Communication for Development and Social Change
What it is
Unit 2 asks how communication serves development and who decides what development means: the Indian audience, the dominant modernisation paradigm and its critics, corporate and NGO campaigns, the public sphere and the NWICO debate, and the reformers who used the press to change India. UGC-NET tests it by theorist–book and reformer–newspaper matching.
Core concepts
Development communication and the role of media. Nora C. Quebral (University of the Philippines Los Baños) coined the term in 1971: the art and science of human communication applied to speedily moving a country and its people from poverty to growth, equality and fuller human potential. Development journalism reports processes and people, not just events; development support communication (Erskine Childers, UNDP) builds communication into project planning. Rogers (1976) redefined development as a widely participatory process of social and material advancement for the majority. Media serve as watchdog, educator, mobiliser and forum.
Characteristics of Indian society. Census 2011 counted about 1.21 billion people, literacy of 74.04 per cent, a sex ratio of 943 females per 1,000 males and roughly 31 per cent urban; the Eighth Schedule lists 22 languages (as of 2026-10). Caste, religion, region, class, gender and the rural–urban gap shape who owns, reads and appears in media. Srinivas's Sanskritisation and Westernisation name cultural mobility that media accelerate; rising literacy drove what Robin Jeffrey called India's Newspaper Revolution (2000), the post-1977 boom in Indian-language dailies.
Media and specific audiences. Farmers: the Pune Radio Rural Forum (1956, with UNESCO), Krishi Darshan (1967), the Kheda Communication Project (1975) and community radio. Learners: SITE, the UGC Countrywide Classroom (1984) and EDUSAT (2004). Children: the Children's Film Society, India (1955). Families: entertainment-education serials on Miguel Sabido's model, such as Hum Log (1984) on Doordarshan and Tinka Tinka Sukh (1996) on AIR.
Development, social change and post-colonial conceptions. Social change is any alteration in social structure; development is planned, directed change. Post-colonial thinkers treat development as a discourse: Escobar's Encountering Development (1995) shows how it constructed the "Third World", Sachs (1992) launched post-development, and Subaltern Studies (from 1982, Ranajit Guha) and Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" (1988) ask who speaks for the poor. Alternatives include Gandhi's Hind Swaraj (1909) and Sen's Development as Freedom (1999), whose capability approach informs UNDP's Human Development Index (1990: health, education, income).
The dominant paradigm. Modernisation theory assumed poor nations must follow the West's path. Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth (1960): traditional society, preconditions for take-off, take-off, drive to maturity, high mass consumption. Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society (1958) chained urbanisation, literacy, media exposure and participation through empathy, or psychic mobility. Schramm's Mass Media and National Development (1964) cited the UNESCO minimum per 100 people of 10 newspaper copies, 5 radio receivers, 2 cinema seats and 2 TV sets. Rogers' diffusion research supplied top-down transfer via change agents.
Deconstructing the dominant paradigm. Rogers announced "the passing of the dominant paradigm" (1976), whose pillars were growth through industrialisation, capital-intensive technology, centralised planning and internal causes of underdevelopment; he later named pro-innovation and individual-blame biases. Dependency theory (Prebisch's core and periphery, Frank's "development of underdevelopment", Wallerstein's world-system with a semi-periphery) blamed unequal global structures. Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) replaced banking education with dialogue and conscientisation, founding participatory communication. Shingi and Mody (1976), studying Krishi Darshan, showed TV could narrow the communication effects gap.
Corporatisation of development. Non-state actors (corporates, NGOs, foundations, multilateral agencies) now fund much development. Under Section 135 of the Companies Act 2013, a company with net worth of ₹500 crore or more, turnover of ₹1,000 crore or more, or net profit of ₹5 crore or more must spend at least 2 per cent of its average net profit of the three immediately preceding financial years on Schedule VII activities (as of 2026-10). Corporate models include ITC's e-Choupal (2000) and Hindustan Unilever's Project Shakti; critics warn that citizens become consumers.
