Abstract
The objective of this paper is to study and understand the tribal people, their culture and lifestyles and the relation with communication media that works there. Tribal and rural Development is a important need for a country like India. Media along with acting as a news reporting source becomes a tool for formation and change of the public opinion and also influences the economy, the social and political system. Rural development will lead us in the direction of empowering marginalised sections of society. The tribal people are exposed to mass media and it created various influences on their life. This paper also gives a overlook about their issues and what role media is playing or can play to address their issues. This paper aims to understand their public sphere and how media imperialism influenced their culture. In addition this purpose of this paper is to study the effect of advertisements on their socio-economic system. In other way the study basically shows the importance of mass media in changing and influencing the life of tribal people.
Introduction
In any Modern democratic country there are basic important components or pillars on which the democracy works. These three components are :
1) The Legislature,
The Parliament and State Legislative Assemblies, Who frames laws and regulations and decide the way its conduct
2) The Administration or Executive,
President, the Governor of state, central and state ministries, and their secretariats, the administrative and civil authorities who performs the all function to run the country
3) The Judiciary,
The Supreme Court of India, High Courts at the state and District, session and other courts set up by Judiciary for specific matters. Judicial system looks upon compliances of laws and regulations in the country and has a authority over the matter of conflict to give judgements.
Now there is an another institution working in the democracy and plays a key role in the smooth and transparent functioning all of these institutions and connecting the people with them and rest of the world and it is the Media. All of the three initial institutions works in coordination with each other to function the democracy. But it is very important for people to know as the citizens of the country that how these institutions are functioning. Media plays central role to connect all of these with society, to keep people informed and thats why media is said to be the fourth estate of a democracy.
It plays a key role to keep the people informed and aware about what is going on around their society, their country as well as the world. Media is basically a medium or channel to communicate the massage that is needed to be spread. The modern media consist of communication media and mass media for example print media, broadcast media that is radio and television and now in the days of Internet and technology the digital media is also a very popular and effective form of media. Media becomes a part of day to day functions of society. Different type of media whether it is print or audiovisual or any other kind of media, it is very influential and effective source of educating people on different aspects revolving around the existence of humankind. The different kind of media serve different purposes in early days print media is the only form and it is still a very widely consumed. After that audio media like radio comes and then audio-visual that is television. The audio-visual media stated a new era of communication. In the audiovisual media television is the most popular form of and widely spread among the household in urban as well as rural societies. There are many studies of role of mass media on the life of rural people in India but only few studies published on the role of mass media on the tribal people of India. The objective of the study in this paper to look upon the how the tribal people consume media focusing on television consumption and what role the media performs over their lives.
Empirical method of work
This study is drawn upon the empirical data, both qualitative and quantitative through literature review of the published data and by conducting survey and personal discussion with the people from the tribal settlement at Tamnath wadi. There were 10 respondent who are also the head of the family were interviewed. They watch television therefore there schedule and watching habits were also observed.
Area – Tamnath wadi Taluka Karjat District Raigarh
Raigarh is district in Maharashtra which situated on coastal lines of Konkan Region and it presently consist of 42 towns, 15 tahsils and 1909 villages spread acreoss the total area of 7152 Sq. Km. The total population is 2,634,200 with a population density of 368 person per Sq. Km. Out of this the Rural population is 1,664,005 that is 63.16% of total population. The literacy rate is 83.14 % slightly higher that that of state which is 82.34 %. Raigarh is the one of the coastal district of Maharashtra and an important part of Konkan Region. Raigarh has many ports such as Nhava-Sheva which is also an international port. There is a beach named Alibaug which is very popular tourist attractions. Riagarh Fort was the capital of Chatrapati Shivaji Mahraj. Major parts of Raigarh district is a covered by hilly areas therefore it is also a popular destination for camping and trekking. The ancient caves situated at Elephanta an Island, is also a popular place for people and tourist in Mumbai. Raigarh district has a place named Matheran which is the smallest hill station in India. It is situated near Neral which is a town and a railway station on Central line of Mumbai suburban railway.
