Development Communication- Seminar At NBA Group of Institutions

A vast array of responsive, social change which is required on the challenging situation of India were presented by the guest lecturer in NBA Scool of Mass communication by Co-Founder of BallotBoxPrasad “Rakesh Prasad” .While some stamina was needed to sit through what was quite a lengthy presentation, it was worthwhile to hear astute observations and to see some examples of insightful  consideration of his experience in development communication model in India.

The lecture opened with an overview of Rakesh’s  career, including his education, overseas experiences, a decade of wall street and financial technology experience, now conceptualizing ballotboxindia.com, a platform where deep research meets democracy and get supported with right tech. for larger impact. He then shared his observations about communication practice in India, particularly New Delhi, Gurgaon. The main focus of the lecture was on his projects, including the Janmela and Gurgaon floods interwoven with his personal beliefs and his creative processes. Much like the structure of the lecture itself, Rakesh described his creative processes as eclectic, non-linear and involving much improvisation.

Rakesh describes India as a place where so often development is the top priority. Its practices tend to be very developer driven giving opportunity for creative discourse, resulting in collaboration of creativity and sensitivity. In describing his own projects, he emphasized the inspiration he finds in other creative fields such as literature, music, visual arts and Marketing and Advertisement. Rakesh also drew parallels between the value of improvisation which is needed in both Communication and creativity but emphasized that it is not as effortless as it may appear.Much like a jazz musician needs considerable training, skill and confidence to spontaneously improvise a composition, same happens with Development.

As well said “Rome was not built in a day” in order to achieve that moment we need to combine all our resources.

Learning from efforts such as Rakesh’s to foster a creative discourse in other cities, we may have a better chance of living up to our own  aspirations.