folk media and development communicationfrom-unreal-to-real.com/communication-articles/folk media...
TRANSCRIPT
1
FOLK MEDIA AND DEVELOPMENT
COMMUNICATION
..........................
MYTHS AND REALITIES
A Report on Experiences in People's Communication i n Mexico,
India and the Philippines
by
NEVILLE JAYAWEERA
In collaboration with
David Briddell, Ricardo Avilez, Augustine Loorthusa my, Sarah
Mathews, Sanjib Sarcar and Felix Sugirthiraj
A Joint Publication of the Asian Social Institute, Manila, and the
ISPCK, Delhi, in cooperation with the World Associa tion for
Christian Communication
Copyright 1991
Asian Social Institute, Manila, and the Indian Soci ety for Promoting
Christian Knowledge, Delhi
2
Printed in the Philippines by the Asian Social Inst itute Printing
Press 1518 Leon Guinto Street Malate, Manila
Translated into Sinhala by Prof Tissa Kariyawasam o f the
Jayewardenepura University - Sri Lanka
.
CONTENTS
Introduction 7
Chapter 1. Background 10
Chapter 2. Assumptions and Methodology 13
Chapter 3. The Mexico Experiences 18
The Barley Growers of Tlaxcala Fight Back
Oaxaca Peasants Organize Themselves
Searching for Drinking Water in Michoacán
The Slum-dwellers of Carmen Serdan Struggle for
Emancipation
Observations on the Mexican Experiences as a Whole
Chapter 4. The West Bengal Experiences: 32
The Abyss of Poverty in Puruliya and Thagram
Some Reflections on the West Bengal Experiences
Chapter 5. The Tamil Nadu Experiences: 39
The Dalits - from Despair to Hope
The Lessons of the Tamil Nadu Experiences
Chapter 6 . The Manila Experience: 53
3
Fisher folk Fight for their Rights
Benefits of the Manila Experience
Chapter 7. What We Learned 62
Selected Bibliography 68
Appendix 1 How Drama Productions Tackle
People's Issues 70
Appendix II Social Action Through
Sound slide Production 77
End notes 91
INTRODUCTION
This book records and interprets, in a narrative form, how groups of
villagers and fisher folk in Manila (Philippines) in West Bengal and
Tamil Nadu (India) and in the States of Tlaxcala, O axaca and
Michoacán and in a suburb of Mexico City (all in Me xico) tried to bring
about social change through what one may call "people's
communication".
"People's communication" is a mode of communication which depends
for its efficacy on people's energies rather than on technology. Generally,
people's communication has the following characteristics:
• Its main impetus comes from a heightened social awareness and an
overriding desire to obtain release from some form of socio-economic
oppression.
4
• This heightened social awareness is sustained by an ideological
interpretation of the problem.
• While it does not altogether eschew technology-based
communication, its reliance on technology is marginally confined to what
the people themselves can own and use.
• It relies heavily on communication modes that are rooted in the local
culture, such as song, dance and drama.
• The emphasis is on "people" rather than on "communication". That is
to say, "people" must always stay in command of communication, not
"professionals" or "technicians" or "experts".
• The criteria of what is "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong" in
communication is generated by the people themselves and not by
professional communicators. In fact, there is no "professionalism" in
communication, understood as a body of standards that has been
constructed and pre-determined elsewhere. Criteria are, therefore,
subjective and phenomenological rather than objective.
• The dominant criterion is "does communication bring about the
liberation and enhancement of oppressed people?" If it does, good
communication is deemed to have occurred. If it does not,
communication is not necessarily considered "bad" though it is deemed
not to have occurred! "Communication" and "liberation" are, therefore,
synonymous and the proposition that communication must produce
liberation, a tautology.
• As a corollary, people's communication must result in the
strengthening of "community" and communality, and in the erosion of
"individualism".
• Regardless of ideology, people's communication is generally the
spontaneous response of people who are marginalized by oppressive
5
systems, and is inconsistent with the perpetuation of oppression as an
acceptable socio-economic formation.
The experiences recorded in this book occurred between 1982 and 1986
in different locations, widely differentiated by geography, history and
culture-in the Philippines, in North and South India and in four
different states of Mexico.
A team moderated by David Briddell recorded the experiences. Briddell
chaired the team's meetings when it met once a year to look at overall
policy. Ricardo Avilez worked with the villagers of the different locations
in Mexico. Augustine Loorthusamy was involved in the activities of the
fishermen of Manila. Sarah Mathews and Felix Sugirthiraj worked
among the Harijans or untouchables of Tamil Nadu, and Sanjib Sarcar
worked among the villages of West Bengal.
Neville Jayaweera was responsible for the overall design of the project,
for the ongoing month-by-month operational coordination of the whole
programme, for collating the individual reports and for writing the final
report.
The team members were not mere passive "researchers". They did
not go out to the villages as disinterested observe rs, bent merely
on observing what others did. They were activists. That is to say,
they shared, and identified themselves with the pro blems the
people had to confront and worked alongside them to solve them.
The team's choice of methodologies was influenced b y the nature
of their relationships with the people. The team shared with the
people a commitment to change the people's social a nd economic
6
environment. To that extent their emotions, hopes and aspirations,
their successes and failures, were those of the tea m as well.
The team did not bring into existence any of the groups identified in this
book. Neither did the team manipulate the groups for purposes of study
and observation. All these groups pre-existed the team's involvement.
Overall, the team learned much more from these experiences than they
ever contributed towards them. The lessons the team members brought
away with them have helped them in no small way to look critically at their
own policies and systems and remould them in a fresh light.
The six-year global programme was a major benchmark in the evolution
of the policies of the World Association for Christian Communication
(WACC), which sponsored and financed the entire programme. The
seminal idea to launch this programme came from the WACC's former
General Secretary H.W. Florin who, having set it in motion, could not
stay on to see its completion.
Thanks go to scores of individuals and institutions who helped the team
along the way. Among them are Don Roper, who coordinated the
programme in its initial stages, the late Dr. Chandran Devanesan , one
time vice-chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who was a leading
light during the first two years, and Dr. Sarah Breimer, who worked as a
colleague in the WACC for the four year duration of the programme.
Thanks are also due to Dr. Mina Ramirez , the president of the Asian
Social Institute, and Fonz Deza, also of the same Institute. Shelton
Gunaratne of , who edited the manuscript with great care and devotion -
many thanks to him.
7
Above all, the team owes thanks to the hundreds of unnamed
peasants and fishermen whose names are never likely to appear in
print. Their leadership, wisdom and commitment cons tituted the
foundation and substance of this book.
The team dedicates the book to those unnamed peasan ts and
fishermen of Mexico, India and the Philippines.
Chapter One
THE BACKGROUND
Three factors contributed towards the launching of this
programme.
