Information, education and communication (IEC) inputs are today widely recognised as a powerful and effective means of translating the sometimes arcane and complex messages of social interventions for the benefit of a diverse range of target groups. The term is often used synonymously with ICT (for information, communication and technology), though there is a significant difference between the two. ICT inputs are in essence a set of technology backed tools for project managers, governments, donors and the like to deal with large data flows, track monitoring indicators, analyse information etc. IEC inputs, on the other hand, are a more loosely strung together series of creative strategies to evolve an idiom for communication between formal organisations and communities. IEC become relevant and effective wherever the target group of the proposed intervention consists overwhelmingly of poor households, lives in a geographically dispersed area, is remote in terms of physical and other modern forms of communication and is poorly served by social services such as access to education, health, water and sanitation and, above all, information. Some modern communication theorists call this “social marketing”, even “social advertising”. However, we may use a somewhat simpler definition here: IEC inputs can be seen as a language that must be constructed to enable a dialogue between formal organisations, such as a project management unit, and poor communities. This is essential so that not only does the central message of the proposed intervention get across to a diverse group of stakeholders in the community, but also so as to provide a channel for reverse flows of communication from the target group to project managers.

Jharkhand-Chattisgarh Tribal Development Programme (JCTDP)

JCTDP is an eight-year livelihood improvement and empowerment programme targeted at resource poor rural households in 9 largely tribal blocks of the districts of Raigarh, Jashpur and Surguja in Chattisgarh state. An identical design covers 8 blocks of the districts of Ranchi, West Singhbhum and East Singhbhum in adjoining Jharkhand state as part of the same project. Funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with co-funding by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the project seeks to develop a new model of tribal development by investing in the capacity of the community to take charge of its livelihood portfolio and build institutions that enable sustained growth. With a total cost of $ 42 million in 2001 (Rs. 205 crores), the project is being implemented by the respective state governments through two autonomous societies, one registered in each state. While the project was formally declared effective in June 2002, there has been some time lag in starting activities in Jharkhand. The experience in using IEC inputs summarised below thus relates only to Chattisgarh state.

Surveying the scene

One of the features of JCTDP is the close involvement of NGO and other civil society and community based institutions as project partners from the very outset of the programme. 16 of these NGO partners, carefully selected on the basis of their past experience and presence in the programme area, will work in coordination with the project management unit (PMU) for the entire duration of the project. An initial series of orientation and planning workshops conducted jointly by the PMU and NGO staff to prepare a plan to make first contact with the community revealed the following issues.

• The project plans to target about 150 villages in the pilot phase lasting three years to test its methodology. This has necessitated the selection of a suitably diverse sample of villages, ranging from remote hill hamlets inhabited by primitive tribal groups (PTGs), still engaged in shifting cultivation, to more settled tribal communities and even villages with a mix of tribal and non-tribal populations. The entry strategy had to be one that could successfully address the entire spectrum of interest groups in the community.

• Women are a major focus of the programme and are seen as vital agents of development in the project methodology. In a society that has traditionally excluded women from forums of social and economic dialogue and decision-making, how would the messengers of the project signal their intent of addressing women and drawing their attention and interest without threatening to disrupt the existing social equilibrium?

• Given the long history of interventions by the state in the area, and its paternalistic context, it was important from the start to separate the new initiative from earlier legacies of a top-down developmental paradigm. This made it vital for the first set of messages to very clearly address issues of community bonding and self-reliance.

• While the programme area presents a picture of deeply entrenched poverty, limited access to social and welfare services and a legacy of long-standing social problems, the approach of the project to the situation was consciously chosen as non-confrontationist and non-critical. Thus, issues such as domestic violence, alcoholism and occasional instances of branding and killing destitute old women in the name of stamping out witchcraft, were left out of the content of the initial messages directed at the community.

Identifying social capital

NGO partners and project managers, while planning for an IEC intervention to launch the project, also observed the following facts:

• The largely tribal communities targeted by the project, while poor in material terms and deprived of basic services, owned a rich and largely intact social capital base. This was manifested in the form of ties of kinship, community bonding, elaborate forms of sharing, exchange and reciprocity. It was also expressed in patterns of habitation, construction of housing, dress and personal adornment as well as socio-religious rituals and forms of worship.

