RTV Theory and Practice - Special Issue

contribution in the rural есопоту by ignoring them in the rural programs . Whatever programs on women аге produced, they have limited scope and tend to portray women in the role of housewives in order to reinforce their traditional role . This undermines their role as an active labor force in the rural society . PBC offers a number of programs on the urban youth anđ students, but rural youth and children are not considered . The integration of the rural youth and children with their immediate environment - their culture , folk traditions and their historical past and their participation in rural festivals is totally ignored in the rural broadcasts . Because rural areas in the country represent a wide range of linguistic diversity in dialects and slang even within the folds of one language , this điversity is not reflected in the rurai broadcasts to preserve an overall plural outlook . Inclusion of few loca! languages in rural programs discourages the audience participation in these programs . Poor feedback and lack of research facilities at PBC fails to integrate the audience with the programs actually meant for them. Some ef f orts to include listeners through answers to their letters anđ broadcasting thelr lnterviews have been encouraging for the audience participation , but a more, concerted effort is needed to achieve more audience participation in rural programs . RUROAWARENESS: THE NEW STRATEGV Evidently , all rural development projects in Pakistan have met similar conseguences of limited achievements and frustrating results . Neglect of structural and cultural conđitions was the most significant of, the тапу reasons behind failure of these projects . All development programs f гот Village Aid to Basic Оетосгасу and from People's Works Program to Integrateđ Rural Development Program ignored existing condltions and the llmited resources available to the poor farmer . Planners assumed that rural development could be achieved by the central control and saturatmg of inputs . Obviously , this limited approach led to the dumping of all rural development programs with very limited gains in the field . People's Participation in these projects coulđ not be achieveđ . Actually they were not allowed to participate in the programs because only the elites had access to extension workers . This created a wide communication gap between the target audience and planners .

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