1. The failure of mass media to achieve desired social change . For
more than a decade and a half, the WACC relied on mass media for
achieving social change. The '50s and the '60s were the heyday of faith
in mass media. Mass media were in fashion. Prompted by a coherent
body of academic thinking in the U.S. around that time, most Third World
governments believed that the quickest way to create an environment
conducive to development was to invest heavily in mass media,
particularly in radio.
By the mid-'7Os, faith in the effectiveness of mass media had declined
sharply, especially among Third World practitioners and theorists. Far
8
from helping Third World governments to realize their development
goals, excessive reliance on mass media had, in fact, generated
consumerism and a new individualism which, in turn, had stimulated
demand to a degree that was beyond the capacity of the economy to
absorb. The drifts to the cities had increased, sprawling slums had
added to the burden of Third World welfare programmes and local
industries had lost their markets through unequal competition from
imported products as advertised on the mass media. The drift to the
cities by armies of rural unemployed searching for the good life
advertised in the mass media, and the failure of the economy to meet
their expectations, brought in their wake deep frustrations which, in turn,
produced social upheavals, insurrections and terrorism. To cope with
these violent manifestations, governments had to divert scarce
resources from agriculture, industry, education and welfare to massive
militarization programmes. In turn, militarization led to the weakening of
the civilian administration, the eventual seizure of power by the military
juntas, and the increasing brutalization of civil society. The new military
regimes, in turn, backed up their military muscle with increased control
over the mass media to strengthen their hold on the people.
Thereby, a vicious cycle was set in motion. Reliance on mass media led
to discontentment, social upheaval and militarization. And militarization
in rum led to a further strengthening and dependence on the mass
media.(1)
2. The Weight of the Findings of Critical Research . The findings of
critical research carried out in the '60s, particul arly in Latin
American countries, were heavily biased against con tinued faith in
9
mass media. Reliance on the mass media for achieving social change
had grown out of a tradition of positivistic research pioneered by Harold
Lasswell, Paul Lazarsfeld, Daniel Lemer, Lucian Pye and Wilbur
Schramm. This tradition had stressed the cognitive factors, e.g.,
individual attitudes and values, as central to the problem of
development. They had argued that for development to take place Third
World people should change their perceptions of the world. They did not
say that attitude change was sufficient, but emphasized it as both
necessary and primary.
On the other hand, two decades of trying to change attitudes and values
had convinced the Third World countries that no amount of attitudinal
change could produce development, unless fundamental structural
changes were also undertaken simultaneously, both nationally and
internationally. Research carried out by a few Latin American scholars
reinforced this perception. Romero Beltran, S.R. Parra, G.D. Cuellar,
J. Gutierrez and Diaz Bordenave seriously undermined the
"modernization" and "diffusionist" models proposed by US
scholars.0*
3. WACC's Own Research Experiences in India . Responding to the
growing disquiet among Third World communication thinkers over the
irrelevance of the paradigm proposed by US scholars in the '50s (which
had, in the course of two decades, become the dominant paradigm), the
WACC itself decided to test the water, and launched a major research
project in India.
The project, designed by Prof. James Halloran of the University of
Leicester , was executed by a team headed by Paul Hartman of
10
Leicester. B.R. Patil and Anita Dighe of the Council for Social
Development of Delhi comprised the rest of the team.
This research effort lasted four years. Its central concern was to
determine to what extent and in what ways mass medi a produced
social change. The findings generally confirmed the view that mass
media did not produce the kind of social change tha t Third World
countries were seeking and that interpersonal commu nication was
far more important in this respect than mass media. They
emphasized that attention to the "local situation" was far more
important than disseminating information from centr alized mass
media .(4)
It was to this "local situation" that the WACC then turned. It became
clear that it was not possible to achieve desirable social change in the
Third World by treating people as if they were isolated objects, living
outside a social context. It also became clear that development
communication could not occur without taking into consideration the
culture of the local people and the socioeconomic structures within
which they had to live. It was evident from research carried out in Latin
America and India that mass media tended to consolidate existing
structures of inequality and further polarize societies.(5)
Thus the WACC had to consider the alternatives to m ass media
technology and the modalities under which social ch ange can
occur most widely.
This was the background to WACC's involvement in th e "people's
communication" programme. The programme was not a r esearch
11
project in the usual sense of the term. It was esse ntially an action-
oriented programme, geared to achieving certain sta ted social
goals. The WACC team wanted to see for themselves, at firs t hand,
how masses of ordinary people, who had no access to mass media
or competence in the handling of technology, set ab out achieving
their goals .
Chapter Two
ASSUMPTIONS & METHODOLOGY
The programme rested on a cluster of assumptions ra ther than on
a single overarching hypothesis. Stated briefly, th ese assumptions
were:
Firstly , that in certain Third World societies, there still exist modes of
communication that are capable of producing social change on a scale,
and at a pace, different from those associated with the mass media.
Secondly, that these modes of communication are:
• indigenous
• low cost
• accessible to people
• capable of being managed by them
• participatory
• capable of influencing consciousness and raising awareness
12
• using minimum and appropriate technology, and
• producing change that is self-generated or endogenous rather than
externally directed or exogenous.
Choice of a Methodology
At the outset the team decided that the programme was not going to be
a conventional research undertaking, where the researchers set out to
observe, analyze and generalize about a reality which existed outside.
They confronted two broad epistemological models, subsequently
reduced, by Yvonne S. Lincoln and Egon G. Guba to two antagonistic
paradigms: the "positivist'' and the "naturalist", summarized as
follows:
Positivist Paradigm
1. Reality is an aggregate that is tangible and frag-men table.2.
Knower and known are independent entities (dualism).
3. Generalizations are universal. They are time and context free,
4. All events have causes which precede or occur simulta¬neously
with them.
5. Inquiry is value free.
Naturalist Paradigm
1. Realities are multiple, constructed and holistic.
2. Knower and known are interactive and inseparable (monism).
3. Generalizations are time and context bound. They lack universality
and are
13
only working hypotheses.
4. All entities are in a state of simultaneous transformation, so that it
is impossible to distinguish cause from effect.
5. Inquiry is value bound.
The team chose the "naturalist" paradigm . And this had far
reaching implications for our methodology, which had the following
characteristics:
•The local context was all-important. Team members carried out their
observations within the total context of interaction, involvement and
struggle.
•Team members were not passive observers. They were more than
participant observers. They identified themselves fully with the
community when problems had a claim on their attention. This involved
an active sharing in their struggles.
•They accepted tacit or intuitive knowledge as legitimate, not only
conventional prepositional knowledge.
•They allowed a theory to emerge from the data rather than imposing
an a priori theory on the multiple realities they encountered.
•They adopted the case-study reporting mode in preference to the
"scientific- or the technical mode.
The team went beyond the participant observation mode which seemed
to place reality too far outside themselves. A reality outside themselves
was not only epistemologically but also morally, untenable. They wanted
to become a part of that reality, not merely participants in observing it.
