After having launched a massive ad campaign to popularise NREGA in some northern states, the rural development ministry now wants to know if the ads worked at all.

“The ministry has decided to conduct an Impact Assessment Study of this special campaign to gauge the quantum of awareness/degree of capacity building to acquire the benefit of RD schemes due to such campaign. It also wants to find out the utility of such a campaign and draw lessons to organize such activities in future,” said a senior official from the ministry.

The ministry has invited bids from organisations experienced in rural development projects. The last day for the submission of the proposals is October 18.

The major scope of work for the assessment study is as follows: media habits of target groups; reach of cable & satellite channels used in the campaign; exposure to NREGA messages; impact of NREGA campaign; suggestion on development of future media campaigns; the media habits such as timings, channels watched, and newspapers read etc; normal sources of information and how far this information influences the target group; any other TV channel which is predominant in the area; how much informative the campaign was and whether the information received was adequate.

Launched in January this year campaign included two NREGA spots: Hindustan Ki Guarantee and Zamana Kehta Hai. The states covered were Bihar, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and NCR. The channels used for the campaign included ETV Bihar, ETV Rajasthan, ETV Urdu, ETV Uttar Pradesh, SS Bihar, SS Uttar Pradesh, SS NCR and Mahua.