Public Relations in Grassroots Innovation

Dr. Manoj Lodha* Prof. Shashikant

Bhagat** Ms. Anita Dhami***

Abstract:

Public Relations have been an integral part of human communications, since time immoral. It developed as an art and science in the 20th century. Today, there is no sector, whether it be Government, Private or NGOs, who do edgy in their operations. The ever escalating cost of advertising too has contributed to the significant growth of this industry.

While Public Relations, known by other sophisticated names such as advocacy, spin doctor, spin in-spin out etc, has immensely contributed towards highlighting socio-cultural issues, development affairs, exploring the innovative inventions, maintaining and harnessing the organization goodwill in the market. As far as grassroots innovators are concerns they do have knowledge abundance, and some want to use this knowledge to try things out. Public Relations is the tool to promote and explore those knowledge abundance across the human being.

Keywords: Grassroots Innovation, Innovators Public Relation Inventions, Innovation.

*-HOD, Department of Journalism, HNGU, Patan, Gujarat, India

**-Faculty, National Institute of Mass Communication and Journalism, Ahmedabad

***-PR Executive, SETU PR, Ahmedabad

Introduction:

Communication is the basic needs of the society. There are various means, medium and model of communication have been developed across all sections of society. ‘Communication’ (together with its twin ‘information’) is perhaps one of the most hyped words in contemporary culture. It encompasses a multitude of experiences, actions and events, as well as a whole variety of happenings and meanings, and technologies too. Thus, a conference or a meeting or even a mela or procession is a ‘communication event’, newspapers, radio, video and television are ‘communication technologies”, and journalists, advertisers, public relations personnel, and even camera crew and news-readers are ‘communication professionals”.

Public Relations (PR) can be defined as the practice of conveying messages to the public through the media on behalf of a client, with the intention of changing the public’s actions by influencing their opinions. It is a systematic effort to create and maintain goodwill of an organization’s various publics (customers, employees, investors, suppliers, etc) usually through publicity and other non- paid forms of communication. These efforts may also include support of arts, charitable causes, education, sporting, events, etc. PR practitioners usually target only certain segments of the public, since similar opinions tend to be shared by a group of people rather than an entire society. However, by targeting different audience with different messages to achieve an overall goal, PR practitioners can achieve widespread opinion and behavior change.

Public relations help our complex, pluralistic society to reach decisions and function more effectively by contributing to mutual understanding among groups and institutions. It serve to bring private and public policies into harmony. Public relations help organizations manage changes, something they must do to stay competitive and efficient. But since change is threatening and often resisted smooth transition through a necessary change guided by public relations professionals is a real money- saver. As a management function, public relations encompass the following:

i) Anticipating analyzing and interpreting public opinion, attitudes, and issues that might impact, for good or ill, the operations and plans of the organizations.

ii) Counseling management at all levels in the organization with regard to policy decisions, courses of action and communication, taking into account their public ramifications and the organization’s social or citizenship responsibilities.

iii) Researching, conducting, and evaluating on a continuing basis, programs of action and communication to achieve the informed public understanding necessary to success of an organization’s aim. These may include marketing, financial, fund raising, employee, community or government relations, and other programs.

iv) Planning and implementing an organization’s efforts to influence or change public policy. Setting objectives, planning, budgeting, recruiting and training staff, developing facilities-in short, managing the resources needed to perform all of the above.

Public relations do seek to persuade people. It can influence what you buy, how you use a product and what you do to improve your health. Yet the average person may have no real idea of how omnipresent public relations is in their lives. In fact, most people do not know what public relations and Critics warn us that the hidden public relations industry is a danger and that stealth is a strategic choice. A public relations is unseen largely because people choose not to see it.

Public relations is just below the surface in our daily lives. We can realize its existence and potential influence on our lives if we critically examine the messages generated by public relations. Public relations should be able to survive thoughtful interrogations. Those who would abuse and misuse public relations should fear public relations literacy. The tricks of these charlatans could and should be exposed. With the evolution and development of new communication technology public relations has slightly shifted towards online and known as ‘online pr’ which covers almost all dimension of tools which connects the publics.