They wanted to change that reality. They were engaged actively with the
groups, trying to achieve common goals. They shared the group's
hopes, successes and frustrations. They did not pretend to maintain
14
their "objectivity" or their "academic detachment" in relation to their
goals and purposes. They identified themselves with the group. They
made the process of obtaining knowledge and uncovering general laws
governing social reality subservient to the primary objective of changing
it.
Goals of the Programme
Stated in concrete terms, the team's objectives were:
1. To identify groups or small communities who were striving to
overcome the social, economic and political barriers to obtain a decent
life.
2. To involve themselves with the groups in their struggles.
3. To learn through that involvement how the groups use the
available communication tools (of whatever shape or form) to achieve
their objectives.
4. To arrive thereby at a new understanding of communication and of
the relationship of communication to social change.
Choice of Groups
The following criteria guided the selection of the groups:
•The group should have been actively engaged in trying to solve
some social or economic problems that confronted the people, prior to a
team member's arrival on the scene.
•The principal actors had to be the people themselves. They had to
define their problems, devise strategies for solving them and carry out
their own observations and rethinking.
•The communication tools employed by them had to be mostly of
indigenous origin and manifest a strong cultural quality. Wherever they
used modern technology, they had to remain in control of it.
15
•The interaction or participating mode had to be manifest as their
dominant style.
The team members had to take great care to ensure t hat they did
not assume a leadership role. There was the risk of the team
members assuming that they were more "educated" because they had
more "information" at their disposal, and were backed by the "funds"
available to them through their Institutions. They were conscious of the
need to keep a low profile. While they recognized theoretically that social
change was invariably either set in motion or at least speeded up by
catalytic influences, they were very careful to ensure that they did not
assume a catalytic role.
Applying the aforementioned criteria, the team sele cted four broad
areas for involvement: Mexico, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu in
India, and Manila in the Philippines.
What follows is a narrative account of the team members' experiences in
these areas. This report refrains from mentioning the names of many
individuals for reasons of personal security. In many places, individuals
who found themselves in leadership roles often risked exposure either to
the state security apparatus or to the power of the dominant elites.
Definition of Terms
At this point, it is useful to set out clearly the meanings attached to
words used in this book.
Community: refers to the local group with whom team members
worked. It occupied a local space within a defined physical area.
Popular : means belonging to, or springing from, the people and,
therefore known and acceptable to them.
16
Development: an Inclusive socio-economic- political process involving
qualitative and structural change, resulting in the improvement of the
quality of life of the community as a whole.
Culture: the totality of human expressions and manifestation of a
community, both material and non-material, which enjoys a certain
permanence and has been or can be transmitted from one generation to
another. It includes paintings, music, architecture and sculpture,
religious beliefs and practices, dress habits and life styles, values and
attitudes; forms of government, and all the tools and artifacts that human
beings construct for various purposes.
Communication: an interactive process through which persons or
groups relate to each other and share Information, experiences and
culture. Communication is deemed not to have taken place in a one-way
transmission situation or where there has been an inordinate dominance
to the detriment of sharing.
Traditional Communication: communication modes that have their
origin in predominantly agricultural or rural societies, relatively
independent of modem technologies, and adopt local cultural forms for
their expression.
People's Communication or Popular Communication:
communication systems or forms that are put together by local groups in
the course of their struggles to achieve a fuller life. An essential element
of such systems is that the local people are constantly in control of them.
Such communication systems may combine traditional forms and
modem technology-based communication tools, but the people remain in
control of them.
Chapter Three
17
THE MEXICO EXPERIENCES
The experiences in Mexico cantered on three peasant communities in
three states, and on one slum settlement in Mexico City. Ricardo
Avilez, a Mexican , and a group put together by him made up the team
working among these communities.
The three peasant communities were situated in:
The state of Tlaxcala 1,150 sq.m. in extent and situated to the
Southeast of Mexico.
The state of Oaxaca . 36,000 sq.m. in extent and situated on the South
west coast of Mexico, bordering the Pacific.
The State of Mlchoacan 23,000 sq.m., in extent and situated in the
central zone.
Carmen Serdan suburb in Mexico City, a slum settlement comprising
some 2,000 families and about 10,000 people.
The state of Tlaxcala - The Barley Growers of Fight Back -
Tlaxcala is a predominantly agricultural region with a population of more
than 500,000 people.
The Problem. The focus of concern was the oppression of the barley
growers (small holding peasant communities) by a monopoly barley
corporation named 1ASA in the Altiplano region of Tlaxcala. lASA's
managing director, told the barley growers, "You have to accept your
role in life, and yours Is to work. Each one has his function in society,
and yours is to produce barley and to resign yourselves to that role."
This statement summed up the problem.
18
The problem of the 20,000 barley growers was two-fold. On the one
hand, with a growing population, their land was getting increasingly
fragmented and atomized, resulting in boundary disputes and inefficient
land use. On the other hand, four brewery companies to whom the
barley producers sold their produce had decided to form a single
organization to eliminate competition among themselves. They were
then able to fix the prices, and the producers had no option but to sell at
the buyers' price.
There was nothing unusual about this. It was the classic problem of
smallholding farmers all over the world, particularly of those who
cultivate cash crops and depend on the middleman and the monopoly
purchaser for their market. In the absence of intervention by the
government, the smallholder is entirely at the mercy of those who are
able to control the market. Consequently, the producer received rock
bottom prices for his produce, whether or not prices rose sharply, the
middleman and the monopoly purchaser siphoned off the surplus, and
the producer was left perpetually caught in the poverty trap.
Smallholding farmers who are forced into total dependence on a single
purchaser dared not antagonize their patron. For it was to their patron
that they had to come for small loans and temporary cash
accommodations so the oppressed came to depend for their very
survival on their oppressor!
However, a time comes when, driven by the overwhelming injustice of
their predicament, unable to accept any more hardship and having
19
nowhere else to turn to, the smallholding fanners decide to organize
themselves.
The Response. So in Tlaxcala, by 1979, driven to desperation by their
poverty and by their lack of bargaining power, the barley growers began
to organize themselves.
As often happens, the initial impetus came from outside. In April 1979, a
group of students from the University of Iberia Americana, who were
doing their masters degree In rural development and who had to live and
work with the barley growers for obtaining their data, developed contacts
and explained to a few enterprising farmers the nature of their
oppression. They persuaded the farmers to organize themselves for
improving their living conditions. The role of the university students
proved crucial. They had set in motion the process of conscientization.
First, the students and a few enterprising peasants took a census of the
barley producers and found that there were, in all, about 35 identifiable
communities of barley growers numbering about 20,000. Next, they were
able to persuade a few farmers within each of these 35 communities to
form themselves into cells within the villages of Tlaxcala. Within these
cells, a process of discussion and analysis got underway. However,
there was still no recognizable organization but only a ground-swell of
educated and focused discontent.
The first target of the new consciousness was the middleman. The
producers saw that the middleman was raking in more than the price
that they got from the buyer, and for doing a job that they could do
themselves. But to replace the middleman the producers had to have an
organization. So they formed a cooperative of barley producers with
20
rights to buy from the producer and sell to the market. The producers
owned the cooperative and shared its profits.