Campaigns and the discourse of development communication. State campaigns: family planning ("Hum Do, Hamare Do"), Pulse Polio (from 1995; WHO certified South-East Asia polio-free in 2014), Swachh Bharat Mission (2014), Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (2015). Agencies: UNICEF's Meena initiative for the girl child. NGOs: the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan's jan sunwais (public hearings) fed the RTI movement. Discourse moved from IEC (information, education, communication) through social marketing (Kotler and Zaltman, 1971) and behaviour change communication to communication for social change: from persuading individuals to empowering communities.
Public sphere, global civil society and the global communication system. Habermas's The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962) traced a bourgeois public sphere of coffee houses, salons and the press, later refeudalised by commercial media and PR; Nancy Fraser (1990) added subaltern counterpublics. Global civil society surfaced at Seattle (1999) and the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre, 2001). The Non-Aligned call for a New World Information and Communication Order (Algiers, 1973) challenged "free flow"; UNESCO's MacBride Commission (1977) reported Many Voices, One World (1980). National communication policies, urged by UNESCO (San José, 1976), set national sovereignty over information against universal free flow.
Reformers: Roy, Phule, Tilak and Malaviya. Raja Rammohan Roy founded Sambad Kaumudi (1821) and Mirat-ul-Akhbar (1822), led the 1823 protest against press licensing and campaigned against sati (abolished 1829). Mahatma Jyotiba Phule opened a girls' school in Pune with Savitribai Phule (1848), wrote Gulamgiri and founded the Satyashodhak Samaj (both 1873); its weekly Deenbandhu appeared in 1877. Bal Gangadhar Tilak used Kesari and Mahratta (1881) and the public Ganeshotsav (1893) to mobilise and was jailed for sedition in 1897 and 1908. Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya founded Abhyudaya (1907), The Leader (1909) and Banaras Hindu University (1916).
Reformers: Gandhi, Vinoba, Ambedkar, Upadhyaya and Lohia. Mahatma Gandhi ran Indian Opinion (1903), Young India and Navajivan (from 1919) and Harijan (1933), refusing advertisements in Young India and Harijan. Acharya Vinoba Bhave, the first individual satyagrahi (1940), began Bhoodan at Pochampally on 18 April 1951 and widened it to Gramdan. Dr B.R. Ambedkar founded Mooknayak (1920), Bahishkrit Bharat (1927), Janata (1930) and Prabuddha Bharat (1956) and wrote Annihilation of Caste (1936). Deendayal Upadhyaya set out Integral Humanism (1965) and Antyodaya. Ram Manohar Lohia proposed Chaukhamba Raj (village, district, state, centre) and Sapta Kranti and edited Mankind.
Worked example
Rogers' adopter categories. A survey covers 2,000 farmers offered a new seed. How many fall in each category? Rogers cuts the bell curve of adoption time at the mean (m) and standard deviation (sd), rounding the shares.
| Category | Adoption time | Share | Farmers | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Innovators | before m − 2sd | 2.5% | 50 | 50 (2.5%) |
| Early adopters | m − 2sd to m − sd | 13.5% | 270 | 320 (16%) |
| Early majority | m − sd to m | 34% | 680 | 1,000 (50%) |
| Late majority | m to m + sd | 34% | 680 | 1,680 (84%) |
| Laggards | after m + sd | 16% | 320 | 2,000 (100%) |
- Multiply: 2,000 × 0.025 = 50; × 0.135 = 270; × 0.34 = 680 twice; × 0.16 = 320.
- Check: 50 + 270 + 680 + 680 + 320 = 2,000.
- Cumulate: 50, 320, 1,000, 1,680, 2,000, that is 2.5, 16, 50, 84 and 100 per cent; plotted over time, the S-curve.
- Apply and critique: opinion leaders cluster among the 270 early adopters, so change agents target them; calling the last 320 "laggards" is individual-blame bias if they lack land, credit or irrigation.
Common traps
- Lerner wrote The Passing of Traditional Society (1958); Rogers wrote "The Passing of the Dominant Paradigm" (1976).
