Impact of education and mass media have been very important agents of social change and modernization in village India.
Education is a great leveller of social and economic strata. It has contributed to the growth of an intelligentsia, which is eager for social and cultural reforms. It has helped the educated sections of masses to break the barriers of tradition to adopt modernity. It has contributed significantly towards the empowerment of the weaker sections of the rural society.
Mass media such as radio, films and television hold a place of special importance in the life of village India. In the face of rampant illiteracy it has proved itself to be an agent of social change in the absence of books. Under the conditions of mass illiteracy only the traditional media such as folkdance, drama and puppetry used to be the main channels for dissemination of information, ideas and entertainment. But the technological innovations facilitated the entry of modem forms of mass media. the radio has already covered more than 95 percent of rural population “‘.’bile more than 60 percent of the population has come under television coverage, both reaching the people in different regional languages. In many rural areas tea stalls happen to be the symposia grounds for rural people where they discuss the information they receive through radio and television. These have emerged as popular instruments through which information about fertilizers, seeds, insecticides, cropping pattern, new goods and services, new living patterns etc. are disseminated to the people living even in far-flung villages.
Television has proved very helpful especially for school teaching and for agricultural improvement programme. through a number of programmes new values and new ideas are adopted but at the same time through religio-mythological programmes irrational values may also be perpetuated and superstitions strengthened. Films are another effective audio visual medium of entertainment and dissimination of ideas. It has also promoted change in dress pattern, hairstyle, spoken language, mannerism and social norms. The ‘touring talkies’ are a familiar sight in rural India. The extent to which social change being influenced by all the minor and major technological innovations is for anybody to guess.