At this stage, the monopoly IASA, seeing that an organized peasantry
was becoming a threat to its own power, refused to negotiate or bargain
with the peasants' cooperative. Normally, individual producers would
have capitulated and sold out to the monopoly. But now they had a
sense of solidarity and they held their ground. The dispute became a
public issue for the first time. The mass media took up the debate. The
peasants' organization grew in numbers and public sympathy veered
round massively to its side.
Sensing the possibility of widespread civil discontent, and desiring to
contain the agitation, the government itself intervened on the side of the
peasants, and compelled IASA to negotiate with the producers'
cooperative. Thereafter, prices continued to be fixed through direct
negotiation between the monopoly and the producers without the
intervention of a middleman.
Two consequences followed immediately. First, through the elimination
of the middleman and as a result of being able to negotiate from a
position of power, the producers were able to increase their income by
almost 100 percent. Second, the producers were able to acquire the
sophistication and the market knowhow to bargain in the open market,
bypassing even the monopoly. This has served to tame the monopoly
and compel it to pay the cooperative's more realistic, if not fair, prices.
The Communication Component . The fundamental changes in the
power relationship between pauperized peasants, on the one hand, and
21
a powerful monopoly on the other, was brought about primarily through a
process of communication.
The communication strategy used for achieving this major shift in
power relationships had the following characteristi cs.
No one, at any stage, sat down and reflected on the concept of
"communication" or asked questions such as "How do we
communicate?'" or "what" or "to whom" do we communicate?
Communication was not an adjunct grafted on to the programme.
Perception of the reality and action to change that reality were
fundamental. Communication was the process of altering both the
perception and the reality. Communication meant mor e than the
tools of communication, more than the media or the technology or
the content or any of those things that are usually subsumed under
that term. Communication in this context meant the whole range of
activities involving educating, analyzing, organizi ng and
negotiating, that underpinned the efforts of the sm all producers to
improve their conditions.
The role of the animateur was crucial to the whole process . In the
absence of the post-graduate students from the University of Iberia
Americana who were pursuing their studies in rural development in the
highland of Tlaxcala state, it was highly unlikely that the barley
producers would have organized themselves.
The base of the communication system was interperso nal, face-to-
face communication. That was the point at which the first stirring of an
altered consciousness occurred. The use of various tools of
22
communication, whether they were newsletters or cartoons or posters or
audio-cassettes was entirely secondary. They were used primarily to
widen or reinforce changes in consciousness that had already occurred,
albeit incipiently, through person-to-person communication.
Once consciousness began to grow in complexity, dif ferent tools
of communication were harnessed. First, they produced pamphlets
with crude drawings; then, occasional newsletters and bulletins; and
finally, audio-cassettes which they duplicated and distributed widely.
They had no pre-determined views or inhibitions about the use of any
particular communication technology, either on grounds of culture or
ideology, provided the communication tools were within their capacity to
purchase, maintain and control.
Oaxaca Peasants Organize Themselves .
Oaxaca has a population of more than 2 million. In this state, the team's
involvement was limited to the isthmus of Tehvantepec . As in most of
the Third World, more than 70 percent of its population live in rural
areas. The majority of these people are Indigenous to Mexico, and 80
percent belong to the ethnic group called Zapotecas.
The Problem. Before the arrival of the Europeans, the people owned
the land communally. But, progressively, the newcomers took over the
23
lands, evicting the indigenous people and crowding them into small
villages.
As the villages became overcrowded, the displaced peasants drifted into
cities where they became victims to drug use, alcoholism and crime.
Those who stayed behind lived by subsistence agriculture, cultivating
maize, wheat and chilli. But their agriculture and land use patterns were
quite primitive and the income from these sources was not adequate for
sustaining life. Therefore, they had to look for other sources of income.
They earned supplementary income working as agricultural labourers on
the large estates of the newcomers. Their wages were abysmally low,
and their living conditions deteriorated.
The problem was twofold . First, they had a feeling of apathy and
despair but they did not know what the problem was. Second, they had
no organizational instruments whatsoever.
The Response . As in Tlaxcala, the response began with a group of
animateurs. In early 1981, a dedicated group of church workers, priests
as well as lay people, moved in. Deeply committed, they worked from an
ideological and spiritual impetus.
But they did nothing for a year, except buy some plots of land, settle
down among the peasants, and cultivate the land along with them. They
shared their lifestyle, joined their social round, and participated in their
sports activities.
24
The first to take notice of them were the local youth. They put the
football matches to good use for starting discussions and for sharing
information.
The peasants took the first positive steps when they formed a council.
The number of cells multiplied and soon they had a network. They
collected money and invested it in slide projectors. They organized slide
shows in various villages to show how villagers in neighbouring regions
lived. This gave rise to awareness that the problem they faced was not
peculiar to a family, or to a neighbourhood, but was widespread and
affected a whole social class.
Then they got down to analyzing their problem - its origins, its structural
mechanisms, its consequences, and what they could do to solve it.
At this stage the church came in and began to support the emerging
umbrella peasants' organization that had been set up with government
recognition. When both government and church gave the organization
legitimacy, they acquired the power they needed to act.
The results were spectacular. Several other peasants’ organizations
sprang up. The producers formed cooperatives and eliminated the
middleman. Prices paid to producers rose sharply and almost every
peasant household became a member of one of the peasant
organizations. In the course of five to six years, an apathetic and
disconsolate peasant community transformed itself into a self-
respecting, politically conscious and action-oriented social force.
25
Communication Component. As in Tlaxcala, the catalyst was a group
of dedicated animateurs - not money, not technology, but people fired
by a vision.
Again, as in Tlaxcala, consciousness raising through interpersonal
communication and institution building, preceded the application of
technology.
Every available form of communication was ultimately pressed into
service-slide projections, cassettes, newsletters, bulletins and mass
media.
A significant innovation was the harnessing of the church and of the
Eucharistic Celebration-normally conservative forces-for progress.
Another innovation was the use of sport-the football encounter-which
was, next to the Eucharist, the single most powerful factor in the life of
the peasants because it gave an opportunity or platform for
disseminating ideas.
Also, as in Tlaxcala, the people remained steadfastly in control of their
communication tools.
Searching for Drinking Water - in Michoacán
This state, with a population of 2.5 million, is largely a forested area. Its
principal economic activity is forest exploitation and cattle rearing. Forest
exploitation is almost entirely in the hands of foreign entrepreneurs.
Local peasants carry out cattle rearing without modem technology. Their
26
subsistence-scale agriculture did not yield much productivity. Like in
Oaxaca, the peasants are forced to hire themselves out as labourers on
the lumber exploitation centres. Michoacán comprises 18 municipalities.
The WACC team worked in three of these, viz., Uruap an, Parachan
and Charapan.
