Development Communication in India: Prospect, Issues and Trends

How did the discipline and practice of development communication begin? Who were the founders and how were the first experiments implemented? The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of development communication. To do so, the first section focuses on the theoretical perspective and evolution of development communication. This study then specifies the components of development communication and, having done so, proceeds to evaluate the various approaches to this conceptual formulation. Thus, it discusses the extension and community development approach, the ideological and mass mobilization method, the centralized mass media method, the localized mass media method, and the integrated approach. It concludes that since development communication is not simply concerned with the mere provision of information on development activities, it should not stop with conventional mass media. Rather, it must involve strong components of social organization and interpersonal and traditional modes and media if it is to succeed.