Review of Literature:

Innovation in developing countries is a wildly unappreciated phenomenon – there are incredibly interesting things going on in places like India, China and Brazil. Some of them are built around finding innovative ways to provide goods and services to poorer people at much lower costs. Turning ideas into new products, services or practices often requires systematic steps in a process of innovation. Aravind Eye Care and the Tata Nano car are just two good examples of how this works. Mr.Gupta who is a founder of Grassroots Innovation Said Grassroots Innovation is normal, useful and creative way of solving the solution of bottom level people. He is not approaching poor people as consumers, but as inventors.

Grassroots-level, alternative innovation activities recognize the ingenious solutions continually developed locally to improve livelihoods and promote sustainability. Rooting innovation in local problems, resources, capabilities and socioeconomic conditions makes it meaningful to communities, which maintain control over the processes and outcomes.

Grassroots innovation requires adaptable, locally inclusive policies — quite different to the mainstream.

Development organizations, funders, governments and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) recently put grassroots innovation back on the agenda. But for practitioners, it never really went away. Many networks have supported it since the 1970s or earlier, when organizations like the Intermediate Technology Development Group (founded in 1966, now called Practical Action) and the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation drew initial attention to grassroots innovation as part of an alternative to the high-technology and large-scale industrialization dominating development theory and practice.

Diversity of grassroots innovation in terms of technologies, people involved, organizations, purposes and contexts makes it difficult to define. Overlapping terms such as user-led innovations, inclusive innovation, social innovation and hacking cultures can add to confusion. But there is one defining characteristic: grassroots innovation must emerge from, or be directed towards, local development.

Grassroots innovations develop through networks of activists, practitioners and organizations generating novel, bottom-up solutions for sustainable development, solutions that respond to the local situation and communities' knowledge, interests and values. Grassroots innovation can be viewed from three distinct perspectives, each focusing on a different part of the process. The local ingenuity perspective focuses on innovations from local groups or individual inventors. They might be farmers developing irrigation systems or drivers developing gear trains for their cycle rickshaws. The emphasis is on people innovating for themselves and their community, perhaps drawing upon traditional and indigenous knowledge, and occasionally turnings it into social enterprise, sometimes with outside help. Organizations such as the Honey Bee Network and complementary institutions seek out and help innovators documenting and developing knowledge, ideas and products, such as a pedal-powered washing machine and a compost aerator device.

A second perspective focuses on local empowerment resulting when communities and technology developers interact. Local groups may not be the innovators, but developers make sure they are fully included in adopting and benefiting from technology, which may even be mass-produced devices such as solar photovoltaic systems. In other cases, the technology is deliberately developed with community engagement in the design, manufacture, maintenance and operation. The emphasis here is on the innovation process as a tool or catalyst for developing capabilities, relationships and organizational partnerships useful to wider development processes such as generating revenues, improving security and livelihoods, and building organizational capacity.

The third perspective is more critical sometimes, dismissing support for small-scale initiatives and simple technology as romanticizing 'second-class' development. Grassroots innovation programme are seen as overly optimistic and failing to address the root political,

economic and social causes of poverty, social exclusion and unsustainability — causes that cannot be changed by working at the local level. Grassroots innovation does little to address the distribution of power in trade and investment, or the knowledge economies that channel scientific activities towards the interests of the wealthy and those controlling capital. But supporters of grassroots innovation counter that bottom-up activity makes these sometimes unjust economic and social structures all the more visible, and itself serves as criticism of the exclusions associated with conventional innovation systems.

Grassroots innovators are generating valuable knowledge and experience. The challenge for scientific research institutions or conventional innovators is to learn how to engage with that diversity.

Among the available literature, The Author of the book title “Enabling Enterprise Transformation” by Nagy K. Hanna (2010) traces that in a turbulent global economy, rocked by market, technological and financial disruptions, innovation and transformation have become a matter of survival. We live in an increasingly networked, interdependent, fragile and unstable planet. To ensure sustainability and prosperity, economies and societies must become smarter. Windows of opportunities are multiplying, but getting shorter. Agility is at a premium. Possibilities must be explored and expanded by driving all forms of innovation. Accelerated and orchestrated product, process and business model innovations have become essential to capture the new opportunities. And making innovation work means aligning knowledge and innovation platforms with business strategy and managing the accompanying institutional change and learning.

