The course of study that combines the ideas of development communication, social work and NGO represents a dual novelty. A rare conception in terms of formulation, it provides a rich opportunity to negotiate between the global-national history and the current predicament of development along with the role of communication in it. The development with capital 'D' was fashioned in the mirror of West's own trajectory of progress in the post-war era. Presented to and accepted by the then emerging states of Asia, Africa and Latin America for their liberation from economic backwardness and unproblematic ushering into the epoch of modernity, it achieved initial success, but later encountered practical and theoretical crises from which it never recovered fully. However, just before its imminent subside, with the advent of globalisation the idea of development staged a comeback with the communication revolution as its main vector.

Postcolonial India too went full throttle into the dream of modernised development with a national communication system for understanding the need of the people and for evolving and sharing a consensus on national plans. The efforts in this information intensive human development strategy were to discover and implement procedures that may effectively train and mobilise the human resources. Development of a communication infrastructure permitting the flow of information throughout a society in that sense was an important prerequisite. Through the strategic focus on the big industrialization, the Indian State achieved admirable success in charting out a path of development necessary for a traditional society with a huge demographic proportion and mind boggling socio-cultural plurality. A few problems remained, such as over dependence on the state sector, sluggish social participation and systemic bottlenecks. But, these limitations failed to dampen the national enthusiasm and with the policies of state welfarism guiding the agenda, India strode proudly in the comity of nations.

In a sense, the Indian experience was unique because in other parts of the world newly independent nations neither achieved sufficient capitalist growth nor social equity. This adverse experience of development strategy there forced several scholars in India also to recall the traditional wisdom of ecology friendly ways of living. Likes from Gandhi, Vinoba, Nehru, Ambedkar to Paulo Frere, Evan Illich, Michel Foucault, Wolfgang Sachs, Arturo Escobar etc provided master-texts in this context.

This combo-course is designed to inculcate the deep understanding about the phenomenon of Maldevelopment, practices of Climate-Smart Agriculture, plight of small farmers, migrant labour, concepts of Earth System Governance, Eco-modernism, Green Economy, Sustainable Development, De-growth, Prakritik Swaraj, Small is Beautiful, Ecological Democracy and various other alternatives to the present deprecated state in which our Globe and Globalised Polity finds it presently. Besides, this course can go a long way in helping aspiring students to get a clue as to why health system of most third world countries failed to become people friendly, why electoral democracy became another victim of hierarchical machinations, why adult education fell short of required literacy revolution, and about many inegalitarian ills the states and societies of third world suffer from.

Here comes the discipline of social work and networks of communication that can play a defining role in bringing the fruits of development to the common masses in a planned manner. India has seen a plethora of non-governmental organisations and various social movements. Certainly in the context of development, the ideas and the practices related to social work represent the possibilities of a number of positive results.

With the advent of new media technologies the idea of development has now acquired an entirely new perspective. It seems that fresh technological impetus has unleashed a new hope for more egalitarian developmental goals and processes by breaking the caste barriers and evils of communal sectarianism. The realisation of a just and secular society is possible only if a new communication theory commensurate with the dreams of a better world is formulated in near future. This combo-course unveils the vistas of communication that are acutely needed for our current scenario.