Editorial

Abstract

I arrived in Iowa City in the Fall of 1980 to pursue graduate study in media and communication. I had already developed an interest in development communication study and practice by then. When I did my MS degree work in Bengaluru University in India, the Satellite Instruction Television Experiment (SITE) was launched by the Indian government. SITE was a huge experiment in bringing information, communication, education and pro-social entertainment directly to remote villages from a satellite. All students in my cohort were encouraged to write their master’s thesis on some aspect of SITE. I chose to study challenges of organizational and interpersonal issues in the work environment of television producers in the four production centres at Ahmedabad, Cuttack, New Delhi and Hyderabad. It was fascinating that a live social/communication experiment was going on and we were in the front ranks! There was no special reason to have chosen the MA programme in Journalism and Mass Communication at Iowa other than the fact that it was a good programme and my sponsor insisted I go there! However, this was one of those blind dates that turned out to be terrific! I was introduced to Dr Joe Ascroft, an expert in development communication, and was told that he would be my academic advisor. What followed has been a wonderful and eventful journey of nearly 40 years in development communication study and research with Joe and the rest of the gang at the school, which included Alan Brody, Leslie Steeves, Robert Agunga, Ab Gratama and Jacob Matovu. Joe was a teacher, mentor, advisor and friend all rolled into one. His development communication classes were so much fun. He would relate one story after another about cultural and field-based development problems in Africa. It took me a while to realize that every story was packed with didactic value. Behind every cultural story was an issue of communication, which had been rendered ineffective due to blindness towards local culture, knowledge and practice. Behind every story about a field-based development problem were lessons about inefficacies of foreign aid and technical assistance programmes, which created additional problems of development. Leslie Steeves writes,