To determine the level of awareness of symptoms of TB, a sociological study was carried out in a randomly selected population in Tumkur district in south India. The findings indicated that there was a considerable "felt-need" (50%) for a TB programme in the District. The problem of "Treatment Default" was found to have been exaggerated due to inadequate consideration of some basic factors such as inaccurate diagnosis, healed symptomatic TB cases actually taking treatment elsewhere, completing treatment in a longer span of time. On analyzing the causes for defaulting, two factors emerged. Greater consideration to the social, cultural and economic factors that influence the TB patient's motivation to take adequate treatment and, integrating the TB control programme with other development programmes such as education, population control, agricultural and industrial production, are suggested.