When Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India, she set her country on a course of modernization through the development of science and technology.
This film contains one of her last interviews before she was assassinated.
For centuries, life in rural India was based on simple technologies.
The ox cart.
The pottery wheel.
The spinning wheel.
But now even the most remote Indian villages are about to be launched into the space age.
In 1983, India's own telecommunication satellite was placed into orbit, and now television has come to rural India.
This modern technology offers a window on a wider world.
But what impact will television have on rural India?
What benefit will the new communication technology bring, and at what cost?
In villages all over India, a technological revolution is taking place, bringing to the countryside the futuristic hardware of the space age.
In the dim light of evening, a new ritual begins.
These men are the caretakers for the community television set.
For the first time, people living in the most remote areas of India can have instant contact with the rest of the world.
Through television, this small rural community has come to join the global village.
Seven, six, five, we have engine start, two, one, we have ignition and we have liftoff.
The launch of the American space shuttle Challenger in August of 1983 was of special interest to the people of India.
Within Challenger's payload bay was India's own telecommunication satellite, built by Indian scientists in conjunction with Ford Aerospace.
Two decades in the planning, the satellite was designed to serve several purposes, ranging from forecasting the weather to improving the nation's telephone system.
But the main function of the satellite, called INSAT, was to make television transmission possible in the widespread underdeveloped regions of India.
INSAT stands for Indian National Satellite. In geostationary orbit, its speed exactly matches that of the Earth's rotation, which keeps INSAT permanently over the heart of India.
It cost $130 million to design and build INSAT, a major financial commitment for a developing nation.
But it cost only a fraction of the trillion dollars that would have been needed to build a completely ground-based telecommunication system.
INSAT has transformed the landscape of India.
The concept of a communication satellite was first put forward in 1945 by engineer and science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.
Communication satellite enables us for the first time to send any type of communication, telephone, television, telex, anything you like to imagine, direct to any spot on the Earth's surface at any time of the day or night. This has never been possible before.
Arthur Clarke lives on the island of Sri Lanka, off the southern tip of India. Through satellite-linked computers, he communicates instantly with the Hollywood-based producers working on his latest film, 2010.
It is his belief that satellite-linked technologies can be of considerable use to developing countries.
Many developing countries have very little communications infrastructure at the ground level, you might say. The communication satellite will enable them to leapfrog a whole era of communications by making it possible to broadcast into particularly large developing countries, Africa, South America, every type of communication from a single satellite in space, thus doing away with billions of dollars' worth of ground equipment, which will now be unnecessary.
With his own dish aerial pointed at INSAT, Arthur Clarke often watches Indian television beamed from Delhi, 2,000 miles to the north.
The communication satellites, like the new Indian INSAT, which is operating now very well indeed, will for the first time give the whole continent of India really good telecommunications, which are absolutely essential, of course, for business, tourism, ordinary home life. And it's a quantum jump when a developing country gets this kind of communications. It transforms a whole society.
Around the turn of the century, Great Britain built roads and railways and set up a communications network linking the many regions of India.
The system was designed to meet the needs of the British Empire and favored the cities. Although extensive, today the transportation system badly needs upgrading.
Telephones were introduced in the 1880s. Exchanges are now run down and ground lines are inadequate. It is often easier to dial internationally than across town. Today India's telephone system is reputedly among the worst in the world.
Satellite telecommunications are intended to help India modernize its transportation and communications network.
Since independence in 1947, India has worked to become a modern industrial society. Bombay, the richest city in India, is a prime example of the emphasis on urban development that goes hand in hand with progress.
India has the world's second largest population, more than 700 million people. It is roughly the same size as Western Europe, with a similar number of constituent states.
There are more than six different religions and more than 16 languages. This cultural diversity is a staggering challenge to the nation's communications system.
India also has the largest middle class in the third world.
But 300 million people live in poverty. Against the backdrop of their plight, millions of dollars have been spent on satellite communications.
The government contends that the availability of information made possible by this new technology will narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.
