Communication is like the bounties of nature. Naturally available, so least attended to.The economics of existence may have built civilizations on the crests of topless towers but has scarcely ever read the anguish of Mother Nature, compelling it to unleash the Eumenides of natural calamities to persecute the Oedipus-man. The story of communication is no different. Thrown into the fiefdom of the modern day aristocracy, it has become the sole preserve of corporate behemoths and unrepresentative governments comprising the ruling class in each region and country. The liberation of communication is a herculean task for it entails a two-pronged gigantic action: one demanding its liberation from all regulatory and ownership controls and the other entailing its accessibility to the common man. A distinction between communication and expression here becomes necessary for the world has travelled millions of miles since the time a (wo)man could influence the decisions of his/her community through expressing his/her views on the village green/choupal. Nation-states are too vast to be influenced by a citizen's expressions in the city square or village choupal. The empowerment of the citizen calls for the right to communicate which in effect implies the citizen's right to exercise the freedom of expression over the mass media. This catapults mass media/mass communication to the centrestage of public debate and policy and dovetails neatly into the concept of human development envisaged in the first UNDP report on the subject and Prof. Mushir-ul-Haque's philosophy of human development/right. A serious engagement of the academia with issues related to the resurrection of communication, therefore, is the need of the hour. This journal is an attempt to coax and cajole media observers and analysts into re-engaging themselves with the notion of communication and its role in a democratic society.

Of the four articles in this issue, the one by V. Jagadeeshwar Rao focuses attention on the prospects of Educational Television in India; the second by Ravi K. Dhar attempts to analyse the significance of the right to communicate as a basic human right and spotlights attention on the factors that deprive the vast majority of Indians of this right to communicate. The third article by Pitabas Pradhan appraises the response of the Print Media to the challenges posed by the waves of the electronic media revolutions and the fourth by Anubhuti Yadav focuses attention on opinion poll surveys. Apart from the research articles, this issue has perspective notes on mobile ESPN by Soumitra Bose and on future of broadcasting in India by Nandini Sahai.

I hope the readers will like the contents of this issue and encourage us with their suggestions and remarks.