Some important statistics about Karjat
Karjat is a taluka place in Raigarh district and it consist of urban as well as rural population. The rural area is around 626.82 Sq. Km and it consist of total 176 Villages. The total rural Population of Karjat is 159,566 and the total households are 32,579. Out of the total household the number of households having television are 14,272 (44.58%). The total tribal population under rural area is 46,274 and the larger section of these tribal people are covered under Scheduled Tribes as per the government of India classification. Administration of Karjat comes under Panvel subdivision which is also a part of Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
Tamnath Village
Tamanath is a village in Karjat taluka with the total area of 295.87 hectares. As per the data available through census of India for the year 2011 the total population of the village is 1056 people distributed among households 223. It is situated near a base of hilly region and large section of the population is Marathi speakers. The tribal living at Tamnath wadi, a place outside the main village and are belongs to Katkari tribe having total population of 260 people.
Tribal People
Tribal are the indigenous people who are living here from ancient times. Indian tribal people are the essential part of the cultural and heritage of India. The tribal communities are spread across the different parts of India. They resides different ecological areas in the country mainly hilly regions, forests and across the different plains. They consist of substantial percentage of the population of country. The tribal communities in relation to their culture, heritage and practices, are very different from each other but also integrated with the other cultures in India.
The tribal people were very underdeveloped and unprivileged but in present days many of the tribes were exposed to modern mainstream development which leads into their growth on various socioeconomic and political platforms. Are divide in different units depending upon the type of tribe and previous traditional occupations over the different areas of Maharashtra. Tribes of Maharashtra are mainly consist of tribes that are notified as nomadic tribes and scheduled tribes.
Katkari Tribe in Maharashtra
The Katkari is tribe mostly resides in the hilly forest areas of coastal region of Maharashtra state. The Katkaris are included in the Scheduled Tribes of India. They speaks Katkari language and Marathi language which a most spoken and official language of Maharashtra. Traditionally their livelihood mostly based of forest related occupations and the name of tribe Katkari is itself denotes forest based activities. But in present days they are employed in various kind of activities mostly consists of manual labor. The Raigarh district of Maharashtra has a large number of Katkari population and the Katkari people in this block generally earn their livelihood on basis of seasonal employment such as working as Brick kiln and farm labor. These Katkaris were shifted here in these villages about 40 to 50 years ago before that hey were living in the forest and hills. The huge deforestation in the region forced them to leave their places and occupations and to shift in villages. Now they were separated from each other and living in a small units. They don\’t have proper place of their own to settle down and earn livelihood because they are fully dependent on the other villagers for their livelihood. They are treated as out caste and by other upper caste villagers and are not allowed to enter specific places in the village such as community center, temples, houses of upper caste Hindu peoples. There is a huge amount of practice of bonded labor in Katkari people. Most of them are become a bonded labor for the big contractors of Brick kiln. The mortality rates among children in Katkari tribe is high and main reason behind this is malnutrition, no proper health-care and sanitation facilities and lack of awareness. Even though the Katkari community was thrown out of the forests, still they preserved their knowledge and culture about forests. They have outstanding skills relating to forest-based activities and they still practices some of their cultural activities but in very unorganized and less frequent manner. Also now days after becoming a part of mainstream communities they follow some of cultural practice of modern society. For example Ganesh Utsav is a very common and one of the largely celebrated festival in Maharashtra so the Katkari people also celebrate it almost in the same manner as other non tribal people do.
Tribal Settlement at Tamnath
There are different tribal settlements for every village. Every settlement is settled and living outside the main villages. The tribal settlement at Tamnath village is situated outside the village near a hilly ground. These kind of settlements are called Wadi. The land is not owned by these tribal people but given to them by Gram Panchayat. They does not have any property rights on their lands. They are not considered as a part of village. All the tribal population at Tamnath Wadi falls below poverty line. There are several problems existed there such as problem of indebtedness by money lenders, scarcity of food, social insecurity, high illiteracy rate, alienation by others upper caste villagers. There are some cases of malnutrition also. Various health related issues and diseases are prevalent in the tribal settlement. There is a very less frequency of public transport thats why private transport such as jeeps are very frequent there and people use theses services. In this tribal settlement there is a major problem of electricity. Except toe or three households no any other household has legal electricity connection with meter. They had the connection before few years but then there was a problem occurred about the wrongly increased billing amount and it created dispute between the people and electricity board. After that the board disconnected their connection. Since then the people of Tamnath wadi using electricity by staling it through hanging cables directly on main line wires. They are aware about the fact that is a very risky practice and causes damage of life also but they don\’t have any other choice to get electricity.
Important details about the respondents.
Sr. no.