According to Prof. Anil Gupta (2000) in his remarkable search on grassroots innovation and mentioned title “Grassroots Movements” under author of the “Village in the future” by Detlef Virchow and Joachim Von Barun stated that the grassroots movements can be seen as a means of improving participation in decision making by the rural development activities can their sustainability be ensured. The key impacts of grassroots movements have been (a) the increased economic emancipation and social integration of specific sections of the population (women and youth) into the society as well as the acceptance of the rural population in general, (b) pressure on the state for becoming more accountable towards the urges of the people at grassroots, and modify policies accordingly, (c) make research and development systems more sensitive to the problems of the people at grassroots, (d) help rural poor become actors in their own development and (e) learn from the innovations and solutions developed by grassroots innovators on their own without outside help. As has recently been seen, grassroots movements also play a significant part in fostering good governance at the national and international levels.

Grassroots innovation is a further investment in a better rural future. The emphasis is on what people already know in rural areas, on their knowledge systems, and on their ways of doing things. It looks at their already existing capacities for innovation, for producing new ways of thinking and of acting, new technologies, new ways of marketing, etc. the idea is to make the

rural societies dynamic not through the process of receiving knowledge either through modern communication technologies or through formal systems of education but through the creation of new systems of knowledge based on local perspectives, on already existing systems of knowledge and on local capacities for innovation.

Objectives:

This study aims to find out:

1. Awareness about grassroots innovation among people at all levels.2. Public Relations and its effectiveness to create awareness and bridging gap between three

entities i.e. Innovators, Organizations and Entrepreneurs. 3. Concerns over to not reaching to the people despite of doing different information

diffusion media tools and tactics.

Research Design and Methodology:

The research design helps to draw inference from the outcomes. In keeping view of extensive secondary resources available for the research, we have taken up some 100 sample which comprises PR professionals, PR agencies, Grassroots Innovators, general publics, scientist, and professors which they are directly or indirectly somewhere connected with grassroots innovators. Questionnaire survey, telephonic interview, personal meeting methods have been taken during data and response collected period. It took 2 and half months to conclude the final study.

Results and Discussion:

India is a country where everything are diversified in nature which comprise in states, cast, culture, religion and most strong in value systems. The country where still 70% of people lives in rural area where there ideas are generated from roots and that transform into development, used in various sectors by the government, non-government, private & public, individual and collective entrepreneurs. One of the root area is grassroots innovations where rural technologies are used by farmers and villagers who have devised creative solutions to address their basic needs for food, shelter and sanitation. SRISTI and Honeybee Network, which is part of National Innovation, which supports grassroots innovations of India has compiled a database 10,000 inventions and patents approx1,50,000 pioneered by rural entrepreneurs, especially in rural areas.

Now, it is strongly believe that the only way India can sustain its long-term economic growth is by unleashing and harnessing the creativity of its grassroots inventions which lives in rural areas. But, there is challenge that these innovative inventions have not getting momentum and space in government and

entrepreneurs’ sphere. What is missing here is lack of awareness and mechanism to cross-pollinate and scale up these bright and nexus ideas among India’s 6, 00,000 villagers and over 250 million agriculture community.

Finds and observations are making here a strong points that there should be more focused on grassroots innovations awareness and awakening which fosters, motivate and persuade to adopt grassroots inventions. The persistent and dedicated work of NIF under Prof. Anil Gupta and his leadership requires more exploration in his documented fields such as agriculture, animal and human medicines, herbal drugs, mechanical devices, rural technologies from the informal and unorganized sector of rural people. There should be space given in all mass media through which news, views and information to reach out to all people of country living in various in parts and the world too.

An attempt to make from this dissertation to find out where is the loophole in mass awareness. From the study we have seen that television and newspapers and internet media are still favorites among people choice. But all forms of media, PR agencies, PR Consultant needs to focus on exploring such unique inventions.

Last but not the least I would recommend that various tools which are used in awareing grassroots innovations but four key essential areas in mass media like technology, content, access and awareness are needs more attention in grassroots innovations.

FORMAT OF QUESTIONNAIRE

FOR GENERAL PUBLIC

Title : Role of Public Relation in Grassroots Innovations

Name:Age:Gender: Female MaleStatus: Married UnmarriedEducation:Occupation:

1. Which medium do you access more?

Television Web Newspaper RadioMagazine Mobile

Any OtherWhich Medium do you use for gaining information?

