Revolutionizing Agriculture through SBCC: Case Studies of Empowerment and Innovation

In rural India, where millions of farmers still rely on age-old practices passed down through generations, information is not a luxury – it is a lifeline. When a farmer in Madhya Pradesh learns about disease-resistant seed varieties over the radio, or a smallholder in Bihar watches a real-time weather update on a dedicated farming channel, something profound shifts. Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBCC) – the strategic use of media, messaging, and community engagement to shift knowledge, attitudes, and practices – is quietly rewriting the story of Indian agriculture. At the heart of this transformation are two landmark initiatives: FM Kisan Vani and Kisan TV (DD Kisan).

What is SBCC and why does it matter for agriculture? 🔗

Before looking at specific case studies, it helps to understand what SBCC actually does. According to UNICEF’s SBC Guidance, the goal of SBCC is to change the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of target groups and stimulate social change at the local and national level. It is not just about broadcasting information – it is about crafting tailored messages that resonate with a specific audience, creating two-way communication for feedback, and measuring actual shifts in behaviour over time.

In agriculture, this translates directly to empowering farmers: moving them from reliance on inherited guesswork to informed, evidence-based decisions. Research published in Indian Journals confirms that mass media – television, radio, and print – plays a critical role in transferring agricultural technologies to farmers by narrowing the gap between scientific knowledge and its on-ground application. The challenge, however, has always been reach. India’s farming population is vast, geographically dispersed, and often speaks dozens of regional languages and dialects. That is exactly the problem that FM Kisan Vani and DD Kisan were designed to solve.

FM Kisan Vani: the voice of the village farmer 🔗

The story of FM Kisan Vani begins with a simple but powerful idea: bring the agricultural extension agent directly into the farmer’s home, every single day, in their own language. Kisan Vani CRS at 90.4 FM, set up by the Indian Society of Agribusiness Professionals (ISAP) in the Sironj block of Vidisha district, Madhya Pradesh, became the first community radio station established by an NGO in India specifically for agricultural community development. Within its broadcast limits, the station has an outreach potential of nearly 1,50,000 people.

But the reach of the Kisan Vani concept extends far beyond one community station. All India Radio’s Kisanvani initiative – launched on 15 February 2004 in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture – took this model nationwide. The scheme utilised the existing FM infrastructure of AIR across 96 rural FM stations, each producing locally specific, half-hour daily programmes six days a week. The approach was deliberately built on narrowcasting – delivering content tailored to a specific agro-climatic zone rather than broadcasting generic national content.

What Kisanvani actually broadcasts 🔗

The content model of Kisanvani is what makes it a true SBCC tool rather than a conventional radio programme. As documented by Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA), the programme’s primary goal is to educate farmers on scientific agricultural techniques – what it calls a “Lab to Land” approach – covering horticulture, animal husbandry, poultry farming, fisheries, rural banking, and self-employment schemes. Its format includes named segments such as Aaj Ka Bazar (today’s market prices), Aaj Ka Mausam (weather updates), Aaj Ke Kisan (an interview with a local farmer), and Desh Videsh (national and international agricultural news). This structured variety ensures that a farmer tuning in gets market intelligence, weather data, peer learning, and scientific advice all within thirty minutes.

The ISAP Kisan Vani at 90.4 FM takes this further with a unique cultural integration: it works with over eighty folk singers and maintains a repository of more than three hundred folk songs. Community Voices India describes how local artists compose thematically meaningful songs in traditional singing styles – including Rai, Ala, and Lahangi – to convey important messages about soil health, crop protection, and social issues. The station receives an average of 25 calls a day from farmers seeking advice and requesting songs, creating a genuine two-way communication loop – a core requirement of effective SBCC.

Impact on the ground: the Atalguda case 🔗

The real measure of any SBCC initiative is whether it changes behaviour. In the Koraput district of Odisha, a collaboration between All India Radio, the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), and the state Department of Agriculture produced a compelling case. MSSRF documents how progressive farmers from Atalguda village – a remote settlement of 79 households – shared their experiences on AIR’s Kisan Bani phone-in programme after adopting improved technologies for groundnut, black gram, and green gram cultivation. The adoption of quality seed selection, bio-fungicide treatment, and need-based fertilizer application led to stronger harvests and surplus produce that could be sold for income, directly improving livelihoods. Radio was the bridge that connected laboratory-validated techniques with farmers who previously had no access to extension services.

DD Kisan: agriculture goes prime time 🔗

If FM Kisan Vani represents the radio pillar of agricultural SBCC, DD Kisan is its television counterpart. Prasar Bharati launched DD Kisan on 26 May 2015 as India’s only 24/7 television channel fully dedicated to farmers. Owned by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and operated under Doordarshan, the channel’s stated objective is to serve the farming and rural community, reach the remotest parts of the country, and create a holistic environment for sustainable and inclusive growth. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has categorised it under the Infotainment genre, and it is a must-carry channel for every cable and Direct to Home (DTH) operator in India – ensuring it is accessible even in remote areas where buying a newspaper or attending an agricultural workshop is not practical.

DD Kisan did not emerge from nowhere. It built on a 58-year-old legacy. India’s agricultural television journey began on 26 January 1967, when Doordarshan launched Krishi Darshan, a 20-minute programme for farmers. According to Wikipedia, DD Kisan is itself described as the flagship evolution of that tradition – now delivering real-time information on new farming techniques, water conservation, and organic farming to a national audience around the clock.

