 Hello everyone, I am Trisha Dora-Burra from the Bhupan Hazurika School of Mass Communication, Krishna Kanta Hanik State Open University. And I would like to welcome you all once again to another informative online class. In today's online discussion, we are going to talk about Unit 3 of the paper, Traditional Folk Media, which belongs to third semester of BA program in journalism and mass communication under Krishna Kanta Hanik State Open University. Now, we have been talking about the importance of traditional folk media, you know, how folk media is helping us. Now, do you really think that the growth of electronic media have had a massive impact on traditional media? And if so, to what extent electronic media might have had a massive impact? Definitely, the growth of electronic media, people have, you know, they're completely, I won't say completely, people have kind of, you know, lessened the need to go through different media forms. Because electronic media is at our fingertips. And these days, almost every one of us, we all have our Android mobiles. We just early in the morning, if you want to look at any news stories, we just click a mobile phone. And then, you know, we just check and Google the different news stories. And one of the basic advantage of electronic media is that every second, the news is being updated, unlike print media forms or maybe traditional media forms. So, we are always on the go. We are so much busy with our own lives. So, we just take the help of the mobile phone, maybe we go to our workplace, we check for any other email or any kind of important messages that might have come. And then maybe we go home, we just relax in front of the television. So, that is how people, the work ethics have become. The way of, you know, understand the way of how work activity has become. Even then, we actually cannot lessen the impact or importance of traditional media. And with the electronic media boom, people, they actually fear that traditional media might fade away. But that might never happen, as it is an inseparable part of Indian culture. Definitely, electronic media, the importance has risen, but this does not mean that the importance of traditional media has come down. You know, and some traditional media like the Jatra or the Nautanki occasion includes the film-style songs these days. Even television shows use puppetry or the folk dances. And the different films for a long period of time, they have used folk songs or folk theater forms to appeal to rural masses and generate the uniqueness. For example, I think most of you have seen the film Bhavani Bhavai, it is a 1980 art film, where the Bhavai folk form of Gujarat is used. Or the film Peepli Life, it is another popular film from the Hindi film industry. And in this particular film also they have used the different folk songs to make satirical comments on common people's problems. And even in Gangs of Vasipur, that's a recent movie, I think 2012 was released. And in that particular movie also there is a nice fusion of folk music, modern songs, which actually could be seen. And in Paheli also, the 2004 film that was directed by Amal Palakar, it was actually based on the culture Rajasthan. And if you clearly remember in this particular movie, puppet was used to start and end the story very beautifully. So as a whole we can say that, yes, with the passage of time, new technologies have come up, we have new forms of electronic media, we have new forms of online media to communicate. Yet the value and the importance of traditional media has not come down. It's mostly seen and the importance and the value or the identity of traditional media could be actually seen mostly as very much prominent, most specifically in the rural areas. And there is also certain kind of interdependence between electronic media and traditional media. And of course one ricks that remains is that we can't intermingle both these two forms. It's easier said than done because we need to keep the traditional folk media intact. We can't try to incorporate some kind of modern elements to it and bring out the remix version of it, which actually will not sustain in the long run. So there has to be some kind of difference. We should keep both the two mediums separate. But yes, that can be interdependent. Electronic media can play important role in popularizing different traditional media forms. That can be done. And folk media will always remain people's media, definitely remains people's media. Electronic media might never be able to challenge existence completely. Rather we can say electronic media have actually depended on traditional media forms. To disseminate important messages to the masses. I think most of you must remember the satellite instruction television experiment that was conducted in 1970s. And the Khera experiments. In that those experiments they actually made use of the different electronic media forms to popularize the folk media forms. And of course cinema have always used traditional folk media elements to narrate the different stories to the people. Now lastly let us come to the different application of traditional media for development purposes. Now we have been talking about how different traditional folk medias are there in the country. Whether electronic media have had some kind of impact on traditional media or not. And lastly we have tried to understand that what implications can be there if there is impact of electronic media on traditional media. Now the fact of the matter is that traditional media have really been used for development purposes. Or it's just like people just make use of them and just say yes we have used this. And there is no such resultant kind of good activity arising from that application. Well definitely traditional media has been used for development purposes a number of times. But the focus is not there because the people they don't try to focus more on the traditional folk forms. They try to focus only on electronic media forms, different online media forms, social media and so on and so forth. Now the different public and private organizations they have made use of traditional folk forms for development purposes. For instance we have the Song and Drama division of the Ministry of Information Broadcasting under the Government of India. And this public body is the largest public body just it gets involved in such kind of activities. They try to make use of different traditional folk forms and they carry