India is known as the land of Gandhi, the land of great sacrifices and enlightenment, the land of gods and spiritual fulfillment, india has a very rich tradition of communication, especially when it comes to communicating to masses. Folk art like Nautanki (a kind of folk ballet), Ramlila (drama on life and struggle of mythological lord Rama), folk songs and folk dances are immensely effective as the means of mass communication. Ramilila is one of the oldest of folk arts, possibly, which has been communicated to millions and millions of people oven generations, the code of conduct and ideals of social life. More recently, Mahatma Gandhi was possibly the greatest communicator of all time, who aroused the people of India to participate in the struggle for freedom against the mightiest empire the world had ever seen, and all this was through his extraordinary communication skills, which were so natural to him. "....Every cultural pattern and every single act of social behavior involves communication, in either an explicit or implicit sense, "Sappier"(1931) was probably underlineding the might of mass communication, which is the root of ant social change, let alone development. This speaks volumes of the impact of sustained communication in changing the way a society thinks and behaves It is unmistakably the only perceivable panacea for innumerous miseries the world over. India has a great tradition of scientific heritage. Various classical works were carried out on the Indian subcontinent, in the fields of mathematic, astronomy, medicine, material science and so on, during ancient, medieval and modern periods, which still form a treasured paet of its cultural heritage. 

    The medieval age, however, saw a remarkable phenomenon occur. Classically coded literature was made comparatively simpler and written in the popular forms of commentaries and analyses. One can observe a great tradition of such commentators in the country who contributed such secondary knowledge literature for generations. Many of ancient works, be it 'Aryabhatiya' of Aryabhat or 'LeeIavati' of Bhaskar, are available in these forms.

    Here is a glimpse of current communication challenges. We are meeting these challenges with a mixed media approach, including, Print, broadcast, folk, digital and interactive:

Languages : 22 Regional languages
100+ dialects
Communicating with different regions
Common thread of communication
33 States
4 Union Territories, 1 National Capital Region
602 Districts
4 Casts/ 6 Religions/ 1000+ Clans
Food Habits : 64,000 recorded food recipes
Diverse Culture
Media : TV 97, Radio 100, Print 7, Digital 0.30%
150 recorded so-called

Lord Budha expoused a doctrine of communicating knowledge which says,

    ".... Do not believe whatever you are told or you yourself have imagined it, unless you testify it. Do not believe whatever your teacher says just because you respect him, but believe only after your own examination and analysis; it would be your guiding factor that will never let you down. Even do not believe whatever I say, unless you have tested it with due experimentation as a goldsmith dues for resting gold by purring it in fire!" 

    (Manoj k Patairiya, Visiting Professor-Global Communication, Chungnam National University, June-JuIy, 2010)

<Editor>

Indian Journal of Science Communication (IJSC)
A Half-yearly international Research journal on Science

Communication
Phone : +91-11-26537976, Fax : +91-11-26590238
E-mail: manojpatairiya@yahoo,com, mkp@nic.in

Communicating knowledge : Experiences from india
Dr. Manoj K. Patairiya 
Director (Scientist 'F')