Still, immediate social needs must compete for funds with the costs of technological and urban development.
It is in rural India, where 75% of the population lives, that satellite communication is expected to have its greatest impact.
Although some villages are beginning to get electricity and reliable water sources, these people have been relatively untouched by modern development.
The government maintains that satellite broadcast television is the only practical way to reach India's 700,000 villages, with information needed to overcome the poverty that has plagued the country for centuries.
In 1966, Indira Gandhi was elected prime minister. She would rule for more than 15 years.
In the first year of her administration, the country was torn by religious riots.
Unparalleled drought and food shortages plunged the nation into a crisis. Millions of people died of starvation.
Amidst this disaster, Gandhi continued a commitment to science and technology that was originally made by her father, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Throughout her political career, Gandhi was fiercely determined to see her country become a world leader in science.
She argued that scientific advancement was key to the long-term prosperity of the nation.
Why is India economically backward today? Why is it poor? It's because we missed the Industrial Revolution.
Now, if we miss what is happening now and the new advances in science, then we haven't got the ghost of a chance of making up for lost time.
Over the last decade, India has become a leader in science in the developing world. It is surpassed only by the United States and the Soviet Union in number of scientists.
Last year, India opened its first factory for the production of microchips.
The nation has also made impressive gains in the field of space science.
For a country like India, which is so vast in scale and with such a large population, such a diverse population, you do need something that will enable you to reach out to people.
The remotest areas, the poorest sections of the people. And I think that we can do that through space.
In April of 1984, the INSAT telecommunication satellite transmitted pictures of India's first cosmonaut aboard the Soviet spacecraft Salyut 7.
This exciting event was seen on television in cities and villages all over India.
INSAT has put more than 70% of the country within the range of television signals.
For the success of your space journey, for a space safe landing, and a joyous return home.
Television is INSAT's most controversial capability.
Supporters see it as a tool to accelerate development.
Detractors fear it will be used to promote government policies, and they contend that its educational potential will be eclipsed by its appeal as an entertainment medium.
INSAT is the most ambitious telecommunications project to be undertaken by a third world country.
In the year and a half that it has been in operation, more than 200 Earth satellite stations have been built.
With INSAT, India has invested in a grand experiment to see if satellite telecommunications can provide a quantum jump into the future.
The foundation for INSAT was laid in 1975 with the satellite instructional television program, or CITE.
CITE was a one-year experiment in educational broadcasting.
Television programs were beamed to villages via the U.S. satellite ATS-6.
2,400 villages in six different states were equipped with their own direct reception antenna and community television set.
In charge of the CITE project was Professor Yash Pal.
The CITE experiment was a unique experience, not only for people to whom the programs were transmitted, but also for all the people who were involved in it.
It had technological dimensions, social dimensions, educational dimensions. In fact, it in a sense transformed our media.
As well as educational programs, CITE villages received for the first time news from the rest of India.
The experiment was an engineering trial, one of the world's first demonstrations of television reception direct from satellite.
Many of the programs were geared toward regional interests. There were programs on agriculture, teacher training, and children's shows.
This experiment was the first concrete expression of the Indian government's commitment to telecommunications, and it was used as proof that television could play a role in development.
But CITE was a pilot project. Today India has its own satellite.
With INSAT, most of the country can receive television relayed from the satellite overhead.
INSAT is a multipurpose satellite. In addition to television broadcast capabilities, it contains 8,000 telephone circuits, which are working to alleviate telephone congestion.
INSAT also provides a continuous picture of India's weather. This is the first time people all over India can see their country's weather patterns on the nightly news.
These pictures show the snow cover on the Himalayas.
The Himalayas are the highest mountains in the world. INSAT pictures showing a dramatic change in snow cover can help scientists determine where runoff is expected.
This information is used to predict floods. When the snow melts, it brings rivers of water to the valleys and plains of northern India, one of the world's most fertile growing areas.
The monsoon rains that come every summer compound the hazard of floods, bringing to India more rainfall in four months than England gets in five years.