Name
Age
Education
Owns TV
Monthly Income(Rs)
Monthly Spending on DTH (Rs)
1
Ankush Waghmare
35
NA
4 years
6000
450
2
Haribhau Pawar
35
NA
3 years
6000
500
3
Lakhu Malhari Pawar
45
3rd
4 years
7000
400
4
Laxaman Pawar
40
NA
3 years
4000
600
5
Bhurya Kamal Waghmare
35
NA
4 years
7000
600
6
Sudam Ganpat Waghmare
40
8th
15 years
6000
600
7
Santosh Mahadeo Waghmare
40
NA
6 years
6000
450
8
Ashok Baban Waghmare
50
NA
4 years
4000
600
9
Jayshri Suresh Dhotre
22
7th
No
6000
NA
10
Waman Ramu Pawar
45
NA
10 years
7800
700
Important : The person who is earning and the primary source of income was interviewed. The income does not shows actual income throughout the year because of temporary nature of work therefor it is an average assumed income on the basis of information provided by respondents. Also the people don\’t not recharge DTH for whole month but choses packages as per the money available at particular time therefor the expenditure on DTH varies depending the frequency of recharge done by respondent.
Media Scenario
Mass media of communication are very crucial for nation building and national development in any developing society. The modern media, specially after the invention of electronic media and satellite communication has changed the entire structure of media. The technological changes that happened in the past few decades in the world completely modified and advanced the mass media. Now mass media being a channel to gather and spread information from any place in the is has a power to penetrate different levels of society in a very short time. All information has now been reaching to every home in any remote area. This has not only changed the psychology of people but also changed their approach and life style in offices as well as in homes. Specially the youth of the recent generation has a strong influence of modern media on their life. Modern media technology brought unbelievable changes in the society, because society influences media and vice versa. It is an era of information explosion which has its effect on the the minds of the people. In every kind of media entertainment is one of the important function. But the media also need to deliver some necessary and important functions. Because as a part of society media has its rights and duties also and in the democracy the mass media has a very much freedom and liberty to work by its own. With the use of media people can get any information they want. The information can related to politics, economy, international relations, agriculture, sports, education etc. Media is very rich source of information as well as entertainment in the modern society. Different television programs, films, radio and FM, novels and magazines etc are the various sources of having entertainment. Media is also useful to to get connected with people specially the social media operated through internet is very useful to establish network and sharing information with others. The mass media has an central place the providing important information in the process of development and communication of the change that is happening around the world. Mass Media brought the entire world closer to everyone situated at every different corner of the globe. The people are now closer to each other and sharing information, their thoughts and opinions thats why the terms is evolved that the world became global village. We are now able to find everything at every place across the world. We can purchase different products from different region all over the world any where we want. The same commodities are available irrespective to their origin throughout the world. Internet played very key role to bring people from different places across the world closer to each other. It also helps to generate and spread information on a massive scale. Again mass media has a important place in advertising and marketing industry. Mass media such as television is a largest source to gather consumer and promotion of good and services. In country like India there is a presence of very diversified media as the country itself is very diverse and large. Newspaper as well as other print media such as magazines, periodicals etc are spread across the country with different publishing houses and having their own style and structure content. The television and radio including FM radio reaches maximum number of population in the country.
Television in India and its role in Society
Before the introduction of television in India the Radio was the very popular media among the people. Films were there but not very much accessible to everyone hence the television gained extreme popularity in very short time. TV was first introduced in 1959 with the view that it will help to reach and communicate the masses and provide helping hand to development. And within a few years it also transformed as a medium of entertainment and started to reach across the country even remote areas and in present times television has become a part of near about every household it the country. It causes some good as well as bad effects on the people specially youth and children depending upon their accessibility of television. After the introduction of cable television it Indian television media changed rapidly with diverse range of channels and entertainment programs from the Indian as well as foreign broadcasting houses. Currently the number of western regional, National and Govt. television Channels and accompanied by hundreds of western and other foreign channels. And the fact is now western channels are extremely popularised within the Indian audiences.
With the introduction of television in India the state had the complete right over the broadcasting in the country. The state holds restrictions over the televised media and regulated the production distribution and broadcast for many years. The main focus of the television media is concentrated on news production and information broadcasting generally for the purpose of both economic and social development.
