Contents: Preface. I. General and conceptual aspects: 1. Development communication in rural sector/D. Das Gupta. 2. Development communication concept with reference to media for agricultural development/A.G. Sawant. 3. Development communication and communicating development: a perceptual study/Dipak De and Misha Nedeljkovich. 4. Development communication--help to those who need it most/S. Chowdhury. 5. Development communication system/B.S. Hansra and N.R. Gangadharappa. 6. Development communication: reaching the unreached for sustainable development/A.K. Singh, K. Singh and Amardeep. 7. Communication models in technology transfer and research and development/Manish Kumar, Chitra Pathak and A.K. Singh. 8. A systematic paradigm of a rural development technology/S. Gregory. 9. Generation and transfer of adoption managers--need for restructuring the model of agricultural communication/D. Das Gupta and P. Pal. II. Communication behaviour: 10. A study on communication behaviour of community health workers/M.K. Tiwari. 11. Communication of technologies for boosting farm income and progressiveness/Sanjib Chatterjee, Sibaji Chakraborti, S.D. Mukhopadhyay and D. Das Gupta. 12. Characteristics of farm radio listeners and their listening habit/Jitendra Chouhan and Baldeo Singh. 13. Communication behaviour of rural cooperators with regard to effectiveness in respect of adoption of HYV Rice Cultivation/M.D. Golam Mortuza. 14. Role of extension activities in communication development and adoption of modern agro technologies for sustainable development/A. Zaman, B.C. Sahana and Amir Hossain Mollah. 15. Diffusion on technology in Rural Orissa and It's effect/C. Satapathy and Bineeta Satapathy. 16. Information sources consultancy pattern and knowledge of farmers for development/S.K. Meti, S.R. Patil and B. Smdaroswamey. III. Channels of Media: 17. Information technology for rural development/R. Sarvanan. 18. Farm information through Gram Mangal telecast in Madhya Pradesh/L.N. Sharma, S.K. Agrawal, V.K. Pyasi and J.P. Patel. 19. A study on impact of farm broadcast on farming/R. Agila, N. Anandaraja and R. Premavathi. 20. A critical review of agricultural news covered in Bengali Dailies vis-a-vis source of publication and territory wise importance perspectives/Sabyasachi Roy, Naipal Singh Verma and Sujit K. Jha. 21. Traditional media--reaching the unreached/S. Chowdhury and C.K. Panda. 22. Content analysis of agricultural extension review: a critical study/P. Kavitha, N. Anandaraja, R. Premavathi and N. Sriram. 23. Advanced information technologies for agricultural development/N. Anandaraja, K. Chandrakandan and R. Agila. 24. Cyber extension: an effective way for agricultural communication--a concept paper/Siddhartha D. Mukhopadhyay. 25. Developing a computer aided extension system for farmers: step to improve rural communication/Kalyan Ganguly, Premlata Singh and K. Kalimuthu. IV. People's Participation: 26. People's participation for development in watershed programme/K. Nagabhushanam. 27. Participation of rural households in livestock production activities in Bangladesh/M. Moniruzzaman. 28. Participation of women members in Gram Panchayat: a study based on experience and observation in two districts in West Bengal, India/Bholanatha Ghosh. V. Constraints: 29. Communication lapses in rural energy programme/Dibyendu Ghosh, Sujay Mitra and Subhrangsu Santra. 30. Jute Fibre marketing--some important issues/Sanjib Chatterjee, Swapan B. Mukhopadhyay and D. Dasgupta. 31. Constraints in production and marketing of Jute in Orissa/R.K. Raj, C. Satpathy and B.R. Pattanaik. VI. Other related issues: 32. Role of service centres as a communicator towards rural development/Rajesh Chatterjee. 33. Adoption of paddy production techniques and its effect on productivity under different farming situation: an agro-ecosystem analysis/Ranjay K. Singh, B.S. Dwivedi and A.K. Pandey. 34. Improvement in livelihood through communication--a case study/Sujit Kumar Pal. Contributors.

"Critical importance of the Development Communication (CD) in this particular context is obvious. CD is primarily communication for planned change. It is to reach unapproachable/unreachable mass of human through various means of communications for their development. It means more than just communicating information to the people. However, CD as a concept is yet to be fully internalised both by practitioners and researchers. This has yet to come out of the old paradigm in our country. The crucial task before us is to make the development efforts appropriate and thereby more effective, so that it will reach down to the heartland and world poverty. In this background CD has the immense potentiality.

The CD is all about to inform, motivate and influence all sectors and levels of people. It is actually a process, not a technique, which is problem communication for promoting human development through education and by helping to reduce poverty, unemployment and social inequality. It obviously attaches an element of social commitment to the process of communication because of which development of population belong to all the cultural groups in the society is attained.

Survey on literatures suggests that three categories of approaches have dominated the paradigm of communication and development since 1950s which are as: (a) the approach of viewing communication and development as a cause effect relationship; (b) the approach dealing primarily with what might be called cost-benefit analysis; and (c) the approach dealing primarily with infrastructure analysis. The CD which got headway only since late eighties can be seen as a social process designed to seek common understanding or consensus among all the participants of a development initiative. It is actually a challenge in communicating effectively for development. Method and media of communication should be used meaningfully and wisely to help meaning formation and in speeding up the process. It is also essential that the source of information be not only comprehensive but also credible. This point may seem very obvious, but it has often been overlooked. It may even more important than being equipped with sophisticated media. Moreover, the very direction of CD in India might have changed by the privatization of communication, rapid changes in communication technologies and increasing influence of the concept of social marketing.

Hence, serious introspection and retrospection on this important and emerging domain as a whole is essentially needed. Socio-culturally constructed and value-laden scientific methods in research on the CD have to be pursued intensively and objectively." (jacket)