In the disastrous flood of 1978, millions of people were left homeless. Thousands were killed.
INSAT can be used not only to help predict such disasters, but also to instantly send warning to villages.
Computer-enhanced INSAT pictures also help scientists understand complex weather patterns, such as this destructive cyclone.
INSAT transmits a picture of weather activity every half hour. This information can provide 12 to 24 hours notice of an approaching cyclone.
Government offices are also making use of INSAT's telecommunication channels.
Bureaucrats who coordinate programs that link national and regional offices have long depended on thick files from field workers to obtain information.
Now satellite-linked computers have been introduced to cut down on paperwork and streamline administration.
More than a million tourists visit India every year. The Department of Tourism is working to improve facilities in order to attract more visitors.
Already many of the larger hotels have installed computers that will soon be linked nationwide by INSAT.
It is hoped that this kind of booking office chaos will become obsolete. Both the national railways and airlines are introducing satellite-linked computers to help the transportation systems run on time and cope with the huge volume of travelers.
The Ministry of Commerce computer is already online. It will eventually be connected via INSAT with computers in regional offices. Most computers now are imported, but India is rapidly developing its own computer industry.
But INSAT's primary function in rural India is broadcast television. This is the Sekundarabad earth station near Delhi, a major link-up for INSAT telecommunications, and it is the main one for radio and television broadcasts.
An educational program for school children is transmitted from here to villages all over India.
Half of the educational programs are produced in Delhi. The rest are made by regional stations of the Indian Broadcasting Service.
There are also plans to use INSAT for adult education and to create a university of the air.
Educational programs are targeted initially at six different rural states.
In parts of these, like western Andhra Pradesh, hundreds of villages have been supplied with their own TV set and dish aerial.
A typical INSAT village is Manikonda.
The satellite receiver is located by the school building, which also houses the community TV.
Education in India is an enormous challenge. Three in four are illiterate, more than 400 million people.
Three-quarters of all children never go to school at all or drop out before they are 12 years old. In rural areas, contact with the outside world is rare, and books and equipment are in short supply.
There are now 25,000 television sets in these rural villages that are intended to help compensate for the lack of other educational resources.
Classes now get one and a half hours of educational television a day.
A satellite reception set for a village costs nearly $3,000. Even the educational use of television has its critics, who ask whether this is the best use of available funds in the face of shortages of teachers and facilities throughout India.
The Director of Educational Communications at the Space Research Organization, Kiran Karnak, responds.
We look on TV as playing two roles. One very important role with the TV in the school, you may not call it ETV, but it's using the TV in the school, is to use it for teacher training and to get together groups of teachers who can then be trained and therefore act as a multiplier.
But even when not used in that role, the reality of the situation in India is that we will never have in the foreseeable future enough number of trained and highly qualified teachers to take care of the kind of primary school population one is talking of.
And therefore one has to look necessarily for other means of playing this role.
We have a lot of people in the villages. We have 400 million people who are illiterate. We have 140 million in schools. We need to build a school every five minutes in order to keep our people in school.
So from our point of view, communication has to be used to work for all our developmental programs. So communication is not a luxury.
Two classes at the Manikanda School are permanently taught out of doors, even in the rainy season.
Of India's half a million schools, two-thirds have no school buildings at all.
In addition, a third are either one-teacher schools or are at times simply unstaffed.
Some critics argue that teachers, buildings and equipment should be higher priorities than television.
One outspoken critic of the government's attempt to use television for education and development is the former leader of the Lok Dal opposition party, George Fernandez.
I keep giving statistics of the number of primary schools we have and the kind of problems that these schools have.
You don't have blackboards, you don't have drinking water, you don't have teachers. There are 3,000 schools in the country at this moment without teachers.
I was in Indravilli in Andhra Pradesh day before yesterday. I asked the goons, are there schools in your villages and they don't have.
And one young man came up and said, the teacher in my school died five months back. Since then there is no school.
So against the backdrop of that, where exactly are you going to fit the TV?