Newspaper Book Web TelevisionMagazine Radio All

2. Have you ever heard about Public Relations (PR)?Yes No

3. What according to you is Public Relation?PR is a mutual relationship between organization and people.PR is just a publicity or propaganda and moreover advertisement No IdeaSomething Else

4. Do you know Public Relations tools? Yes No5. If Yes then name few6. Do you know about Grassroots Innovation? Yes No7. Have you ever read the column “Minds of the Margin” writes by Prof. Anil

Gupta in DNA Newspaper on every Sunday? Yes No 8. How do you come to know about Grassroots Innovation?

Newspaper Magazine/Newsletter Pamphlets / Periodicals / Journals Govt/NGO Events Any Other_________

9. Do you aware of an event which organized by SRISTI? Yes No Specify the Impact:_________

10.Have you ever visited any event which is being conducted by SRISTI? Yes No Specify the Impact:_________

*********************************************

FOR GRASSROOTS INNOVATORS AND NGO’S INVOLVED

Title : Role of Public Relation in Grassroots Innovations

Name:Age:Gender: Female Male

Status: Married UnmarriedEducation:Occupation:

1. Do you know what Public Relations is? Yes No 2. Do you think Public Relations play an important role for building image of

any organization? Yes No3. How frequently do you approach to media?

Once in a Month Twice in a month In a week In 6 month4. Where do you find difficulty for aware people about Grassroots Innovations?

5. Do you find any impact through an event organized in PRSI Ahmedabad Chapter? Good Bad Average Excellence

6. Which medium do you use more for approaching to masses? Newspaper Television Radio Magazine Web Newsletter Pamphlet Any Other

7. What way do you like to read “Minds of the Margin” which published in daily newspaper DNA on every Sunday? Content wise Editorial wise Circulation wise Any Other

8. Do you find any impact through “Minds of the Margin” by Prof. Anil Gupta? Yes No

9. How frequently do you organize events? Once in a month Twice in a month Once in a 3 month Any other

10.Do you feel that there is need of better communication Strategy to create more awareness among people about Grass Root Innovation? Yes No

***********************************

On the basis of above questionnaire we took responses from 100 respondents for both questionnaire-1 and 2 about the Grassroots Innovation. All the respondents from different walks of life like Business men, Journalist and PR Professionals, Professors, Collage and University students, Innovators, NGO and Research Scholars.

FINDINGS & ANAYLSIS FROM THE QUESTIONNAIRE-1 i.e. RESPONSES FROM THE GENERAL PUBLIC:

1. Which medium do you access more?

Television Web Newspaper RadioMagazine Mobile

Any Other

MediumRespondent

T.V 15 Web 24Newspaper 23Radio 3Magazine 3Mobile 20Other 0

17%

27%

26%

3%

3%

23%

RespondentT.V Web Newspaper RadioMagazine Mobile Other

Table-1

From the total 100 responses about the media access TV, Web, Newspapers, and Mobile are the favorites among all available media. Radio, Magazine and other media are still finding their ways to reach out the people.

2. Which Medium do you use for gaining information?Newspaper Book Web TelevisionMagazine Radio All

Medium RespondentNewspaper 19

Book 6

Web 26

Radio 2

Magazine 5

T.V 12

All 9

24%

8%

33%3%

6%

15%

11%

RespondentNewspaper Book Web RadioMagazine T.V All

Table-2

In information technology age people are more reluctant to access web, newspapers and TV media for getting information than the radio, magazine and other media. There are also witness that 9% of people prefer to access all available media which alarming more attention to lure people to watch.

3. Have you ever heard about Public Relations (PR)?Yes No

95%

5%

Respondent

Yes No

Table-3

40 people know about the public relations among all respondent which very less in our country and more attention is required to put in forward for visualizing the importance of public relations.

PR Awareness RespondentYes 40No 2

4. What according to you is Public Relations?PR is a mutual relationship between organization and people.PR is just a publicity or propaganda and moreover advertisement No IdeaSomething Else

PR AwarenessRespondent

PR is a mutual relations 33PR is just Publicity/ Propaganda/Advertisement 5 No Idea 2

83%

13%

5%

RespondentPR is a mutual relations PR is just Publicity/ Propaganda/Advertisement No Idea

Table-4

PR has a wide definition which includes media masses, organization, government, NGOs etc.

Public Relations is unpaid form of communication and has a direct relations with the public.

Public Relations is bridge between the organization and media.