- Rostow's fourth stage is the drive to maturity; high mass consumption comes last.
- The semi-periphery is Wallerstein's; "development of underdevelopment" is Frank's.
- The MacBride Commission was set up in 1977 and reported in 1980; the Algiers call was 1973.
- Mooknayak (1920) is Ambedkar's; Deenbandhu (1877) belongs to Phule's Satyashodhak movement.
Speed technique
- Paradigm by keyword: growth and empathy mean dominant; core and periphery mean dependency; dialogue and conscientisation mean participatory; discourse means post-colonial.
- Diffusion shares 2.5, 13.5, 34, 34, 16 cumulate to 2.5, 16, 50, 84, 100.
- Reformer–paper pairs: Roy–Sambad Kaumudi, Tilak–Kesari, Malaviya–Abhyudaya, Gandhi–Harijan, Ambedkar–Mooknayak, Lohia–Mankind.
Check yourself
- Who coined "development communication", and where?
Show answer
Nora C. Quebral — University of the Philippines Los Baños, 1971. - Which book linked media exposure to empathy, or psychic mobility?
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Lerner's The Passing of Traditional Society — 1958. - What was the MacBride Commission report called?
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Many Voices, One World — UNESCO, 1980. - What did Freire call the awakening of critical awareness?
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Conscientisation — opposed to banking education. - Where and when did Vinoba Bhave begin Bhoodan?
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Pochampally, 18 April 1951 — later widened to Gramdan.
Try it: Communication for Development and Social Change questions
Real questions from the NET Mass Comm. bank on exactly this skill. Pick an answer to see the full solution — the intuition, the worked steps, the faster methods and the traps.
The term "development communication" was coined in 1971 by:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option A
Nora C. Quebral of the University of the Philippines Los Baños coined the term in 1971.
She defined it as the art and science of human communication applied to speedily moving a country from poverty to growth, equality and fuller human potential.
So the term was coined by Nora C. Quebral, option A.
The Doordarshan serial Hum Log (1984) applied the entertainment-education model of:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option D
Entertainment-education weaves social messages into popular drama; the Mexican producer Miguel Sabido developed the model for television serials.
Hum Log (1984) on Doordarshan and later Tinka Tinka Sukh (1996) on AIR followed Sabido's model.
So Hum Log applied Miguel Sabido's model, option D.
The concept of conscientisation, set against "banking" education, was developed by:
Show the answer and worked solution
Answer: option B
Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968) rejected banking education, in which teachers deposit facts in passive learners.
He proposed dialogue and conscientisation, the awakening of critical awareness, which founded participatory communication.
So conscientisation comes from Paulo Freire, option B.
Arrange the stages of economic growth set out by Walt Rostow (1960) in their proper sequence: I. Take-off II. Age of high mass consumption III. Traditional society IV. Drive to maturity V. Preconditions for take-off Choose the correct answer from the options.
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Answer: option B
Rostow's The Stages of Economic Growth (1960) runs from traditional society to the preconditions for take-off, take-off, the drive to maturity and finally the age of high mass consumption.
In numeral order that is III, V, I, IV, II.
So Rostow's sequence from traditional society to high mass consumption is III, V, I, IV, II, option B.
Match the authors in List – I with their works in List – II and choose the correct answer from the options. List – I (Author) | List – II (Work) --- | --- (a) Wilbur Schramm | (i) Hind Swaraj (b) Arturo Escobar | (ii) Development as Freedom (c) Amartya Sen | (iii) Encountering Development (d) Mahatma Gandhi | (iv) Mass Media and National Development
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Answer: option D
Schramm wrote Mass Media and National Development (1964) (a – iv), and Escobar's Encountering Development (1995) read development as a discourse that constructed the 'Third World' (b – iii).
Sen's Development as Freedom (1999) set out the capability approach (c – ii), and Gandhi's Hind Swaraj (1909) was his critique of modern civilisation (d – i).
So matching List I, from "Wilbur Schramm", gives a – iv, b – iii, c – ii, d – i, option D.
Answer above — every one shows its working.