• Significantly, the region as a whole enjoyed a complex and vibrant cultural heritage, covering the entire spectrum of creative expression: visual, vocal, dance, music and theatre. An elaborate set of cultural codes and social messages was being transmitted from one generation to the next through these art forms. In a sense they sustained social communication, so vital to the imagination of the community and ensured its survival in the face of material poverty.

• Any new idea, especially one originating from the wider world outside the community, would struggle to enter the social discourse and imagination unless it, at least initially, adopted styles, forms and language with which the community was familiar. It was thus a matter of identifying the project with the community before the latter could be expected to identify with the message the project wanted to convey.

• Lastly, despite a cultural tradition and forms of expression that had survived centuries without change, there was a healthy interest, curiosity and desire to engage with modern forms of communication.

Planning IEC interventions

Having undertaken the above analysis, the choice of IEC interventions was more or less a self-selecting process for the project managers and NGOs.  The following was agreed upon as the menu of inputs for the first year:

• A kala jatha (or troupe of local performing artists) was recruited for each of the 9 blocks of the project area. These young men and women are actually volunteer artists and were selected for previous skills in any of the traditional performing arts of the region, be it music, dance or theatre.

• They were retained to perform a fixed number of live shows at the village level for an agreed token honorarium. Most of these youth are located in rural areas; many are unlettered, while others are farmers, traders or students. They responded to the project’s appeal out of a sense of artistic challenge and a desire to contribute to community development through their creative expression.

• Each of these 9 troupes received an intensive one-week training in various components of the project design and implementation strategy. This was then converted by the kala jathas into skits, songs and other artistic forms of communication, using local dialects, musical styles and theatre traditions. Each troupe was also equipped with a set of musical instruments and a performing wardrobe by the project.

• A second intervention used a local puppetry group as social messengers. While selective in its targeting due to higher costs  and not attempting to cover the entire project area, the puppetry group also translated the project’s message into a series of attractive performances that were designed to both entertain and educate its audience.

• It was consciously decided that while around two thirds of the initial IEC inputs would use traditional forms and artistes, a third would deploy modern forms of communication to exploit their potential to address and attract a larger audience simultaneously, ensure quality control and also be economical. With this objective, the project authorities planned one input each using video and radio as media.

• A video magazine was prepared with inputs from NGOs and project staff, successfully dramatized by a local production house and recorded on CD. The magazine takes off with a male and female anchor discussing the project in local dialect. It is interspersed with clips of song-and-dance routines from Mumbai film hits, messages on maternal and child health, disease control, hygiene and discussions on social ills. Copies of the CD were sent out with hired TV sets into each target village.  The TV sets were usually powered by small generators carted by jeeps to the site, since most villages in the project area are not electrified. Played either along with the performance of the kala jathas or as stand-alone inputs, these video magazine programme used the attractive format of TV with a mix of local and imported content to make their impact.

• The second non-traditional input involved the use of radio. This strategy was specifically designed to address women and create a virtual community, bonded by common issues of personal safety, reproductive and sexual health, childcare and food security for their families. The project booked two 30-minute slots every month on a fixed day and time with local public broadcasters. Every fortnight a 30-minute discussion among a group of women, recorded earlier in the field, was aired on these slots. The intention was to create a platform that gave anonymity and yet audience to women in far flung villages to voice their feelings about issues of livelihood, health, society, inter-personal relationships etc. To create a regular audience that will follow this series of broadcasts as it moves through the project area, 50 community transistor radio sets have been made available to women’s SHGs in the programme area by the project. A campaign to publicise the days and timing of the broadcasts was also launched to stimulate audience interest. Radio owners in general in the area are also being motivated to tune into the programme on their sets. It is proposed that 2 discussion programmes will be recorded in each of the 9 blocks. Men will be invited to join the discussion groups to give their opinions. The initial broadcasts have been received very favourably and requests from SHGs all over the project area are pouring in to bring the radio discussion to their area.

