Need of Marriage of Mass Media with Traditional Folk Media in Empowering Towards Sustainable Development among Santals: A Review

Information is treated as a vital and powerful tool of socio-economic development, no less important than land, labour and capital towards empowerment of people towards attaining sustainable development (SD). Empowerment, the degree of autonomy and self-sufficient, self-dependent, self-determined, self-responsible, self-reliable, self-confident in the democratic society in controlling their lifelong learning and their own quality of life. Access of right information at the right time in right form and ability of sharing information to others empower people. Mass media in this regard plays a crucial role as a vast portion of population may be reached through mass media. Present study conducted in four Santal villages of Birbhum district of West Bengal with 100 Santals (50 male and 50 female) attempts to investigate the extent of use and utilization pattern of mass media in information seeking behavior by the Santals of the study area and finally suggest towards empowering the Santals for attaining sustainable development in the study area. In the study a mixed reaction of the respondents have been received regarding the exposure to various mass media. Mean value of social awareness based on mass media of female Santals (x̄₂ = 109.43) was better than the male Santals (x̄₁ = 106.18). ‘t’ value of the study indicated that null hypothesis H₀ is rejected and alternative hypothesis H₁ is accepted. The Santals are incapable of developing themselves, by their own efforts. Many government schemes and initiatives remain still unutilised due to their illiteracy, neo-literacy, barrier of language, lack of guidance, unawareness about the programmes etc. They should be motivated to come out from their isolation and should be aware about various government initiatives. Observed also that, availability of mass media with the Santals is too much limited, but however, accessibility to these media is somewhat better among them. Evening (17:30-18:00 Hrs.) found to be the best time for exposing to mass media and majority by respondents like to expose to mass media in group. Folk items and formal discussions were the preferable format in mass media. The study demands for coalition for traditional folk media with mass media to improved their quality of life and attaining empowerment.