Knowledge An Aid To End Aid

Knowledge – An Aid to End Aid

M U R A L I SH A N M U G AV E L A N , M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India.

ABSTRACT

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t has been increasingly acknowledged that poverty eradication is the single most important issue and challenge in this new millennium. At the same time, the developing world is experiencing globalisation, which is often associated with market expansion. This affects subsistence and established rural livelihood opportunities. Market driven consumerism aggravates unequal distribution of resources and unsustainable consumption. Governments under the pressures of liberalisation and privatisation are forced to cut certain entitlements that have a direct bearing on the ultra poor. Globalisation has also affected the media industry which might lead to pro-market agenda setting. The growing market dominance in the media is not a good sign.

Profit-making organisations realise the importance of media and (mis) guide people in making priorities and choices. “The agenda of globalisation requires public acceptance of that model as the only viable strategy for economic growth. The architects of the new global economic order need to market this message; that’s the role they’ve assigned to the media. Media outlets have become willing promoters of globalisation and consistent attackers of its noisy critics. The media not only spin global news to hype market values but are themselves purveyors of products, which they bring to the world market. They sell as they tell.” [1] There is an immediate need to work out strategies to promote debate within society on issues related to human development, gender equity, poverty and sustainable consumption. This is important in a country like India, where media forms an important decision-supporting system. Free access to emerging knowledge will increase the capabilities of the poor. Open discussion on various sensitive gender and development issues in the public domain will lead to the right public policy, empowering people with knowledge. In a country like India, access to knowledge and opportunities still runs along caste and gender lines. Whilst hundreds of development projects are successfully managed, they don’t all reach out to the wider community level including policy makers. Many development agencies do not consider that communicating their concerns to the wider public is their responsibility. This is because they are all operated within project mode. For example, if an NGOs is involved

in providing opportunities for oppressed children, then it is expected to communicate these concerns to the public to change attitudes. In my view, the following issues touch important aspects of sustainable food security.

E NGENDERING THE ME DI A Every third child in India is malnourished due to women’s poor health. It is worth noting that more

Figure 1 Rural children learning computer skills in a coastal village in South India (Veerampattinam Village) Figure 2 A Village Knowledge Centre in South India set up by M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (Kizhur Village)

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MEDIA A ND C ONSUMP TIO N

Figure 3 Native people in Jaipore – includ ing the excluded: MSSRF volun teers discuss with native people in Orissa, India on conservation

Figure 4 Relative space devoted to women’s issues in English

than 70% of Indian women are anaemic. Maternal rights and entitlements are virtually non-existent for women working in the unorganised sectors. These women comprise 90% of the total working women population in India. Yet these facts are never addressed in the mainstream media. By contrast, the media portrays women as urban, arrogant office-goers and discourages women from entering into the workforce. The media does not find health issues, for example, as sensational as rape or murder. They are commonly referred to as “soft issues”. In the Indian context “hen-pecked husbands” are the ones who wash clothes and dishes at home. A recent study [2] quantifying relative space devoted to women’s issues in two English dailies concluded that women’s issues ranked 10th in a list of 12 issues covered. The most space was devoted to covering cricket, and the least to children’s issues (Figure 4). Another example is how media handles female infanticide in this country. Media deserves credit in exposing this issue, thus opening up a debate. Yet sensationalism ruled the stories. While most of the stories were narrative, to interest the readers, they also located issues with a caste and class focus. Violence against women is the single reason for this brutal act. It is very clear from the National census (Figure 5) that the female population is decreasing regardless of education, caste, class and economy. Yet, the poor and poverty were “discovered” by the media as reasons for female infanticide.

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Media promotes consumption. According to ACNielsen, the media research company, “Advertising expenditures in China, already the largest in Asia, climbed to a record RMB59 billion in the first nine months of 2000, driven by continuing strong growth in advertising aimed at Chinese consumers who seek lifestyle improvements” [3]. Global spending on advertising has been rising three times faster than population [4]. By contrast, sustainable development thinkers argue “…overconsumption among rich communities can lead to under-consumption among poor communities” [4]. What is worse is that the media also influences poor people to become consumer freaks. While the war on obesity is suddenly becoming the exclusive news with colour photos in Indian media, news on death due to starvation tends to get passed over. Media and multinational companies are clever in promoting consumerism in the name of a “freedom of choice” philosophy. Both NGOs, and specifically, development communicators, have the responsibility to draw up strategies to persuade media to publish more stories on responsible consumption.

THE POL ITIC S OF LANGUAG E IN COMMUNI CAT I O N Language reflects ingrained perceptions, conceptions, attitudes and patterns of likely decisions and actions. The shift from a basic needs approach to a human rights approach requires a change of language to reflect the paradigm shift. This does not seem to happen with Indian media, which is conservative, patriarchal and not v e ry concerned with poor people. India still has proverbs that suggest women should eat less; that one should be content with what one has [by believing in Karma], that men are important to society and so on. These attitudes are widely internalised both by media and by the general public.