The Problem. The peasants of these three municipal areas lived under
conditions of poverty that were perhaps the most abject in Mexico. Their
per capita income was less than $100 a year . They grew some maize,
wheat and barley, but purely for subsistence. Their principal source of
income was cattle farming for meat, but their cattle were emaciated and
barely fetched market prices.
Among their many harassing problems was that of drinking water.
During the 1970s, the whole area was subject to a prolonged and severe
drought, the effects of which were highly aggravated by the degradation
of the environment due to the sustained and indiscriminate deforestation
carried out by foreign timber merchants. Erosion of mountain sides, the
silting of rivers, the impairment of precipitation and the drying of wells
had added greatly to the hardships of the villagers. Most adversely
affected were the women, who had to trudge longer and longer
distances merely to collect water for their daily household needs. The
team's involvement in this area was confined to working with the
villagers in solving their problem of drinking water.
The Response . The team's experiences in Michoacán was sharply
dissimilar to those in Tlaxcala and Oaxaca . For one thing, there was
hardly any evidence of willingness on the part of even a few villagers to
take the lead in organizing themselves. Untold decades of living in
27
poverty and degradation had sapped all their vitality and initiative and
rendered them incapable even of responding to initiatives that others
took. Internal rivalry among families and adjacent villages, interminable
boundary disputes and sheer apathy made them totally resistant to any
form of organization. A principal reason for their suspicion of the team's
intention was the latter's suggestion that the community should do
something quickly to ameliorate the conditions of the women who had to
walk several miles a day to collect water merely for cooking purposes.
However, starting around 1981, the team set in motion the same
process as in Tlaxcala and Oaxaca. Because no animateurs emerged
from among the peasants themselves, the team took the initial steps.
The members started talking to a few peasants at random and, after a
period of three years, they succeeded in forming an organization of
about 300 members, mostly pauperized cattle farmers and farm
labourers. The team organized public meetings and marches to
convince the local politicians and the local bureaucrats of the need to
provide drinking water to the villages. As a result, the authorities
supplied pipe-borne water to six isolated communities living in the high
plateau of Meseta Tarasca by constructing small dams across streams.
However, soon after the completion of the water schemes that catered to
less than one percent of the population who needed drinking water, the
organization disintegrated because those whose needs were met
dropped out.
Communication Component. There was a lack of a local initiative. The
only initiative came entirely from the team, an expatriate, alien group.
28
Interpersonal and face-to-face communication took an inordinately long
time to bear fruit, partly due to the language barrier. Although the team
spoke in Spanish, it was the Spanish of the educated elite that bore little
resemblance to the local dialect. The absence of the proper dialect
hampered communication.
The production of pamphlets and newsletters never caught on. For one
thing more than 80 percent of the people was illiterate. Those who could
read did not care.
Lacking vitality and authenticity, communication failed to provide the
peasant organization with the nourishment it needed for survival and
growth. Basically the communication was not theirs, so when the team
withdrew, the peasants' organization dissolved and the villagers returned
to their life of apathy and dependence, with only six small pipe-borne
water supply schemes to show for the effort of three years.
The Slum Dwellers of Carmen Serdan - Struggle for Emancipation .
Carmen Serdan, a suburb of Mexico City, is, in fact , a slum
settlement. It came into existence in 1967 when Mexico City's municipal
government expropriated a huge expanse of land that some of the
poorest people of Mexico City had used to obtain clay for brickmaking.
Some of the hundred workers received small plots of land, 50 meters by
50 meters each, in Carmen Serdan. The land, originally allotted to 500
families, was subsequently subdivided to house more than 2,000
families.
29
The Problems. The problems of Carmen Serdan were the same as
those of any slum settlement in the Third World-lack of roads, drinking
water, postal services, telephone facilities, overc rowded and
ramshackle houses without basic toilet facilities o r sanitation, lack
of schools, medical services and opportunities for entertainment
(except the ubiquitous TV), lack of playgrounds or sports facilities
and high rates of unemployment.
By 1977, these conditions had brought into existence a militant
organization, a group of domineering and authoritarian "strong men"
who, in the absence of any government-sponsored civil authority, were
imposing a tyranny of corruption rather than providing leadership to the
people. Under the guise of helping the people, they resolved boundary
disputes arbitrarily on payment of bribes, and they extorted money from
the dwellers on promises of obtaining all sorts of direly needed facilities.
But they rarely fulfilled their promises. They sold off barren plots of land
to hundreds of newcomers thereby adding to the slum conditions. In
reality, they filled the power vacuum created by the government's
inaction.
Therefore, the problem was not merely the absence of the basic
amenities of life and the prevalence of dreadful slum conditions, but also
the imposition from within their own ranks of an authoritarian
organization which greatly added to their burdens.
The Response. The response to this double-tiered problem-the slum
conditions at the base and the superstructure of oppression and tyranny
from within the people themselves-was also two-tiered.
30
But before the people could fight the main enemy (the oppressive
municipal system), they had to combat the enemy within. First they had
to remove the corrupt gangs who were dominating the slums.
As elsewhere, the movement in this direction got underway only after a
handful of youths, in 1981, took the first initiative to develop a
countervailing mobilization. They went from home to home talking with
other youths and formed youth cells.
After they had established a fair degree of mobilization among the
youths horizontally, they began talking to the young women and
mobilizing them in similar groups. All this was done covertly.
Thereafter, the young men and women in each household were given
the responsibility of talking to their parents and other adults to draw them
into the movement. Soon they achieved sufficient strength to come out
into the open.
To cement their institutional or cooperative solidarity, the youth
organization needed to fight some issues. The first issue they took up
was not the internal tyranny exercised by unscrupulous gangs of slum
dwellers. Before they could effectively take on the internal enemy, they
had to demonstrate to the whole community that in the forthcoming
struggle against the internal gangs, they, the youth, were their (the
community's) friends.
To woo the whole community and establish the credibility of their
organization, the youth, who had now decided to call themselves the
"Slum Dwellers Association in Carmen Serdan", took up as their first
battle cry an issue that was agitating all of the slum dwellers: their
31
tenancy and land tenure. This action was in sharp contrast to the work
of the gangs who made money by selling off land to newcomers or by
settling boundary disputes arbitrarily.
Having established their credibility in this way, the youth association felt
strong enough to challenge the power of the gangs. The main line of
attack was to ask the slum dwellers not to patronize them, not to seek
favours or ask for their intervention for settling any of their disputes. This
way, without confronting the gangs head on, the youth association was
able to whittle away their base and their clientele. Apart from that, there
were occasions of sporadic violence whenever the youth confronted the
gangs head on. But the gangs, realizing that the vast majority of the
slum dwellers were now solidly with the youth, backed down.
The youth association then felt free to tackle all the major issues that
confronted their members. For this purpose, they divided themselves
into commissions or departments and set up a secretariat in which the
members worked voluntarily.