5. Do you know Public Relations tools? Yes No

PR Awareness RespondentYes 34No 10

77%

23%

RespondentYes No

Table-5

This is a very great significant that from the above diagram 77% of respondent knows tools of public relations which shows that people somewhere uses public relations personally and professionally to express news, views and information.

6. If Yes then name few

In response to naming few tools through which they come across are:

Press Conference Personal Interaction Press Releases News Articles Magazines Web/New Media specially social media networking Newspapers Television Event Press Note Journals Interview Media/Press Visit Newsletters House Journals Outdoor Publicity Brochure, Pamphlet. Seminar and mouth publicity

From the above listed tools, it can be said that people very aware about the role and functioning of pr tools which is indeed a great extent.

7. Do you know about Grassroots Innovation? Yes No

GRI Awareness RespondentYes 33No 14

70%

30%

RespondentYes No

Table-6

It is good to see that 70% of respondent know about the grassroots innovation while remaining 30% of respondent are of the opinion that they heard about grassroots or jugaad technology but how it is an innovation, this is not clear in their mind.

8. Have you ever read the column “Minds of the Margin” writes by Prof. Anil Gupta in DNA Newspaper on every Sunday? Yes No

NOTE: “Minds of the Margin” is column appeared on DNA every Sunday writes by Prof. Anil Gupta.

31%

69%

RespondentYes No

Table-7

Minds of the Margin Respondent

Yes 13

No 29

“Minds of the Margin” is a regular column which appeared on every Sunday in daily newspaper known as “DNA” published from Ahmedabad edition. He focused to explore new ideas about the grassroots innovation which he gathered from his “Shodh Yatra” and through some other initiatives. 69% of the respondent read that column to know about recent updates in this field. So far as his column is concerned he wrote 77 columns till to-date (retrieved from DNA website on 10/06/2012) in DNA.

9. How do you come to know about Grassroots Innovation? Newspaper Magazine/Newsletter Pamphlets / Periodicals / Journals Govt/NGO Events Any Other

22%

11%

7%

59%

RespondentNewspaper Magazine/NewsletterPamphlets/ Periodicals/JournalsGovt/NGO Events

Table-8

From the above diagram it has shown that event is one of the favorable tool through which grassroots innovation could put forward in display and exhibit to more people. 59% and 22% respondents respectively feel that event and Govt. and NGOs are more conducive platform to create awareness about grassroots innovation among people.

Medium which awares GRI

Respondent

Newspaper 6Magazine/Newsletter 3Pamphlets/Periodicals/Journals 0Govt/NGO 2Events 16

10.Do you aware of an event which organized by SRISTI? Yes No Specify the Impact:_________

Events Organized By SRISTI RespondentYes 15No 28

35%

65%

RespondentYes No

Table-9

From the above table-9 it reveals that 35% are aware with an event organized by the SRISTI whereas 65% are not aware with an event conducted b y SRISTI. Recently we have seen that Food Festival and PRSI Ahmedabad Chapter have conducted seminar to talk about the Grassroots Innovation and invited Professor Anil Gupta, later on it has seen that some of the volunteers joined hands to work with SRISTI.

11.Have you ever visited any event which is being conducted by SRISTI? Yes No Specify the Impact:_________

Events Visited by People

Respondent

Yes 18No 25

42%

58%

RespondentYes No

Table-10

As table 9 shown that people have know some of the event organized by SRISTI. Now in this table 58% respondent have visited SRISTI events to know, feel and observed various technology and techniques used in Grassroots innovation. Only 42% respondents have not visited any of an event which alarms that campaign, publicity, and branding have not been used extensively to create awareness.

FINDINGS & ANAYLSIS FROM THE QUESTIONNAIRE-2 i.e. RESPONSES FROM GRASSROOTS INNOVATION:

1. Do you know what Public Relation is? Yes No

Awareness about PR

Respondent

Yes 19No 2

86%

14%

RespondentYes No

Table-11

From the above table which shows that 86% people from grassroots innovations knows about public relations while 14% are not aware with the concept of public relations. The people who don’t know about PR may assume that they might be using in some other way but technically they don’t know.