What DD Kisan broadcasts and who it reaches 🔗

The channel’s programming is built around the farmer’s most pressing information needs. As described by the Press Information Bureau, DD Kisan keeps farmers informed about weather changes, global and local market fluctuations, and agricultural research developments, enabling them to make advance plans and timely decisions. Its content reinforces what agricultural scientists call the three-dimensional model of farming: balanced crop cultivation, animal husbandry, and plantation. In 2024, DD Kisan added a technological milestone: two AI anchors named AI Krish and AI Bhoomi, capable of delivering agricultural news in 50 Indian and foreign languages – a significant step toward breaking the language barriers that have historically excluded farmers in southern and northeastern India.

Research published by the Agricultural Extension in South Asia (AESA) network highlights the channel’s measurable contribution to agricultural extension – connecting farmers with government schemes, pest alerts, and market prices without any commercial agenda. It also documents a real-world example of SBCC in action: after learning about collective farming benefits through the channel, a group of farmers in one village formed a cooperative, which improved their collective bargaining power and gave them access to bulk discounts on seeds and fertilizers.

Limitations and the path forward 🔗

DD Kisan, like any SBCC initiative, is not without gaps. The AESA research also identifies that most programming is skewed toward Hindi-speaking states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh, while smaller states receive only 1-2% of coverage. Pulses, cash crops, and oilseeds receive comparatively limited airtime despite supporting millions of livelihoods. Fisheries, beekeeping, and sericulture – crucial for many smallholder incomes – also remain underrepresented. These are not fatal flaws, but they are important signals that SBCC tools, however well-intentioned, need continuous refinement through community feedback to avoid reinforcing existing inequalities.

The SBCC strategy behind both initiatives 🔗

What connects FM Kisan Vani and DD Kisan is not just their agricultural focus – it is their shared communication architecture. Both reflect core SBCC principles as defined by UNICEF India’s Communication for Development framework: they use tailored messaging specific to local agro-climatic contexts, deploy multiple media channels (radio, TV, and increasingly digital platforms), create two-way communication through phone-in programmes and farmer-participation segments, and work to make knowledge adoption a social norm rather than an individual burden. When a farmer on Aaj Ke Kisan shares how crop rotation doubled his yield, he is not just an interviewee – he is a positive deviant, a peer model whose success normalises the adoption of scientific techniques for thousands of listeners.

Both initiatives also reflect a commitment to local language inclusivity. Kisanvani programmes are broadcast in all major languages and dialects spoken within each station’s coverage area. ISAP’s Kisan Vani goes further by embedding agricultural advice within folk song traditions, ensuring that even a farmer who is suspicious of outsider knowledge receives it through a trusted cultural form. This cultural sensitivity is what separates effective SBCC from top-down information delivery.

From the airwaves to the field: real change, real farmers 🔗

The cumulative impact of media-driven agricultural SBCC is measurable. The ISAP Kisan Vani station is actively in touch with more than 3,000 farmers in its region and involves them directly in developing its programming. The Kisanvani national network, backed by the Ministry of Agriculture’s Mass Media Support to Agriculture Extension scheme, has reached tens of thousands of villages across 24 states and two Union Territories. The Better India reports that ISAP – which operates the Kisan Vani 90.4 FM – has been working since 2001 to bridge the gap between rural farming communities and modern knowledge systems, and now sees community radio as one of its most effective tools for reaching a large number of farmers simultaneously in ways that field agents alone could never achieve.

The story of the farmer who learned water conservation techniques through a radio broadcast and applied them to restore degraded land is not an isolated anecdote. It is a pattern that repeats across India wherever the airwaves carry knowledge that field agents cannot deliver, where the television screen shows a farmer what a healthier crop looks like, and where a phone-in programme tells a listener in real time whether to sell his wheat today or wait for prices to rise tomorrow.

Agriculture has always been about reading signals – from the sky, the soil, the season. SBCC through mass media simply adds a new signal: the informed voice of science, policy, and peer experience, transmitted directly to the farmer who needs it most.

What do you think? As AI anchors and regional language programming expand the reach of channels like DD Kisan, is technology alone enough to bridge the knowledge gap for India’s most remote farmers – or does effective agricultural SBCC ultimately depend on genuine community participation in shaping the content itself? And with the rise of mobile internet in rural areas, how should radio and television-based SBCC initiatives evolve to stay relevant to the next generation of farmers?

References

1. https://www.sbcguidance.org/understand/social-and-behaviour-change-communication
2. https://indianjournals.com/article/jcmsd-16-2-012
3. https://docr.cemca.org/city/vidisha/listing/kisan-vani-crs-90-4-fm/
4. https://www.academia.edu/26535704/Kisan_Vani_An_Innovative_Approach_by_All_India_Radio
5. https://aesanetwork.org/blog-191-the-continuing-relevance-of-all-india-radio-for-agricultural-development-in-the-digital-era/
6. https://communityvoices.in/directory/community-media-profile/1342/
7. https://www.mssrf.org/our-stories/farmers-voice-in-all-india-radio/
8. https://prasarbharati.gov.in/dd-kisan/
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DD_Kisan
10. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2021431
11. https://aesanetwork.org/transforming-farmers-livelihood-through-dd-kisan/
12. https://www.unicef.org/india/what-we-do/communication-for-development
13. https://thebetterindia.com/43971/indian-society-of-agribusiness-professionals-farming-rural/