Rapidly, they started working simultaneously on a number of related
issues. They got themselves recognized by the Municipal
Administration of Mexico City as a legitimate, repr esentative
institution with rights to negotiate on behalf of t he slum dwellers.
Thereafter, they presented their grievances to the appropriate
government officials. This was often a slow process and rarely produced
quick results. So they backed up their negotiation with sustained
agitational support-public meetings, marches, demonstrations and non-
formal street wall advertising and sloganizing. In this way, by 1985, the
association was able to achieve some remarkable successes.
32
Among their achievements were the regularization of tenure and
the formal recognition of boundaries, the issuing o f legal
documents to cover their tenure, the laying of wate r pipes to
individual homesteads, the provision of educational facilities and
civil amenities such as public lighting, road clean ing services and
opportunities for education and leisure.
Emboldened by their successes between 1981 and 1984, the
association moved further afield. They enlarged their area of operation
to encompass other slum settlements which encircled Mexico City. They
carried their message of organization, mobilization, agitation and
liberation to 10 other slum settlements around Mexico City, chief among
which was "Camp October 2". Together they brought into existence a
federation of slum dwellers' associations and calle d it the Union of
People's Suburbs.
In the course of working alongside the Association of Slum
Dwellers of Carmen Serdan between 1981 and 1984, th e team saw
the most astonishing transformations wrought not on ly in the
physical environment, such as would not have been p ossible
through ordinary governmental action for decades, b ut also in the
consciousness of the people, such as might have tak en several
generations to achieve. An apathetic, wretched and viciously
quarrelsome collection of individuals evolved in th e course of a few
years into an energetic, self-respecting and united community. A
physical environment which was almost totally beref t of any
facilities which one may call modem or civilized tr ansformed itself
into a reasonably provided, decent urban neighbourh ood.
33
What was the secret of these transformations?
The Communication Component. In one word, the secret of this
amazing transformation was "communication". But
"communication" here means something much broader t han the
instruments of communication or the message or the relationship
of the sender to the receiver. Here, communication means the
whole ambience within which this drama was enacted, a whole
network of relationships comprising people, ideas, institutions and
technologies which is difficult to reduce to any on e of its
constituent elements without seriously distorting t he truth.
The most visible elements of the "communication" phenomenon were
the following:
• As in Tlaxcala and Oaxaca, the role of the animateur was
fundamental, a sine qua non. And unlike in Michoacán, the animateurs
sprang up from within the community itself. In Michoacán, the outside
team tried to do the animation and remained always unauthentic and
alien.
• Unlike in Tlaxcala and Oaxaca, the animateurs in Carmen Serdan
were soon able to enthuse such a broad mass of people, that the role of
animation rapidly passed on to the whole community. Animation soon
ceased to be the responsibility or activity only of a few. It became a
mass activity.
• The initial thrust was almost entirely through interpersonal and face-
to-face communication. A mere 10 animateurs visited 1,500 households
within three months. That Is to say, each animateur had to call on one or
34
two households every evening. They would sit and talk. In most
households, before they left, they were able to recruit one or two older
men, young men and women. In this way, within five months they
already had a base of more than 1,000 members.
• Once they had a broad base, they had to ensure that the
membership did not succumb to a few charismatic leaders. Their
ambition was to make the community a totally participatory one. This
called for a uniform level of awareness. The team realized that a wide
divergence in the levels of awareness among a group working to
achieve a common goal could result in those who were more aware, or
who had the "information", exercising power and dominance.
At the very outset, the youth animateurs were keen to ensure that there
was no room for hegemony within a participatory community. They
achieved this by making "ideas" the common property of all through
seminars or workshops.
• The seminar/workshop was, next to face-to-face communication,
fundamental to the communication strategy. These seminars were not
the structured, sophisticated events associated with the word. They did
not include outsiders except the team members. The agenda was
unstructured and open-ended. Likewise, presentations were informal
and, for most of the time, discussions took up more than 90 percent of
the time. It was at these seminars that ideas fermented and intensified,
and became internalized by the participants as their own property.
• The use of communication tools was purely auxiliary. The seminars
used flip charts, flannel graphs, blackboards, audio-cassettes, drawings
and cartoons. But they gave very little attention to the technicalities or to
the question of how to use them expertly. They rarely stopped to reflect
on "technology". They used whatever pieces of technology served them,
35
and were within their capacity to acquire, operate and control. For them,
communication tools had always to remain within the control of the users
and the intended beneficiaries. Those technologies that they could not
control, they did not use.
• However, they used video to very good effect in their campaign to
spread the word to other slum settlements along the periphery of the
city. Mexico City is a conurbation of more than 18 million people. People
who lived on one periphery hardly knew of people who lived at the
opposite end or even of those who lived immediately adjacent to them.
The business of living was so exacting and tiresome that there was
hardly any interest in others or any energy left for any activity besides
survival. In such a situation of isolation, fragmentation and apathy were
inevitable.
The problem the Carmen Serdan Association faced was how to tell the
others that it was possible to lift themselves up, that it was possible to
break their shackles and ameliorate their conditions.
It was for this purpose that they used video very innovatively. They
filmed their own conditions of living, the proceedings of their discussions
and seminars, and took the tapes across to other slum settlements for
screening. There they filmed their conditions of living and brought them
back to their own community. Within one year, in this manner, there
came into existence a new community of people who for decades had
lived under the same privations but who knew little or nothing of each
other's existence. They now came together in a relationship of solidarity
and common suffering. They were able to share their experiences and
thereby speed up the process of learning. Each slum settlement did not
have to re-invent the wheel or repeat the mistakes of others.
36
• As the movement spread and solidarity grew, the association
started bringing out newsletters, cartoons and a whole range of
educational pamphlets explaining strategies and policies to share
experiences. Slum dwellers themselves wrote all of this literature on
cheap rough paper, and they did not have the character of glossy
magazines produced by advertising companies. They were authentic
and credible-elements essential for effective communication.
• Contrary to popular belief about the strategy of "conscientization"
in Latin American societies, the communication efforts of the Carmen
Serdan Association were remarkably free of theoretical jargon and
slogans. They explained in the ordinary language of the people, in
concrete terms, without recourse to theory or concepts, the nature of
their problem and the possibilities of solving them. They did not discuss
or inculcate ideology, although the animateurs themselves were well
read in Marxist revolutionary theory.
Overall observations on the Mexican experiences
It is pertinent here to record some general observations about the
Mexican experiences as a whole.
1. The team did not encounter in Mexico, at least among the groups
with whom they worked, traditional forms of communication comparable
to those in India. That is to say, the use of dance, drama, music and
song as vehicles of communication was hardly in evidence. That is not
to say that the indigenous Indian people, who comprised 90 percent of
the communities of Tlaxcala, Oaxaca and Michoacan, were totally
lacking In these cultural forms. But they had certainly not developed a
37
level of sophistication to serve as vehicles of communication with a
visible social consequence.
