Sohini is responsible for
leading sustainability-related communications, advocacy and knowledge
management among Tata group companies globally as well as for key external
stakeholders. She holds a Master of Arts in International Relations from
Presidency College, Calcutta and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Strategic
Communications from the London School of PR, UK.
Sohini has over 15 years of
experience in building and implementing large scale strategies in behaviour
change communication, public affairs and evidence based advocacy across India,
Bangladesh, Egypt, West Bank/Gaza, Philippines and Nepal. She has previously
worked on child rights advocacy and partnerships at the UNICEF India Country
Office.
Prior to that she was a
communications specialist for a 10-year operations research programme in
reproductive health. Her role focused on translating research evidence for
policy and programme development funded by USAID, and implemented by Population
Council in Asia and the Near East region.
In her spare time she
enjoys pursuing Indian classical dance, reading art and writing
poetry.
Why
is good communication important in the development field?
I’ve had a very long
background working in the development sector--from UNICEF for many years and before
that
with Population Council working on advocacy and communication
(particularly policy advocacy and behavior change). Now
I’m in a different world, but I believe
it’s very important to have communications in the development field because
it’s a leveller,
particularly in a context like South Asia, where there is so much inequity and
disparity. Communication provides the
information to bridge gaps: between urban and rural, between the haves and the
have-nots. Information is very powerful, and it can be a tool for strategic development.
I was part of
a team that worked very closely on communications about polio
when I was with UNICEF. The last recorded case was in West Bengal. WHO NPSP, along
with Rotary International and Government partners worked
overtime to make sure that communications were reaching the last mile in the
most disadvantaged communities, so that no child was left unimmunised to
the polio virus. We were finally able to make
India polio-free. It was, in large part because of sustained
behaviour change communications. There were a lot of
barriers, myths and misconceptions. In the polio case, we worked with religious
leaders and community influencers in order to impact communities and distribute
the polio vaccine. Communications played a
critical role in strengthening program development and
policy.
I also worked
towards devising communication strategies for eliminating
child marriage. It is shocking that in a country like India,
child marriage is still very much a part of the reality: girls are being
married as early as 13, 14, 15. One of the things we did with government in
West Bengal was to provide technical assistance to develop a
conditional cash transfer scheme—conditional cash transfers are nothing new,
they've happened in Africa and other parts of India—but I worked very closely
with the government to help develop a communications campaign with the
conditional cash transfer scheme (Kanyashree Prakalpa) to
communicate to girls the importance of staying in school and saying no to child
marriage. We worked with community based organizations, government counterparts,
teachers and parents, and a lot of community influencers.
 |
| Source: Al Jazeera |
When we look at changing
behaviors, you’re looking at changing social norms that have existed in places
for centuries. Parents knew that child marriage is illegal, but they were still
doing it--there was because if intergenerational cycles of poverty,
lack of livelihood options and a social license to marry off teenage girls
since it required less dowry. While putting
the strategy together we devised specific messages and interventions for all stakeholders
including, parents, elders and
community influencers.
I think in the
development space –a lot of the focus is on the programs, and supply side,
whether its medical interventions or skilling programs or
constructing toilets —the hardware. What
communications does is marry the
“software” with the “hardware.”
How
do you utilize new technologies?
We have more mobile
phones in our country than toilets, so ICTs are important tools for sure. There
have been a lot of technologies in the last several years that have been
developed by government, private sector, and UN agencies. TCS has an app which
enables fishermen in southern part of the country to be aware of weather and
make informed decisions. They also gave mkrishi that
gives
farmers information about markets, bridging the gap between the market and the
farmer. Tata Trusts have been doing a lot of innovative
work in health and education using information and communication technologies
to empower women and girls to make informed decisions about their education,
their health, and so forth. Governments in different countries I’ve worked with in Bangladesh,
Egypt, Nepal have
also used ICTs as a powerful tool for change.
What
are two or three best practices for communication in development?
1) Make role models out
of peers
or positive deviance with the child marriage or in
promoting feeding strategies for addressing severe acute malnutrition; the
role models out of girls or families
within that community speaks more powerfully when
someone in your own midst has actually shown that it
can be possible to bring change. We used
peer-to-peer kind of communications and behavior change tools quite
extensively.
2) Co-create sustainable
solutions with communities. To engage with communities,
you cannot just use a top-down approach. Otherwise, it will just be a model
that will work only as long as partners and donors are helping to fund and run
it, but it will not be sustainable if we just move out. It’s important for
communities to have ownership.
3) Work with government.
When you work on scale, you have to work with government, and that is an
undeniable truth. When we would develop models or best practices [at
UNICEF], we would have to scale up. That scaling up can only be done with
government partners. You have to involve government…from senior bureaucrats to
village level. They need to be engaged.
How
to communicate with communities?
1) Radio or edutainment
media: In my experience working in UNICEF, radio was a very powerful
medium. In some of the last mile areas where cable television is not as widely
available, community radio can become a very powerful medium. Another thing
that worked very well when I was at UNICEF was an edutainment-format serial.
2) Peer groups: Another
is self-help groups and peer-to-peer monitoring. Anything where you get women
and girls into groups, you empower women, you empower girls. You have these
clubs at school, too; we were working with children and the government to
create "child cabinets" in schools who would monitor programs in
schools like midday meal scheme, dropouts and absenteeism. Then, they would
report back to teachers and other officials who would go in and investigate
(e.g., if children had been sent off for labor or marriage).
3) Local solutions: It's
important to provide a safe place for community members to talk about issues
that require some very local strategies to address. You can look at very
specific solutions (that is, what is culturally viable for that region)—looking
at local arts and crafts to be able to translate that whole messaging (for
instance for the child marriage prevention initiative, we actually trained
local performers, developed kits in the local language, and got the performers
to travel distances across the village and propagate messages).
4) Linking up with
influencers: Amitabh Bachchan was the face of the polio campaign for a long
time at UNICEF also. It really changed the face of the campaign.
 |
| Amitabh Bachchan dispensing polio drops |
“Initially, we were not getting as many mothers and children as we wanted, to come to awareness camps. Then (ad guru) Piyush Pandey suggested that in my films I am known for speaking loudly, so why could I not talk in the same manner in the polio ads,” Mr. Bachchan told a gathering of polio workers.
When the ad began was aired, he added, in places where one or two mothers would come, 150 started coming. “When women were asked why, they replied that Amitabh ji has become angry. We came because we don’t want to anger him further.” (The Hindu)
With the child marriage and polio cases, we had to work very closely with religious influencers in the community. For child marriage: if there is no religious leader willing to perform the religious ritual (to get an underage girl married), then the marriage would not take place. Similarly, for the polio campaign, we worked with a lot of religious leaders who used their announcements in the mosques to ask families to make sure that their children were vaccinated.
Thanks to Sohini Roychowdhury and Tata Sustainability Group.
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