Rural Awareness Campaign

Communication for development (C4D) in rural areas employs the same tools as MNCs but serves different purposes. Rural Communication campaign for awarding people by NGO/Government has to put forward facts before target audiences to appraise them with the Government scheme or value of Sanitation, Education, Health, Gender, and Public Rights. The use of ICT like government department websites in distributing information is limited to English rather than the local language. Searching and cutting parts of data from the website is not easy for villagers using telephone-based connectivity.

Mid-media activities such as street plays, mobile vans, screening of video films, and even Puppet shows are used as a medium of communication in rural areas. Hoarding, Wall paintings & danglers in the local vernacular language also form an important part of the marketing communication strategies. They come at a low cost and the visibility is high, and so is the stickiness. Booklets, Pamphlets, and newsletters can be used in states with high literacy rates like Kerala. Social media such as Community Radio can be beneficial and accelerate the awareness of people. Community halls, Anganwadi centers, Health sub-centers, Schools, Bus-stops, Tea-stalls, dhabas, Dharamsalas (public rest-houses), and Private houses(with permission)are the centers for the campaign.

Motivational messages in Rural Odisha (Renga Village, Koraput District)

Sensitisation Program on NRLM at Bibhutia Village, Surada Block, Ganjam District.

'Ghanta Mrudunga' is the form of art used here for the Information, education, and communication (IEC) campaign. This type of event is helpful in channelizing the information on NRLM through street play sessions. Partner agency has developed IEC material for creating awareness among the public as well as the targeted communities. This event has its drawback. It was organized in interior hamlet but no emphasis was given on the convenient time of women or daily wage laborers etc. The notable absence of the target group in accessing the information on the importance of livelihood shows the approach of the government machinery. I was only monitoring the campaign as it unfolds. The low turnout was a professional failure.

I am still searching for outstanding examples concerning the use of communication to support rural development. Grievance redressal and social audit are good examples of the two-way communication campaign. Against this rural background in Odisha, the question of rural development quickly gives way to a broader, even more, difficult question: Does communication matter for good governance? How can one-way communication enhance good governance, participation, and transparency? How do grassroots democracies evolve, and how do they grow stronger?

Visit for Social Audit of NREGS - 2

What is a social audit? It is better to have an idea of the concept in the first place.  Social_Audit_Report is uploaded to the NREGS website. But almost all of the community seems to be completely unaware of the documentation part. The best part of these meetings is the opportunity to meet office bearers and government officials on the same day.

When the government makes the schedule for a social audit in October, it reviews work done/in progress from April to September. SA was originally scheduled in October, but due to a cyclone, it was completed in December. Advertisements were given in three Oriya newspapers, giving dates and locations of the social audit meeting. Local NGO was invited to attend the meetings, yet no provision of funds was available for community mobilization through local NGOs. This was all done when Gram Rozgar Sevak (GRS) [working personnel for NREGS at the Village level] were on strike. Their online petition is worth a read on the problem faced at the implementation level.

Verification of Documents, grievances submitted, and Issues was tackled in the meeting with sincerity. Whatever issues were raised, action was taken on them.  The normal complaint was the wrong account number given by the beneficiaries of bank accounts. One person complained about having no job card. He later said that he was a migrant and belonged to a well-to-do family. Since this card is one more government paperwork done for free, he was eager to get it in the hope of the anticipated benefits. Ensuring faster wage payment to beneficiaries under MGNREGS is the process lacuna. Payment within 15 15-day deadline is sometimes stretched to a full month, which came into the limelight.

According to the guidelines of MGNREGA, a Gram Sabha is the prime institution of planning and execution of MGNREGA. So much in writing, but activities of Vigilance and Monitoring Committees (VMCs) at the Panchayat level are in hibernation all over Odisha. NREGS works for purposes like common grazing and livelihood, which are not taken much into consideration. NREGS website is great. But even the BPL (as per the 1997 census in Odisha) doesn't seem to be properly fed in that. I have highlighted with a red circle in the picture above and brought it to the notice of the concerned authority.