In any case, there is electricity in the rural areas to take your TV. You don't have electricity for the pumps.
Are you going to take electricity to, are you going to install television sets and provide them with electricity?
The whole thing is absurd. It's not going to work in this country.
Only a small percentage of Indian villages have electricity, generally those near the roads and larger towns.
In villages around Manakonda, television sets have broken down and resources for maintenance are inadequate.
Manakonda is therefore fortunate in having both electricity and a television that works.
In villages like Manakonda, INSAT beams down adult education programs from noon to 1 p.m. each day.
Some of the programs are made abroad in the United States, France and the United Kingdom.
A third will be produced by India's own universities.
These programs are aimed at combating illiteracy, improving living conditions and spreading the word about development.
The government maintains that this will narrow the information gap between urban and rural areas.
Now through TV we can have a higher level of education.
We can bring to the rural community programs for the farmers, for the rural women, for artisans and so on.
And above all give them information.
Our people also need to know about health problems, sanitation, cleanliness, the unity of the country, the diversity of the country.
Things which will help to keep them together and give them a sense of national oneness as well as a desire to participate in all aspects of national life and to do whatever they can for themselves.
That then is the hope. But what is the reality?
Is it naive to believe that television can help alleviate so widespread and intractable a problem as poverty in India?
This Manikanda family survives by making BDs, crude cigarettes.
We work nine rupees a day.
If we want more, we need money for the company. If we want more, we need money for the company.
If we want more, we need money for the company. If we want more, we need money for the company. If we want more, we need money for the company.
Is it enough for you to make these nine rupees a day?
No, it's not enough.
What do you do then?
I do what I do.
This family sells the cigarettes at a low price to a middleman who markets them in town.
Cooperatives do away with the middleman, but most villagers lack the knowledge to organize.
Now educational television provides information on cooperatives.
Unfortunately, the poorest villagers lack the necessary start-up funds.
The poorest of the poor are the Harijans or Untouchables, the lowest grouping in India's age-old caste system.
In many places, they are still forced to live, eat and pray outside of the village and can't even go to the well for water.
The government has television programs telling the Harijans about loans that are exclusively available to them.
The broadcasts are followed up by a visit from a field worker who brings the money to the village.
The goal of these programs is to break through the isolation of the Harijans,
but it is too soon to tell if the programs will have any impact on the caste system.
Television also provides information on alternative fuels.
Unfortunately, this information is not always relevant.
In this village, alternative fuels are seldom available, so the people really have no options.
They must continue to cut down firewood for cooking.
The wood supply near this village is diminishing.
In some areas, villagers travel for days just to collect enough wood for one week.
Clean water is another scarce resource.
Seventy percent of the available water in India is polluted and a major source of ill health.
Although television provides information about hygiene, nutrition and family planning,
most villages do not have modern health care facilities.
Some, like Manikonda, have small primary health centers,
but the village health worker has no real training and few medicines.
The nearest hospital or doctor is half a day's walk.
It is another example of how educational television needs to be backed up by material resources.
Village life revolves around agriculture, and this farmer finds educational programs useful.
For those who can afford fertilizer and own land, the information beamed from INSAT has proved valuable.
But nine out of ten villagers do not own land and have no capital.
Most earn a meager and insecure living as day laborers.
The problem remains that those who need help the most are still the least able to make use of the information provided by INSAT.
Communication can do a great deal, but it cannot really have substantial meaning
unless we can tie in with the agencies that are in the field to deliver the physical goods that are required.
If one is doing a campaign on health, one has to make sure that the infrastructure is there to support what we are doing.
Television, of course, is not a panacea. Our communication is not enough by itself.
When you communicate, you are only supplying one part of interaction.
The proper interaction has to involve transactions, various other things, extension work,
other types of information, so it only facilitates that. By itself, it's clearly never going to be enough.
If one is to take care of immediate problems, it can be done in the short term.
I mean, the question is, for example, there's no water in the village, why do you want a television set?
This is true, but it's not one against the other, because if one is to just provide water, it's like giving charity, and the thing ends there.