2. Do you think Public Relations play an important role for building image of any organization? Yes No

PR build image of the company

Respondent

Yes 18No 3

Table-12

As public relations is an image building tool for a company or an organization. Interestingly respondent also accepted that PR plays an important and pivotal role in sustaining and maintaining harmonious relationship between people and the organization. As far as grassroots innovation is concern SRISTI and allied organization uses the frequent popular tools to disseminate the information about what’s going in / out in the organization. But, here also be noted that 14% people may or may not agree in influence power of PR which is to be a concern and that has also to be taken care.

86%

14%

RespondentYes No

3. How frequently do you approach to media? Once in a Month Twice in a month In a week In 6 month

Approach to Media

Respondent

Once in a Month 1Twice in a month 1In a week 10In a 6 month 2

7%

7%

71%

14%

RespondentOnce in a Month Twice in a month In a week In a 6 month

Table-13

From the above table-13, shown that 72% people use and approach in a week to see, share and talk about the grassroots innovation is good in exploration of the innovators’ innovations. While rest of the respondent says that approaching to the media depends upon the requirement of the organization’s activity.

4. Where do you find difficulty to aware people about Grass Root Innovation?

All those people who have been associated and actively engaged with grassroots innovations directly or indirectly are having following opinions while finding difficulties in awaring the people:

Sensitizing planner / Policy Maker / Academicians and Researchers Means to create awareness to people about grassroots innovations are very

limited and not affordable. Multi-Language database. Access to the channel which communicates Grassroots Innovation. The concept of grassroots innovation might be communicated incorrectly or

misunderstood. Pre-conceive notion that grassroots innovations are not useful or important. Yes, people know about innovation but to understand grassroots innovations,

people takes much time and understand slowly and steadily. Takes time to reach out and accept people about Grassroots Innovations (GRI). Convincing people about GRI is difficult task. Difficult to explain in their language. Needs to design innovating mass tools which every people understand it

irrespective of their geography boundary and to touch to their feet, heart and mind tools about GRI.

It’s difficult for entrepreneur to take GRI forward and encourage people for its usability.

The above comments from respondents reveal that still massive and guerilla kind of promotional activities required to create more and more awareness among people and entrepreneurs to take this forward so that feel that indigenous things are living among us.

5. Do you find any impact through an event organized in PRSI Ahmedabad Chapter?

Good Bad Average Excellence

Impact Through PRSI

Respondent

Good 3Bad 0Average 8Excellent 1

25%

67%

8%

RespondentGood Bad Average Excellent

Table-14

Above diagram shows that 67% people find average impact through different organized events organized by SRISTI and rest are having different impact in mix of good, bad and excellent.

6. Which medium do you use more for approaching to masses? Newspaper Television Radio Magazine Web Newsletter Pamphlets Any Other

Medium Use for Approaching

Respondent

Newspaper 15T.V 15Radio 6Magazine 5Web 8Newsletter 7Pamphlets 5Any Other 4

23%

23%

9%8%

12%

11%

8%6%

RespondentNewspaper T.V Radio MagazineWeb Newsletter Pamphlets Any Other

Table-15

Again here newspaper and television are most frequent medium which is also useful in disseminating information about grassroots innovations. Other available media require more attention to feel that gap and efforts should be put from both mass media and organizations involved in grassroots innovations.

7. What way do you like to read “Minds of the Margin” which published in daily newspaper DNA on every Sunday?

Content wise Editorial wise Circulation wise Any Other

Selection Of DNA For Minds Of The Margin

Respondent

Content Wise 11Editorial wise 1Circulation Wise 2Any Other 1

73%

7%

13%

7%

RespondentContent Wise Editorial wise Circulation Wise Any Other

Table-16

“Content is the king of contemporary media” which again here reflecting that 73% of the respondent likes to read the content of the minds of the margin. But here are some respondent who feels that it should appear in national and vernacular language too so that it can reach out to many people and media must give some space.

8. Do you find any impact through “Minds of the Margin” by Prof. Anil Gupta? Yes No

Impact Through Minds of the margin

Respondent

Yes 15No 2

88%

12%

RespondentYes No

Table-17

Regular reader of the column are of the opinion that yes it does impact on the reader’s mind which quite interesting to visualize that column and advertorial and editorial are important tools in public relations which creates favorable opinion about goods and services. Here 12% of respondent do not much like to read the column which might draw some reasons towards language, technical words and not adjusting in the reader’s mind.