out different, they try to sensitize the people actually by using different folk forms in different places across the country. And this particular division it tries to sponsor a large number of departmental troops and private troops for organizing the programs. Which includes folk plays, poetry, recitation, puppet shows, religious discourses and folk songs and folk dances. And even the Song and Drama division they make use of the puppets in its campaigns to promote the various government projects and life insurance corporation of India use puppets to educate the rural masses about the life insurance. Of course apart from that you know this particular division also carries out different folk performances. I mean they try to organize different folk performances like plays, strict theatres, puppetry, ballads in different parts of the country. And they used to focus on certain socially relevant issues like they used to focus on family planning issue, maybe on savings or alcoholism or domestic violence and there is on patriotism or environmental causes or simply you know to eradicate those different superstitious beliefs from the minds of the people. And of course we have some other private organizations which actually also makes use of extensive use of different folk media forms like we have the social action groups. And the social action groups they use tradition folk media for development activities as well. And when we talk about development in India the development is mostly concerned with developing the rural setup because the government's focus initiative is in incredible India on using more indigenous kind of products to generate income or maybe using more indigenous product to you know generate the livelihood of the people at the rural level more specifically. So as far as India is concerned our focus is on that the development aspect is concerned. And what better way to you know disseminate such kind of messages other than the traditional folk media forms because traditional folk media forms are mostly very much you know prominent at the rural areas. You know of course in urban areas also we could see in some pockets we could see their importance is there but more specifically in the rural areas. So they actually need you know the importance of traditional media was actually felt in the post independence period as well. Even during the making of the five-year plans. But the most important turning point came in 1972 that was when the UNESCO and International Planned Parenthood Federation they organized a series of meetings in London and thereafter they laid a lot of importance on integrated use of traditional and mass media for spreading the awareness on family planning. So the MacBright Commission which was actually set up by UNESCO for study of you know communication problems internationally in 1977 in its report titled One World Many Voices. It also have this particular report even they recommended that one should actually make use of traditional media even in the present context. And of course there are other important examples of development practices to traditional media. For instance street theater. Street theater is very popular to advocate and as well as inform. And I may talk about the origin of street theater. This origin can be traced to the radical political theater. And it emerged not only not from the folk or traditional theater form but rather from the tradition of Indian adaptations of western proscenium theater which were very much popular at that particular point of time in the urban centers. And the main groups which were actually involved in this type of popular theater they were the social action groups which are known as SAGs the health and agricultural extension workers, student activists, the political parties, the religious reformers and other women's organizations. And even you know the IPTA group that's the Indian People's Theater Association. They also contributed towards disseminating information regarding the development purposes for developing issues by performing different kinds of plays all across the country. And even doing the Bengal Femin, the Bengal Indian People's Theater Association they actually played a very prominent role because during this Bengal Femin which took place in 1943 it had a huge impact as far as the country was concerned more specifically in the state of West Bengal and at that point of time the situation was horrendous. So they wanted to focus the situation at that point of time of Bengal and as a result what did they do? This particular IPTA group they travelled all across the country. They used to perform different plays and they tried to expose the hoarders as well as other black marketers and they launched a campaign to save food. Even not so long ago the Heartcare Foundation of India in New Delhi they took the initiative to use folk media to run campaigns across rural India to educate people on healthy nutritious eating habits. Of course we have our own electronic media to look into. We have radio, we have television. Even all India radio they have for a very long period of time they have used folk art from folk music or other oral forms to help the farmer and village community develop it by focusing on different farming methods, by focusing on different rural related problems or solutions to how those problems can be mitigated. So different issues have been tried to look after by the all India radio. And of course Indian television have also used the different folk forms very effectively for the development purposes. And as I just said a few minutes back about the site program, the Satellite Instruction Television Experiment as well as the Khaira Communication Project. Now both these two projects actually it showed that how electronic media and as well as traditional media have actually helped the people where these two experiments were conducted they have actually enabled the people to educate them as well as inform the rural masses for the development. So, so far with this we have come to the end of today's particular unit 3 and in this minute we have tried to understand the historical overview of traditional media in India. We have also tried to understand the different traditional media forms in India and the impact electronic media had on traditional media and finally the different applications of traditional media for development purposes. So with this I come to the end of today's discussion. Thank you all so much.