If you want to build up a self-sustaining, self-dependent development,
I think communication is very necessary to enable people to reach some kind of higher level of both knowledge and aspiration.
Programs shown in Manikonda are transmitted from Delhi via INSAT.
By contrast, people in the KEDA district receive locally produced programs.
In charge of KEDA's production facility is Kiran Karnik.
Decentralized television is absolutely essential when one talks of using television for development.
Most of the problems related to development are to be dealt with at the local level.
Take a simple example, like a health problem, an epidemic that suddenly breaks out, or a sudden change in the weather pattern, unexpected storm.
Now, if the medium is to play some role in trying to alleviate these problems, then it has to be dealing with these very local problems.
You cannot have a program that is all-encompassing and useful to everybody.
It will not have the kind of impact that a local program dealing with local and immediate problems can have.
Locally produced programs have been transmitted to villages in the KEDA district since 1976.
Programs are beamed not by satellite, but direct from a local transmitter.
KEDA is a direct descendant of the Site Pilot Project and is an experiment in decentralized broadcast television.
In this small studio, villagers participate in making simple, relevant programs of their own.
Firstly, we have a very well-defined target audience.
Secondly, we've made sure that this audience that we have has access to the medium by making sure their community sets in these villages.
And thirdly, we have a system where we try and involve the audience and get feedback from them on what's happening,
so we're able to keep the programs in tune with what they need.
The KEDA Project produces both news and educational programs.
This show is a popular weekly drama, a kind of soap opera.
Firmly rooted in the villagers' own experience, the program conveys information about specific local problems.
In this episode, a middle-class doctor from the city is finding it difficult to understand the village way of life.
With all the KEDA programs, care is taken to link up with agencies working in the field, in this case, the Ministry of Health.
Similar programs have been produced in conjunction with the Ministry of Languages and the Family Planning Association.
KEDA provides the villagers an hour and a half of programming a day.
In addition, the district receives national programs via INSAT.
There are 500 government sets and 2000 private sets that now serve KEDA's 5 million people.
Another KEDA program is produced in cooperation with the Department of Agriculture.
It provides information about the care of livestock.
Shows have been produced to teach methods of animal husbandry, including vaccination, artificial insemination, and the feeding of cattle.
This is the Amul Milk Farmers Cooperative in the KEDA district.
Amul is collectively owned by 100,000 farmers.
The cooperative owns its own dairy and provides most of the milk and cheese for Bombay.
The Amul Cooperative recently reported higher milk yields and healthier livestock.
Proponents of the KEDA project believe that the local television programs have in part been responsible.
These villagers have gathered to discuss such television programs.
The feedback that they provide to KEDA researchers is a vital part of the project.
The KEDA project has done a lot of work. The village has improved a lot. The roads have been improved.
The KEDA project has done a lot of work. The village has improved a lot.
The research of the social scientists involved with the KEDA project suggests that carefully planned relevant programs can play a useful role in development.
But the dedication and achievements of this pioneering group have yet to be replicated on a national scale.
Just as regional programs like KEDA are proving their effectiveness, they may be facing growing competition.
For a new era is dawning in Indian television.
The new prosperity of the Indian middle class has led to a surging demand for urban commodities, specifically consumer electronics.
Video cassette recorder sales are booming. Video shops and communal viewing halls are springing up in both cities and rural areas.
The video boom began during the 1982 ASEAD games, the eastern counterpart to the Olympics.
The government slashed import duties on VCRs and a few domestic companies started manufacturing sets.
So India's avid sports fans were able to buy video cassette players to record this momentous occasion.
With half a million VCRs in home and communal use, video now reaches the masses with entertainment such as this Indian musical.
Indian films frequently mix the language, styles and traditions of India with those of the West.
Here a scene from Ram Ke Ganga, a movie released in 1984, is reminiscent of American musical comedy.
But thematically the film is Indian.
Ram Ke Ganga is actually a religious story that upholds the ancient custom of arranged marriages.