9. How frequently do you organize event? Once in a month Twice in a month Once in a 3 month Any other

Frequency of organizing events Respondentonce in a month 11Twice in a month 5Once in a 3 month 0Any Other 3

58%26%

16%

Respondentonce in a month Twice in a month Once in a 3 month Any Other

Table-18

People who active in grassroots innovation with the organizations saying that events and promotion activities are organizes monthly wise in every corner of the country to create awareness among all people about grassroots innovations but it is just occupying 58% which requires more attention of that by organizing every 15 days wise depending on the place and people participation.

10.Do you feel that there is need of better communication Strategy to create more awareness among people about Grass Root Innovation?

Yes No

Need for better communication Strategy

Respondent

Yes 20No 1

95%

5%

RespondentYes No

Table-19

95% of the respondent says that they feel that more and more awareness needed in grassroots innovation and different-different communication strategies should be deployed depending on the nature of communication programme.

Conclusion and Recommendations: Some more suggestions and recommendations proposing in context to media communication mix which invariably construe towards the public relations tools:

To take it forward my suggestions I would like to give some inputs which have collected orally by Dr. Nitin Maurya with personal talk and he said that:

resource people are not multi-tasking to meet deadline with media to transmit messages/information to reach out at the right time to the public.Government machineries are also supporting us but we want more involvement so that grassroots innovations reach to all level of publics.We receive general queries and feedback through rediff.com, telephone calls, e-mails and some of print publications.Entrepreneurs do come to approach us for seeking new product development with grassroots techniques and if they find to fit in their requirements they adopt and purchase.We (SRISTI) also participate in the exhibition at local, national and international level for displaying our innovations so, that people come to know and ask their inner most queries on the spot.We choose the mass medium to diffuse information according to the technology and likely to accept by maximum people.One thing he interestingly insisted that while asking about using of traditional media that we do not use frequent such medium, we used in the past and developed some folk lore and folk songs during our shodh yatra.We have not participated in rural market but used road side market, rural fair, roadside meeting only during the shodh yatra.

Some more suggestions: -

After knowing different facts which are based on my dissertation and some of the inside-outside conversations with people who are directly or indirectly associated with the grassroots innovations, I must say that lot of efforts being put forwarded to disseminate the news, views and information about the innovations. But, there are need of some improvements in the areas of media and public relations. As the research findings says that still lot of people do not know about what is grassroots innovations, the reasons may be anything but the fact of matter is medium uses for information dissemination are not effectively been reaching out to the all people. There are almost all medium have been used in great extent to reach out to people but influence, pervasiveness and persuasion are not impacting them, may be due to language, technical words or due to inconsistency of messages.

But to overcome or to eliminate of these short comings I wish to propose some tools and techniques which are used in public relations:

1. Use of regular traditional medium like puppet shows, story telling, folk drama should be developed in all regional, national and international language so that people can understand easily and recognize the grassroots innovations.

2. Features and advertorial could play vital role and it must pass through all forms of mass media.

3. FTII, NSD, NFAI, Central and State Information Department and some research organizations should come forward to take the initiatives through their wings and aligned institutions.

4. Academic fraternity and students should take up some offline projects to come out with new findings.

REFERNCES: Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions

(SRISTI) NATIONAL INNOVATION OF FOUNDATION (NIF) Tripathy Manoranjan, Public Relations Bridging Technologies and Monitoring

Public & The Media, Chapter-1, Page-No 1&2, Authors Press Publisher of Scholarly Book, Delhi, 2011

Indra Gandhi National Open University, Principles and Functions of Public Relations 2, Unit-3 Function of Public Relation Structure Page-39.

Reddi C.V.Narasimha, Effective Public Relations and Media Strategy, Page-No 3,4,46,53,54,59, PHI Learning Private Limited, New Delhi, 2009

BIBLOGRAPY:

Levy Stuart, Public Relations and Integrated Communications, Lotus Press, New Delhi, 2009

Parthasarathy M.K, Corporate Communication, Apple Publishing International (P) Ltd, Chennai, 2010.

Fernandez Joseph, Corporate Communications, Response Books, New Delhi, 2004

Hanna Nagy K, Enabling Enterprise Transformation, Spring New York Dordrecht Heidelberg, London, 2010

Virchow Detlef and Barun Joachim Von, Village in the future, Spring New York Dordrecht Heidelberg, London, 2010.

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