There is no convergence that the household has taken advantage of, such as the scheme like IAY/RSBY of the government.  Even demand generation suffers due to a lack of initiative in the community. As per government officials, not much work can be generated if a lot has already been done in previous years. There is a limit of demand that can be achieved under the guidelines of NREGS. The demand scheme has been converted into a target scheme by the officers under pressure from the government to show numbers.  That was the most important lesson that came out of this exercise.

Social Audit has merely been reduced to an exercise for checking numbers, as few people complained about the quality of work, and let the accountable pay for corruption. Even mighty monitoring tools like social audits can become grievance redress mechanisms only in the hands of the dull community. The social audit may have helped in awareness generation, but a lot of work needs to be done for community engagement.

Visit for Social Audit of NREGS

NREGA funds are used for natural resource management activities by generating wage employment for the poor as well as strengthening their livelihood resource base. I will ask readers to go through these two articles :[ Rural job scheme: Can we get it right? and NREGA social Audit: Myths and Reality ] on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) before going forward.

There is a social audit of MNREGS going on in Balangir district from 22-10-2013 to 26-10-2013. I attended three such meetings as an observer only. I attended social audit at Kutenpali, Jharmunda and Kandajuri Gram Panchayat of Loisingha Block. Loisingha Block consist of 18 G.Ps with 108 Villages and is 22 km away from district headquarter. The officers, Sarpanch and GRS were present for the meeting on time. Yet, there was lack of people attending the meeting held at Panchayat Bhavan. The registered person data is taken from NREGA website for the financial year 2013-2014. I have given distance from Block Office to show their remote locality.

G.P.	Distance from Block Office	Registered				In Meeting
		Household	Persons	Male	Female	Total	Male	Female
Kutenpali	7 Km	674	1899	1076	823	40	40	0
Jharmunda	12 Km	661	1686	983	703	0	0	0
Kandajuri	15 Km	457	1075	596	479	7	7	0

Key Findings -

1. People were keeping themselves busy in a game of cards, but were unaffected by any meeting. This attitude of the local people was fatal to their own development. Hence, all the blame for the failure of the government scheme can't be solely put on the state. The lack of participation of the local population was making the whole event a flop show.

2. GP with 40 people was considered a success by the lock office. It was later told that such low attendance of 5-10 people without any local NGO participation is prevalent in another block of Balangir district. With the support of a community-based organization, the number of participants can rise up to 80-100.

3. There was a notice attached to the Panchayat office, but no meetings were held on the importance of social audit. Adding to this limited communication, an effective strategy of rural communication through the voice was also utterly discarded by the government. Neither the NGO nor any community organization was used for mobilizing the public.

4. Land development through an individual project is an equally good option with a community project in a remote location. Due to hilly terrain and poor connectivity, there is greater participation in NREGS in backward GPs. Most of the people working as labour in NREGS are tribal and BPL cardholders.

5. The Gram Panchayat must own the data it collects; Information is a basic tool for planning. Information relevant to each area, like population, Infrastructure, and natural resources database, is rarely available for use. Even though NREGA data is available on the internet, it is not available to the common man in the village. Virtual transparency may give temporary relief to the government officials, whereas the reality is that villagers have to meander through a cobweb of data to search and find what they are looking for.

6. Surplus labor used in NREGS can generate productive assets that can be eco-friendly in nature. The asset base of the poor, both individual (for example, Land leveling, reclamation of soil, bunding, constructing small ponds) as well as collective assets (for example, regeneration of common lands, water harvesting structures, group irrigation facilities, etc) can be strengthened through this scheme. Migration of unskilled labor can't be stopped for virtually 30-40 days of work.

In NREGA, government officials and PRI members had used fraud measures like “creating fake muster rolls, inflated bills, exaggerated measurements, and non-existent works, all through bribes and cuts from wage seekers" to make money. What is needed of us is a social audit, the best tool we have for monitoring, using community participation to curb such fraud activities. Development from design is not primarily about selecting the right people for the job. It is about setting the right processes, standards, and procedures, followed by continuous adherence to them. I will end with the words of Omnia Marzouk, President, IofC International: 'Nothing lasting can be built without a desire by people to live differently and exemplify the changes they want to see in society.'