Some early results

The combination of food-for-work and health based entry level activities, anchored by the IEC drive that built up a momentum for the project’s entry into the programme area, brought some early successes.

• Over 200 SHGs could be mobilised within six months of the project’s launch, mobilising almost Rs. 2.50 lakh in member savings. This was significant given that there is virtually no history of micro credit interventions based on the SHG model in the area.

• The programme’s message of empowering communities to take charge of their own livelihoods was put across quite effectively. This was manifested partly by the large number of villages that agreed to take up the construction of community assets by contributing roughly half the cost in the form of unpaid labour, with the project pitching in to provide the remaining share in the form of foodgrains. 55 such works were taken up in the first six months of the project’s launch. These works were valued at approximately Rs. 30 lakhs, with the community providing more than half this amount through unpaid labour.

• Focus on health issues, in response to the felt need expressed by women during the PRA exercises at the village level, was a major component of the IEC drive. This enabled a successful pilot intervention to immunize the 15-45 cohort of women against tetanus, a major cause of maternal mortality in the region. Almost 90% of the roughly 16,000 women identified in this age group were successfully immunized twice in a space of a month against the infection. The response to the mobile vaccination units in some villages was more than 100%, as families brought in relatives and friends from outside the project area to be vaccinated.

• The video magazine dealing with chronic problems like malaria, diarrhea, water borne diseases and basic hygiene proved to be so popular that the project commissioned a second one-hour edition based on the same format within three months. It also led to a general awareness towards basic health issues and resulted in a drive, launched in cooperation with district authorities, to restore the functioning of safe drinking water sources like hand pumps that been lying out of order for months in some cases.

• The latent demand for basic health services was brought to the surface as a result of the IEC interventions and culminated in an innovative solution for the largely unserved hinterland of the project area. The project authorities and district administration pooled resources to run 9 mobile health clinics that visited over 60 points as per a fixed roster. While the cost of hiring the vehicles to run the clinics and basic drugs was met by the project, the district authorities deputed doctors from the primary health centres to participate in this initiative. This gave a boost to the project’s image as a people-centred intervention and enabled the NGOs to gain greater acceptance at the village level.

• A feeling of trust seems to be gradually growing between the community and project intermediaries, both NGO and staff. This is an intangible achievement, but manifested in several, often small, ways. Project and NGO staff routinely camp out at night in remote villages in local homes, while a year ago they would invariably return to base, however late the hour. SHG members feel comfortable talking about domestic issues and larger social ills like dowry and discrimination against women in the presence of NGO and project staff. These developments have laid the base for engaging the community in more complicated social and economic problems in future.

Lessons for the future

What does this little creative experiment of JCTDP tell us about planning and executing an IEC intervention?  For one, the objectives of such an exercise should be clearly kept in view before planning for details. The following would form the basic objectives of any IEC intervention in a project targeted at poor communities:

• To carry the basic message of the proposed intervention, its methodology and expected results to the community at large.

• To build a relationship with the community, especially those within it that traditionally suffer from discrimination, exclusion and lack of representation (e.g. the poorest households, women, dalits and tribals).

• To build a two-way channel of communication that enables not just transmission of messages from project authorities, but also allows for a reverse flow of information and knowledge that helps in project planning and implementation as well as assessing impact.

• To provide a forum that helps to bring out into the open issues of social concern (political and domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse etc.) and explore community-led solutions to the same.

Secondly, the core principles on which the IEC intervention is based should also be kept in view. These are:

• It must identify and primarily use prevalent forms of social communication and expression and avoid importing styles not part of local cultural traditions.

• It must use local artistes, musical and drama forms and images to the maximum possible extent.

• The use of modern technology (such as video, sound equipment etc.) should be restricted to the minimum and, wherever deployed, deployed in support of traditional forms of communication.

• Repeated doses of the intervention, with modifications based on feedback, are necessary to sustain the flow of communication between the project managers and the community.