some community members who called the radio station have the power to inspire many others.

Fakat was reassured when a maulana (religious leader) in the village called him during an episode to show his support toward the series, saying, “Women should be given equal opportunities and respect that they deserve.” Such a response is what the team hopes for in promoting conversations that will lead to a genderjust society. Radio programs bring these conversations into the public domain and encourage families to have these types of conversations in their homes. The new awareness leads to well-informed and meaningful decisions.

(Arti Manchanda Grover is program leader, Communications, with S M Sehgal Foundation)

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These challenges not withstanding, ICTD solutions are slowly changing the lives of rural people. The cell phone penetration rate in rural areas is still low but steadily rising (see chart on right). We are observing an increasingly visible impact of mobile technology on rural people’s lives. In District Mewat, Haryana, cell phones have become key in obtaining timely information inexpensively. The villagers are listening to their community radio Alfaz-e-Mewat FM 107.8 through their cell phones. In Tamil Nadu, SMS, voice and General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) alerts are helping farmers save their crops from upcoming bad weather.

Innovative, low-cost computers and tablet pc can further accelerate rural development. The i-state tablet is a solar-powered tablet (micro computers) requiring minimum electricity. 50,000 students in rural Andhra Pradesh are expecting to test this tablet thanks to an initiative by Rice University, US, and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.[4] There are many more examples of technologies improving the lives of people across rural India. Let’s see how these innovations will change rural lives.