CAN THE NEW ME DIA D ELI VER? The UNDP Human Development Report 1999 says, “…while knowledge goes online, the internet divides the educated from the illiterate, the rich from the poor, men from women, young from old and urban from rural.” The Digital Divide is talked about everywhere. The present Indian Telecom Policy does not include rural areas under its priority. In a measure to increase the cellular mobile phone use (the service is available only in urban areas) the Telephone Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) telecommunication tariff order 1999 stipulated free incoming calls for cellular users while the charge would be paid by fixed line callers. What I consider the more serious problem is content divide. Even if a person from a developing country is connected, s/he is connected to western information. Pornography has reached its height, thanks to new media. Technology cannot change attitude whereas focused communication methods can. The M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation has been testing a model Knowledge Centre in South India to investigate whether ICT could affect the lives of the poorest of the poor. Volunteers are trained and involved in creating locally relevant content. The outcomes are revealing. The rural poor are fast learners; they take less time to learn computer and learn software skills than an urbanite whose main task is to unlearn before learning. Traditionally literacy meant reading and writing. For the first time, multimedia can include textilliterates, thus providing an opportunity for redefining literacy and taking it to more people. There is a great

need for replicable models and policy advocacy campaigns to launch a massive location-specific content creation plan by using ICT. A strong lobby is required to mobilise funds and organise projects for small language groups to develop content.

TAKING THE SCIENCE TO S OC IETY – T HE RO LE OF THE M ED IA IN THIS NE W SOC IAL C ONTRACT The new social contract between Science and Society is possible if communication strategies are deployed at their best. In a society like India, the general public depends on most of their information about science from the media. Unfortunately, science journalism is not flourishing in India. This country’s communication history has seen many closures of science magazines and journals. While all leading newspapers have “dedicated space” for Astro l o g y, very few have columns for science and technology. Leading articles on latest science issues are often “subscribed news” fro m foreign journals (mostly from North America and Europe). These imported stories bring in borrowed mood and debates regardless of Indian perspectives. Debate based on developing countries’ perspectives needs to be mooted. In a recent workshop at MSSRF, on Media and The Gene Revolution, many leading Indian media practitioners urged scientists to part with information relevant to developing countries’ issues such as ending hunger and malnutrition; increase in access to and control over the food; and upliftment of food security of poor and assetless women, children and men. Language press hardly covers science issues, unless they are sensational. Even if they wish to, they lack materials in the local language. There is a great need to fill this gap. Otherwise, the poor, landless and non English-speaking f a rmer will not be a part of the decision-making process. Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) is a good example. Indian IPR has a lot to do with the traditional knowledge of rural and indigenous people. They need to be oriented in a language which they understand. This means developing more local language material and appreciation of local forms of communication. This is possible only if local language is used to reveal the political ramifications of this issue. Man-made inequities reflect attitudes of the people. So, development agencies must communicate for social change. Such efforts will take issues to the people, open up debates, reconstruct the semantics of poverty and development, and orientate the media to be concerned with the poor and marginalised. Otherwise, the market and consumption will dominate the public information domain.

Figure 5 Females per 1000 males in India

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Murali

Shanmugavelan

has

been

working

with

M.S.Swaminathan Research Foundation for the past 5 years. He is with The HINDU Media Resource Centre for Ecotechnology and Sustainable Development, which is involved in promoting public understanding of science and issues related to sustainable development. He is involved in training media practitioners on the use of internet, developing briefing documents etc., He developed audio and video materials on issues related to women's rights. His current interest is therole of the media in poverty eradication.

I F Y O U H AV E A N Y E N Q U I R I E S R E G A R D I N G T H E C O N T E N T O F T H I S A RT I C L E , P L E A S E C O N TA C T: Murali Shanmugavelan M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation The HINDU Media Resource Centre, Taramani Institutional Area 3rd Cross Road, Taramani Chennai 600 113 India Tel: +91 44 2542791 Fax: +91 44 2541319 E-mail: [email protected]

REFERENCES [1] Covering the World Economic Forum, How the Goliaths of Globalisation Groom the Media, by Danny Schecter (www.mediachannel.org). [2] Women in India, How Free? How Equal? By Kalyani Menon-Sen & A.K. Shiva Kumar, UNDP, 2001 p. 10. [3] www.ACNielsen.com.au/China AdEx _ Top 10 advertising categories, Jan-Sep 2000.htm [4] Norman Myers, Consumption in relation to population, environment and development, The Environmentalist 17, p. 44 (1997)

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