Kheda Communication Project, Satellite Television in India

The Kheda Communications Project or KCP is a field laboratory that aimed at the development and local communication in
Kheda district of Gujarat. This project began in 1975 and continued till 1990. The site chosen for the experiment was Kheda
district, which is an area near the SAC headquarters in Ahmedabad. Kheda Communications Project is believed to be a
milestone in the history of Indian television. The Development and Education Communication Unit managed this project
and produced the development and educational programmes that involved the local audience. This project was the tested
for the production of research based participatory development programmes receiving worldwide recognition and
acceptance. Kheda Communication Project was structured aiming at making Indian Television an educational tool.

Kheda Communication Project was yet another pioneering experiment using television for educational purposes in India.
Kheda Communication Project had some special features that made the project truly special in the realm of Indian
Television. The hardware of Kheda Communication Project consisted of one low-power transmitter located in Pij village,
about 50 kilometers south of Ahmedabad, which was connected to a local studio, the local Doordarshan station, and to a
satellite earth station in Ahmedabad. Thus Kheda Communication Project could broadcast either local television
programmes or national satellite television programmes. Around 650 community television sets were provided to 400
villages and also installed in public places like schools, where village audiences gathered in the evenings to view the
broadcasts. Technicians periodically toured these villages to get service and repair the television sets.

Kheda district comprises some 1,000 villages with over three million inhabitants. In recent decades, it has become a major
center for milk production in India, as part of the so-called "White Revolution". The KCP collaborated with extension
agencies working in dairying, agriculture, and health services, and with local banks, cooperatives, and employment
exchanges. Thus, the development in Kheda district facilitated the use of information transmitted by the television
broadcasts. The Kheda Communication Project was independent of commercial interests, as it depended mainly on
government funds for financial support. Managed by the Space Application Center, it enjoyed a great deal of political
autonomy from the national government, and the support of the state government. The Kheda Communication Project
greatly depended on audience research by conducting assessments of village audiences and by carrying out formative and
summative evaluations of Kheda television programs.

The venture promoted rural development and social change at the local level. Audience participation was vastly
encouraged at all levels. Villagers were involved as actors, writers, and visualisers in the production of television programs
dealing with such local issues as exploitation, caste discrimination, alcoholism, minimum wages, co-operatives, local and
national elections. Television serials, folk drama, puppet shows, and other popular local formats were used to continue
issues such as family planning, gender equality, and village sanitation. Chatter Mota (Wise Elder) and Nari Tu Narayani
(Woman You Are Powerful) were two popular entertainment-education serials produced by Kheda Communication Project
with the lively participation of its audience members. A campaign approach was followed, thus, synchronising television
programs with local efforts by the development agencies.

The Kheda Project was instrumental in decentralizing television broadcasting in India. Kheda Communication Project
received the prominent UNESCO Prize in 1984 for rural communication efficiency. However, the Indian government did not
replicate the Kheda Communication Project community-based television model in other regions of India. Instead, in 1985,
when a high-powered transmitter was commissioned in Ahmedabad with a range that covered Kheda district, the
government decreed that the Kheda transmitter should be shifted to Chennai in order to facilitate a second entertainment
channel for its urban residents. Spending money on running a rural community-based communication project was
considered to be useless, when advertising incomes can easily come from metro audiences.

The Kheda Communication Project later demonstrated the missed out opportunities to capitalise the lessons of SITE in
utilizing television for social progress. The Space Application Center (SAC) in Ahmedabad introduced several technological
innovations in the SITE Project on satellite broadcasting to rural India. For instance, during SITE the Center used chicken-
mesh antennae and primary TV sets in the 2,400 Indian villages receiving direct television signals from the ATS-6 satellite.
The chicken-mesh antenna was made of aluminium, and resembled the wire mesh that is used in chicken houses.
Aluminium being a good conductor of electricity and light in weight, made the antenna easily portable. The antennae used
in SITE had a 3-meter diameter and cost 1,500 rupees. They could be installed in a village in only few hours. The mesh
allowed strong winds to pass through, thus eliminating the need to build a strong support structure for the antenna. In
later years, these antennae were designed as collapsible umbrellas, further enhancing their portability and reducing set-up
time.

Ruggedised television sets were developed to meet the needs of harsh village conditions. These sets could easily withstand
wide variations in voltage, vibration during transportation, and extreme conditions of heat, dust, and moisture. The Space
Application Center designed these hardy television sets with easily replaceable fuses, and sealed them to reduce problems
of vibration during transportation and the penetration of dust and moisture. Chicken-mesh antennae and television sets
represent examples of how technology can be reconfigured to meet rural needs, benefiting the most disadvantaged
audience segments. Kheda Communication Project reflected the idea of "limited rebroadcast" and inherited the technology
of direct broadcasting. This network was widely used for local village communication in Gujarat.

The Jhabua Development Communications Project,

Satellite Television in India
The Jhabua Development Communications Project or JDCP introduced the use of
satellite communication to address the needs of the rural illiterate population and
provide programme support communication to development efforts. The project is
located in Jhabua, primarily a rural area with a large tribal population in the state of
Madhya Pradesh in central India. Jhabua Development Communication Project
started to experiment with the interactive satellite-based broadcasting network.

The Jhabua Development Communication Project was launched in the mid-1990s by

the Development and Educational Communication Unit (DECU) of the Space
Application Center (SAC) in Ahmedabad (DECU implemented the Kheda
Communication Project discussed previously). Jhabua Development Communications
Project is an innovative broadcasting experiment in the rural, hilly hinterlands of Jhabua district in India's Madhya Pradesh
state, where some 85 percent of Jhabua's population is tribal, and its literacy rate is around 15 percent. While the district is
rich in natural resources, Jhabua's people are the poorest in the state. Agriculture is their primitive occupation, infant
mortality rates are high, and transportation and communication facilities are also poor.

The purpose of Jhabua Development Communication Project is to experiment with the utilisation of an interactive satellite-
based broadcasting network to support development and education in remote and pastoral areas of India. Some 150
direct-reception systems like satellite dish, TV sets, VCRs, and other equipment have been installed in several villages of
Jhabua, which receive television broadcasts for two hours every evening from DECU's Ahmedabad studio, uplinked through
satellite. Moreover, 12 talkback terminals have been installed in each of the block headquarters of Jhabua district, through
which village functionaries ask questions, provide feedback, and report on the progress.

The evening television of Jhabua Development Communication Project broadcasts, on topics like health, education,
watershed management, agriculture, natural forestry, and local governance that were designed to be entertaining and
educational. The programs of this project are made with the active participation of the local people of Jhabua, as was in
the case in the Kheda Communication Project. In the afternoons, interactive training programs are conducted through the
talkback terminals with a range of village functionaries like teachers, anganwadi workers, handpump mechanics, and local
Panchayat members. Information flows in Jhabua Development Communication Project are thus both downward and
upward, connecting the rural audience of Jhabua with media producers in Ahmedabad in a continuous circle of feedback
and feed-forward.

To facilitate sustainability of the project, Jhabua Development Communication Project was implemented by DECU in
cooperation with state government departments, local NGOs, and also the officials of the Jhabua district administration. A
mid-term evaluation of the Jhabua Project was conducted in the year 1988, showing that the poor people of Jhabua district
has gained significant knowledge in several materialistic areas, enhancing the quality of their life and of the environment of
the surrounding region.