2. The lesson from the team's Mexican experiences was that one
should not understand communication as "media", "content" or even as
the totality of the elements that are normally said to contribute to the
communication process. Communication is a total social process
involving organizational work, struggle, interperso nal and face-to-
face exchanges, and all types of media, leading eve ntually to the
transformation of consciousness.
3. The end of communication, as the team perceived, was the
liberation of people from poverty, oppression and limitation. Where
communication failed to produce socio-economic transformation and
major structural changes, they deemed that communication had not
occurred.
4. The role of the animateur was crucial . In almost all instances, it
was the committed animateur who set the process in motion. It was
evident that, left entirely to themselves, all of the communities in
question would have continued to wallow in apathy. In most instances,
even the intrusion of the animateur initially caused resentment among
the people because it disturbed their apathy and confronted them with
realities they would much rather ignore.
However, there was an important rider to the role of the animateur. The
animateur had to be someone from within the community or close to it.
In the absence of such a person or persons, an outside animateur, even
though Mexican in origin and culture, failed to achieve results. Even
though an animateur had to come from within the community, he/she
could not remain merely a catalyst (a catalyst is a chemical substance
that produces change in its environment without itself undergoing
38
change). In that sense, the animateurs had to be more than catalysts
because in the process of Interaction, of having learned from others,
they had to modify their own positions and show evidence of change
themselves.
5. Effective communication was inseparable from establishing
networks and
building institutions. After the original impetus had worn off, it was the
institution
and the network that guaranteed momentum.
Chapter Four
THE WEST BENGAL EXPERIENCES
The Abyss of Poverty in Puruliya and Thagram
In West Bengal , the team's experiences were of an entirely differen t
order from those in Mexico. While in Mexico (even if only after some
initial work by the animateurs), impoverished people were willing to
confront their problems head on and deliberately and systematically to
develop a consciousness of struggle and militancy, in West Bengal
people sought to cope with their problems in a more gentle way, even
tangentially, but no less effectively.
There are complex historical and sociological reasons that account for
this disparity that this book cannot explore. All it can do is to relate the
39
story of how an ancient people, steeped in tradition and culture,
responded to their experiences of impoverishment, and communicated
and shared that experience among themselves and with the world
outside.
Background. West Bengal, a state within the federation of India, has a
population of more than 54 million people of whom more than 40 million
live in villages. It is divided into several districts, each of which has a
population of several million. The team worked in two of these districts,
Medinapur and Puruliya, which lie about 150 miles to the west and
about 250 miles to the northwest of Calcutta respectively.
In Medinapur, the team worked in a cluster of eight villages in the
subdivision of Jhagram , with a total population of 5,500. In Puruliya,
they worked among a cluster of five villages with a population of 10,200.
The WACC team approached these villages through a group led by
Sanjib Sarcar, head of the Center for Communication and Cultural
Action in Calcutta , a man who has for many years been dedicated to
using local song, dance and drama for social ends. As in the case of
Mexico, the WACC team arrived on the scene long after Sarcar and his
assistants had already gotten involved with the villagers.
The Problem. Stated in simplest terms, the problem in both Jhagram
and Puruliya was social discrimination and grinding poverty.
In Jhagram, out of a population of 5.369 in 1985, 98 percent belonged to
the "low castes"; and in Puruliya, out of a population of 10,204 In 1985,
95 percent were "low caste". In both villages, 91 percent of the people
did not own any land and had to eke out a living by working as
40
agricultural labourers on lands belonging to the Brahmins or the high
caste. In Jhagram, there were only 38 literate people i.e., less than 1
percent; Puruliya had only 238 literates, i.e., less than 3 percent. Neither
village had any regular medical facilities. The only medical attention
available came in the form of a "self-qualified" homeopath who
distributed free medicine. Drinking water was limited to a single well in
each village, both in Jhagram and Puruliya. These single wells were set
apart for exclusive use by the majority "low caste" population. There
were, of course, other wells, but they were for use only by the "high
caste" Brahmins.
Percentage of people owning
Watches Bicycles Sewing Machines Radio
Jhagram 7 50 .08 18
Puruliya 4 21 .07 12
Poverty was so abysmal in these villages that the majority did not have
one full meal a day. The very few who managed to accumulate some
money and move to a higher economic level, rapidly integrated
themselves into the dominant system, so the poor and the marginalized
were constantly without leadership.
The Response. Quite simply, there was no response from within the
villages to this state of abysmal poverty, except quiet resignation and
total apathy. Among the people, there was hardly a stirring of protest,
nor even the most rudimentary awareness of the injustice of their
degradation. The possibility that they could remedy their conditions was
41
not conceivable to them. Thus the team's approach had to be entirely
different from those it adopted elsewhere.
The team selected a few young and middle-aged men. (Women will not
talk with outsiders and are totally subservient; the assumption by them of
any leadership role would be absolutely unthinkable). After long talks,
team members were able to persuade a few selected groups to organize
some traditional song and dance performances which had been a part of
the tradition of the area for centuries.
In Jhagram, they organized an evening of music and song, attended by
some 1,100 people. These took the form of drama, dance and song
Indigenous to Jhagram:
Darma - a tribal drama performed by Santal tribesmen.
Karam - a ritual of worship of the deity Karam.
Panta - a collective dance based on Karam.
Jawa - songs accompanied by dances, also associated with Karam.
Tusu - collective songs related to the worship of the deity Tusu.
Bhuaug - a group dance of the Santal tribe.
Jhumur - collective songs.
Garpa - collective dance by Santal tribe.
The evening made use of all these forms.
A characteristic of these cultural forms is that they are, which enables
the incorporation of whatever message the organises may choose.
Generally, whenever they had been used in the past for articulating any
social message, the message had been limited to imploring the gods to
deliver the people from their misery. The team tried to amplify and
42
broaden this message to suggest that people themselves could remedy
the problems they faced.
Before the evening's entertainment commenced, a local animateur
spoke to the gathering about the problem that the villagers had to face
and explained the nature and evils of the social system. He explained
how the people could help each other to reflect on their problems.
At the end of the long evening (the performance went on for more than
four hours), it was clear that the people were greatly entertained. The
lyrics were catchy and, for weeks thereafter, people were heard singing
them. But there was no evidence to suggest that, beyond a limited
entertainment value, the evening had made a social impact.
The team organized a similar evening in Puruliya where some 60 artists
participated.
The evening used four cultural forms:
Chou - a very famous dance form using decorated masks and
costumes.
Jawa - songs used in the worship of Karam deity.
Jhumu r - a powerful folk song selected for Chou dance.
Machan - a folk drama using gestures, mime and song as well as
dance.
The process and impact of the Puruliya evening was similar to the one in
Jhagram. The people enjoyed the entertainment and went away
humming the tunes but there was no evidence of any great social
consequence.
