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With festive season ahead, govt plans big awareness push to urge ‘Covid-appropriate’ behaviour

Information & Broadcasting Secretary Amit Khare, who is in charge of the awareness campaign, has written to all states & UTs to draft ‘action plans’ for implementation.

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New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government has planned a countrywide campaign, with a special focus on outdoor publicity, to persuade behavioural change in people ahead of the festival season that begins this month. 

Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Secretary Amit Khare, who is in charge of the campaign, has written to all states and union territories, and sought from them an action plan for the campaign, which is being referred to as ‘Public Health Response to Covid-19: Campaign for Covid-Appropriate Behaviour’.

The letter, seen by ThePrint, was written on 1 October. 

“The action plan may also include the likely size of the target group of different departments, as well as their monitorable targets (sic),” the letter states. 

State governments and union territory administrations, it adds, should appoint a nodal officer for the job, with the chief secretaries asked to consider a weekly review of the campaign.

Pointers sent by the central government to states and union territories call for push notifications with awareness prompts to users of government websites, and employing police and fire stations in aid of the campaign.

According to the letter, states and UTs have also been asked to engage regional units of government broadcasters All India Radio, DD News and Press Information Bureau (PIB) for dissemination of information. 

The awareness push comes amid fears in the government that the upcoming winter season as well as festivals — including Navratri, Dussehra, Diwali, which see large gatherings as friends and families come together in celebration — may lead to an escalation in India’s Covid-19 situation.

Khare’s letter came the same day Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba held a meeting on the campaign, ThePrint has learnt. 

The campaign, sources in the I&B ministry confirmed, is likely to go on till next year. It will be launched amid Unlock 5, the guidelines for which were announced 30 September. 

Khare heads the empowered group formed by the government to look at information, communication, public awareness, public grievances and data management with respect to Covid-19. The panel is one of six empowered groups tasked with different aspects of Covid-19 management.   


Also Read: With Pujo looming, Kolkata’s housing complexes are Covid time bombs


Push for outdoor publicity campaign 

In its missive to states and union territories, the I&B ministry has suggested that all government websites be embedded with Covid-19 messages, adding that the same information be sent to users through push notifications — the alerts from different portals that pop up on your screen even when you are not on the websites.

The campaign should also involve Common Services Centers (CSC), which are the access points for delivery of various e-governance and business services in rural and remote areas of India.

The home departments in different states and UTs have been asked to utilise police stations, fire stations and disaster management authorities to spread the word on Covid-19. 

The health departments have been tasked with setting up Covid-19 communication hubs at health centres, and posting adequate publicity material on ambulances and hospitals. Accredited social heath activists (ASHAs) and auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), who have been on the frontlines of the battle against Covid-19, should be made a part of the campaign too, the government has said.  

The government has also advised education departments to oversee Covid-19 messaging by teachers and principals of schools, while the drinking water and sanitation departments are to coordinate with municipal corporations for adequate publicity at public toilets and other utilities.   

For the agriculture and farmers’ welfare departments, the central government has advised outdoor publicity campaigns at fertiliser and seed shops, mandis, and through farmer-producers’ associations.

Panchayati Raj departments can pitch in with wall art and posters at panchayat bhavans and campaigns through functionaries. Housing, urban affairs and transport departments have been asked to put up posters and banners in government colonies, metro trains, buses, as well as on public transport three-wheelers.

Among other ministries, women and child has been asked to focus on anganwadi centres, rural development on self-help groups and NGOs, AYUSH on Yoga centres, and sports department on sports centres and volunteers of the National Service Scheme (NSS).

‘Messaging should not be stigmatising’

A senior state government official, who is handling Covid awareness campaigns, told ThePrint that the planned campaign should be catchy and innovative so as to ensure maximum attention and recollection.  

“This is specifically crucial in the next few months as the Unlock season has started and, additionally, the festival season kicks in this month and is going to last for the next few months,” the official added. “It is more important that people get the message of following all the requisite Covid-19 precautions now, even more than the lockdown period,” the official said. 

Public health expert Anant Bhan told ThePrint that information campaigns are important in the backdrop of the festival season, but may not make an ideal impact without “reinforcement and role-modelling”.

“Whether it is police, policymakers or politicians, there has to be role-modelling involved in all messaging related to Covid-19, else it will fall flat,” he said. 

The messaging, he suggested, should be tailored to work with specific communities. It needs to be locally relevant, the language should be easy to understand for the target community, and the campaigns should feature people they identify, he added. 

“So, it is crucial to work with local community representatives and reinforce the messages by drawing from behavioural sciences,” Bhan said. 

“There are lots of people in this domain who are experienced in engaging with communities through behavioural research. The idea is to learn from them and their work about what has worked in the past to ensure more adherence to precautionary norms, interventions and technologies,” he added.

The messages, he said, should not be “stigmatising”. “We could learn from the past experiences with developing information education communication (IEC) campaigns for HIV, TB, etc, and adapt that to Covid-19”. 


Also Read: Please keep masks on, says govt as it braces for Covid surge during festival season, winter


 

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