In the early phase of 1990 the satellite telecommunication was introduced and it becomes a milestone and a changing point of Indian Television and within few years the cabal network spread across the country. After that the the choices and preferences of viewers were changed because the the traditional programs on previously state owned channels are not that much entertaining and consumer centric with compare to the programs offered by the new private broadcasting agencies. The soap operas, musical programs and game shows became very popular among the Indian audiences. Different news channels were started providing news from various sources, current updates were started reaching to the public with very less period of time. Many of the television programs mainly the soap operas has the storyline revolving around the gender relation, families, culture and socioeconomic conditions. The television created a large influence on Indian society. In rural areas the along with the soap operas the tradition culture driven programs are gained popularity. Also the programs providing important information were also created their impact on the rural as well as the urban audiences. The urban audiences specially the urban middle class women were found to be more attached to the soap operas which had plot of urban settings. In recent times there is a lots of changes happened in the way of living of people in India. The free market economy, globalisation and easy technologies created huge impact on Indian people. The Indian media has undergone into extreme change with the introduction of telecommunications and then the computers also brought a new era of information processing and exchange. In the initial phase Indian media is limited only to news papers and some journals and later on the broadcasting through radio. After that the the television entered into the media and for the long period Doordarshan was the only channel ruled the Indian television. After that there were several other channels operated by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. And presently because of the globalisation and technological improvement in media Indian audiences have access to various foreign media via satellite communication. As per the report of FICCI-KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry for the year 2015. Due to the increased revenue from subscription of Direct to Home (DTH) services there is an powerful change occurred with the Indian television industry. The Indian television industry in India is valued at INR475 billion in 2014, and is expected to reach INR975 billion in 2019 because of improvisation and digitisation. The subscribers of Cable and Satellite reached 149 million till 2014. It include DD Direct which is an unpaid service and the paid C&S subscribers is around 139 million. The paid C&S subscriber expected to increase to get at 175 million by 2019 so that it will cover 90 per households having television. Also the DTH operating companies focusing to increased the viewership of High Definition (HD) channels along with different value added services. India is now become the second largest television market in the world after China.
In case of entertainment films and sports are very popular. The programs are popularised by various additional means such as including violence, sexual content, emotional drama etc. It influenced the people and created a huge effect on the youth. Due to the widespread commercialisation large number of population specially the middle class families is getting attracted towards consumerism. Also the Indian media going to different cultural and social change since having the access foreign media. With losing the bond of Indian culture it forced the domination of western culture over the people of India primarily on the present generation.
Advertisement and television
For the producers of goods and services television is the most effective media . The different producer give advertisements in between the programs and many of the time sponsor programs. As we can observe there is a huge amount of money is being invested on the television advertisements during the period of major events such as National and state elections, sports events and festival seasons. Also the e-commerce companies such as online marketing and selling companies like Flipkart and Amazon are spending a large amount on their advertisements. Among all kind of media the the advertising industry is more successful on the television and out the total money invested in advertisements, the large share goes to television advertising. As per the FICCI-KPMG report Fast moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector is the largest spender on television advertising, it spending very huge amount on continuous advertising on television to promote their goods. Also the advertising on television as well as electronic media by e-commerce companies is likely to increase by a considerable percentage over next few years because they are receiving large amount of foreign investments due to their increasing customer base. Television advertising is grown up at very fast rate because of the increase in Banking and finance sector which ultimately influences market and the high rate of increase in purchasing. And then this television advertisements also, in turn influences the buyers and the cycle goes on.
Media, Television and Tamnath Wadi
Communication is very essential part of the tribal culture. There is a considerable presence of folk media as well as modern media. Folk media items are practiced in the community in the form of folk songs and dance. They arrange programs on a specific occasions such as religions days, festivals, public or family ceremonies with the modern as well as folk items. The elderly tribal people in the community, primarily women sing the folk songs either in a group or individually. These folk songs are the part of their culture and describes their way of living, their mythologies, their relation with nature and all other things upon their life is based. All of people in the community including men, women and children dance on folk as well as modern films songs. They also have a Community center where they arrange different programs such as community meetings, cultural events etc. They have some musical instruments such as purchased with collective funds from everyone. The inter-personnel communication generally in the form of oral communication is the main source of information sharing among the tribal people. But the largest source of information for these tribal people is television. Also the men workers who goes outside the tribal settlement for work, read newspaper or receives information from others at their workplace and then after coming back at home they share this information with other members in the family. They also gathers information from people who visits them at their tribal settlement. Information is also given by official and authorities of their area directly in person or through public announcement, notices and posters etc.