43
After these two major events, the team sponsored several similar
cultural evenings in the villages of both Jhagram and Puruliya
districts . Although on a somewhat smaller scale, the strategy and
structures were the same. Before the evenings' proceedings
commenced, the presenters, performers and organizers met and
discussed what problems they should address, in what form, how and to
what audience. Then they improvised and adapted their song or dance
and shaped the content of their presentation. Thereafter, they engaged
themselves in days of vigorous rehearsing to define and develop the
content. The events received wide publicity and, generally, the entire
village attended. The open-air performances lasted five to six hours.
Before the start of the performance, an animateur talked to the audience
and explained the reasons for the presentation. Without attempting to
make a political or propaganda speech, the animateur discussed the
social evils the people suffered and the reasons for their poverty and
degradation. After the hours of songs, dance and drama, all with a social
content, the people gathered for a round of discussion.
Audiences of 1,000 plus were common. They not only enjoyed the
presentations as entertainment but visibly benefited from the discussions
that both preceded and followed them.
In the village of Jambad, in the Puruliya district, one performance went
on throughout the night attended by more than 2,000 villagers. In some
villages, even without the initiative of the animateur, the local villagers
organized their own dance and drama evenings. Some villagers even
banded themselves into groups and started touring the district on foot.
44
However, the enthusiasm for these cultural evenings had more the
quality of a cultural revival than the character of a social movement. The
villagers delighted in the song, dance and drama and were grateful to
the team members for taking the initiative to revive their traditional
cultural forms. But it was not clear whether they had even perceived the
social goals that drove the team's endeavours. No movement got under
way to construct more wells for drinking water. Neither was there any
agitation for better health and education facilities. There certainly wasn't
the slightest evidence of the 92 percent "low caste" majority even
thinking of challenging the supremacy of the miniscule percentage of
high caste people.
The Communication Component . Nothing would have happened
without the few animateurs. However, their motivation was far less
ideological than it was in Mexico. This does not mean that they were
less committed or less hardworking, rather that their motivation came
more from a deep sense of compassion and humanity than from a
structured, theoretical or ideological understanding.
The choice of communication styles, tools and content reflected this
cultural bias. The communication effort was essentially cultural (in its
most limited sense) rather than ideological or organizational, persuasive
rather than militant. They were content to wait a long time for results to
show rather than go for short-term goals.
The cultural forms in which Sarcar and his team were involved belonged
to the folk-art category. They had their origins among the common
people. Consequently, these forms lacked sophistication, were
unstructured, were not bound by rigid rules, were open to adaptation
45
and were not subject to control by a professional class of artists. They
were invariably associated with agricultural events and were addressed
to the folk gods. Generally, they sought the gods' intervention for the
removal of some agricultural or social disability, or they gave the gods
thanks for some favour bestowed upon the community.
The principal forms used were the Karam Panta forms, Tusu and
Jhumur songs and, most famous of all, Chou and Machani dance
forms. They had a high potential for diffusion. These song, dance and
drama performances were never held before small audiences; rather,
they were always organized as festivals to which thousands of villagers
came from all over the district. So the potential for diffusion was high.
Unlike sophisticated dance forms, these folk-art forms had a high degree
of participation in them, and there was no rigid professional artists' class
who kept the "secrets" to themselves. This meant that anyone interested
enough could join in. The potential for adaptation and flexibility gave an
opportunity to many people, besides the performers themselves, to
fashion the content of the presentation. The period of vigorous
rehearsals that followed the preliminary discussion was also highly
participatory.
Unlike many sophisticated dance forms found elsewhere in India, the
folk-art forms used in Jhagram and Puruliya did not originate as
instruments of a dominant Brahmin class. Neither were they used as
instruments of oppression. Even though they might have been
addressed to the gods, and might have tended to make the people
apathetic and dependent, they were, in fact, always fashioned to
articulate the problems of the people. However, it is possible that as long
46
as the grievances were addressed only to the gods and not used as
material for disturbing the prevailing order, the ruling classes were quite
content.
Some Reflections on the West Bengal Experiences
The principal lesson learned in West Bengal was tha t where
poverty was absolute and where the consciousness of the people
had been smothered by centuries of apathy and acqui escence, no
communication device or mode could stir the people to action .
Even to be able to respond to the strongest stimulation, there had to be
some vitality in the people. No evidence of such vitality existed among
the villagers of Jhagram and Puruliya. While this may sound extremely
patronizing and pretentious, this comment is not a judgment on the
people themselves but of the dreadful social oppression under which
they have to live. Centuries of oppression have literally sapped the
vitality of the people to such a degree that they cannot even dream that,
except through the intervention of their gods, they can find release from
their oppression.
There has been much talk lately of the need to use folk
communication as a means of promoting social change . In rural
societies, folk media have, unquestionably, many ad vantages over
mass media: they enjoy greater credibility with the people, the
symbols and forms they employ evoke a deeper resona nce; they
are Inexpensive, easily manageable, more accessible and do not
serve as conduits for alien cultures. All these cla ims were true in
West Bengal. But to go from there to claim that fol k media can
47
serve as a social catalyst is to indulge in a fligh t of romanticism or
escapism from reality. Certainly neither in Jhagram nor in Puruliya
was there any evidence to support such claims.
This is not to deny that folk media may be used in a supportive role
to a movement that has already got under way. Howev er, the sine
qua non has to be that the seminal stirring of cons ciousness
should have already occurred and that this new cons ciousness
should have already come forth as an incipient move ment. Once
other forces have given the impetus, external or in ternal, folk media
may be harnessed to step up the momentum.
Even the use of the animateurs has its limitations. Both in Jhagram and
in Puruliya, animateurs who had their origins in the villages themselves
were involved in the work. But their impact was negligible, except in their
ability to organize the music, dance and drama festivals.
The principal benefit that came out of the attempt to use the folk
media of Jhagram and Puruliya for social purposes w as revival of
folk art itself. Certainly, the revival of dormant folk communication
media, which are fast disappearing under the onslaught of modernism, is
a good thing in itself. Folk culture has a legitimacy of its own and any
contribution towards its revitalization can be a good thing.
Lastly, one may wonder whether in situations such a s those found
in Jhagram and Puruliya (which are certainly no exc eptions in
India), it Is not wiser to fall back on the much-ma ligned radio as a
way of inducing "psychic mobility" and stirring the consciousness
of the people into wanting better conditions of liv ing. The principal
48
problem seems to be that people do not perceive the mselves as
being oppressed or as living under conditions of ab solute
degradation. Thus, there is a need first to lodge i n the minds of
these villagers a different perception of what life should and can
be. It is relevant to mention that the capacity to do precisely that
has been one of the principal criticisms levelled a t radio. In fact, the
criticism against radio has been that it tends to d o this in excess,
so much so that people get so discontented with the ir present lot
and generate such wild expectation that societies, finding
themselves unable to cope with this "revolution of rising
expectations", go into upheaval. However, when one compares the
abject poverty and apathy of Jhagram and Puruliya w ith the
discontentment, the conflict and the violence of so cieties which
have had the benefit of "development communication" , one cannot
be sure which option is preferable.