The study shows that everyone of the people who were interviewed, were exposed different kind of media. These tribal community has very less access to the newspapers or other kind of print media at their own place. 7 out of 10 are exposed to print media which includes newspaper and magazines. Television has the considerable presence in these tribal settlement. They have DTH channels distributed by different companies like Airtel, Reliance, Tata Sky, DishTV with different monthly packages. Largely the tribals consider the television as a source of entertainment only. But the youth are exposed to various kind of information gained by watching television. The elderly people watch television to to pass their time and frequently they don\’t even understand the the idea behind the programs. Every household except one or two has television set at their home and everyone watch television everyday. Those who don\’t have television at their home they go to watch television at someone else\’s place for some specific programs. They do not have access to Internet but some of the youth who lives outside the village generally in a town on moved to Mumbai for the purpose of education or searching employment opportunities have access to Internet therefore they were also exposed to popular social media such as Facebook and Whatsapp. Among the modern media components films and daily soaps on family drama are the largest watched media programs.
Analysis
On interviewing and talking with these tribal people living at village it was found that they were moderately influenced by media and specially the television. Television becomes a part of their daily life and they regularly watch television as the only source of entertainment. The women in the family primarily watch daily soap operas. Some popular programs such as Kumkum Bhygya, Raja Rani, Jamai Raja etc are being watched on regular basis with every update. The men in the family generally accompany the family while watching these serials but they prefer news channels, films and sports specially cricket matches. The whole family primarily the children and young members sometimes watch educational channels such as Discovery and National Geographic and music channels. There is no electricity in most of the household so they steal it from main between evening to early morning. Therefore the television watching is generally from 7pm to 12 am at night. The media has a considerable influence on their public sphere. The men after coming back from work generally meet at the place near the bus stop on main road. There they discuss experiences and the daily activities. Also they talk about whatever is going on around with the reference to news they saw on television. They make exchange of information and forms opinions on that and sometime argues over it. They also discusses about various government scheme and political scenario. It also helps them to getting out out of exploitation. For example once there was an increase of price of Spices by government so the PDS distributer in the village also increases it but when the prices were down he didn\’t decreases. The tribals didn\’t knew that so they keep purchasing on the same increased prices. One day one of the respondent watch a news about such prices on television and then he confronted the distributer who is an upper caste, about the prices and ultimately making him to decrease the price. On the other hand the women in the village while working together or while washing their cloths on the river discusses about the events going on in their favorite serials. The topic are generally revolving around the updates about latest episodes, family problems or clashes in the serials, the dresses and jewelry etc. It was also observed that sometimes these women have argument over the their favorite serials about their popularity, latest updates and taking side of a particular characters. Here we can see a an example of public sphere and how it is getting influenced by media either in a positive or negative way. The another things is that we can observe media imperialism in the television broadcast and how the foreign media content getting popularised within these kind of audiences. For example people watch programs on Discovery and National Geographic channel and they also like watching Hollywood movies specially action category, which are dubbed in Hindi language. They watch it without understanding the idea or concept behind it and only as an entertainment. The most important thing is that there is a huge impact of advertisement over the minds of these people and a increasing consumerism. It affects their socio-economic way of living life. Taking an example of television itself, many of the respondents have small medium sized CRT colour television at their homes but they saw the advertisement of large LED or LCD TVs so now they were desiring to buy that kind of television. It is case about many of products such as cloths, footwear, mobiles, vehicles, home appliances and many more. On an average they spent around Rs. 500 per month on television through without having knowledge of the actual recharge rates and packages. They are not so enthusiastic to save money for their basic needs such as educating children, health-care, for getting authentic electricity connection but they saves money for buying these things along with spending money on DTH television channels. Having these things at their home is also seen as a symbol of social status among them.
Conclusion
Mass Media is an important for the functioning of society and an economy. Media such as television helps the people to establish their views and sometimes clarify their thought process and opinions about everything. Television is an important tool in the whole public broadcasting system. The basic role of television is to educate and keep informed the people and now it is primarily seen as a main source of entertainment. It has its positive as well as negative influences on the tribal people and it is now fully integrated with their lifestyle or we can say that their life is integrated with television.
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Web. Link :- http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/552/668
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