The recent video explosion is providing an outlet for imported films. American movies are increasingly popular.
But most of the features still come from India's own filmmaking industry, the largest in the world.
Bombay, the Hollywood of India, produces more than 200 films a year, including many that will be beamed via insat into villages.
In 1984, India's film industry turned out 763 films, investing $20 billion.
The film industry depends largely on revenue from trendy, low-budget films.
The Indian high art films seen in the West are not blockbusters in India.
Producers do continue to make films that reflect the unique heritage of the country, and an increasing number are releasing features that raise social or political issues, ranging from police brutality to the ancient dowry system.
But the vast majority of India's films are fantasies, violent adventure stories, musicals, and romance.
There has been much debate in the Indian press about the effect of the encroaching video boom and the increased use of insat to broadcast feature films.
These flashy offerings are already competing with educational programs for viewers' attention.
Some critics fear that the TV's educational use will be overshadowed by the demand for entertaining programs.
Because the most popular films portray a westernized and urbanized lifestyle, there is concern that Indian traditions and cultural diversity may be threatened.
The Indian film does not try to relate itself to the reality of India.
The commercial films which Bombay or other centers of film production put out in this country try to tell the Indian people that life is beautiful, but they go a step beyond that.
And the step beyond is that whereas the cultural values which films in the West present are by and large rooted in the situations that prevail there,
in our case they again try to put across cultural values and economic ideas which are not related to people's lives and which then create false impressions and certain urges and demands which cannot be fulfilled.
In the villages of rural India, televised feature films draw audiences from miles around.
Two or more Indian films are screened every week. The musical is a favorite.
In Manikonda, audiences for these screenings often exceed 500 people, a third of the village, all gathered by the one community TV set.
Television programs also introduce them to a world of different values.
Manikonda has become part of the global village and in so doing has joined the consumer society.
Television is going to create in India a situation where the whole value system is going to change. It's trying to sell products which are not within the reach of the worker, which are not within the reach of the ordinary man.
You are taking TV into every home, the rich and the poor. You are trying to cater to the rich and at the same time tantalize the poor with items that are just not available to them.
You are destroying them. You are destroying them both in terms of values and you are creating a situation in which the poor will then have to find ways and means of acquiring those things which they are told are very necessary for them but which are beyond their reach.
There are two television channels in India, both government owned. One channel transmits mostly educational programs in six different languages. The other broadcasts movies and national news in prime time and allows commercials.
Hailo egg shampoo, protein milk potion, new Hailo green apple shampoo, fresh Manmoha fragrance, new Hailo herbal shampoo, herbal shampoo.
Some of the programs watched here may come as a bit of a surprise.
I love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball and Bessie Arnett.
Besides American shows, British dramas, documentaries, soap operas and sporting events are shown.
From the end of the third night, the 300 miles of rough road behind them, the leaders were pulling
clear. Programs imported from the West now comprise more than 10% of the weekly TV schedule.
Many programs seen throughout the country are in languages rural people don't speak.
English and Hindi are spoken on all programs transmitted after 8 p.m.
Yet English is understood by less than 3% of the population and even Hindi by only 40%.
In a country with a diverse cultural heritage, television's use of a predominant language is
a consequence of a centralized network. Uniformity could help bring together a people divided by
religion, geography and class. But there is concern that non-Hindi speaking villagers will
be denied access not only to the entertainment but also to the educational value of television.
Further, it is feared that the regional languages and customs not shown on television will
ultimately fade away. Will television unify India at the cost of its cultural diversity?
India is a country of many cultures. The tribal culture, what is relevant in the North is not
relevant in the South. Music, song, dance of each area of each region of each people
differs. What you are now going to do through the satellite system is to give it to the
people something that is not indigenous, something that does not belong to them and in the process
try to shake their own confidence in their own values and give them nothing new in return
except something that is synthetic. Television can counterbalance, can balance that to some
extent by projecting regional cultures and by convincing the people that what they are
doing is really a good thing, that it is not something to be sneered at, it is not something
that is less than the city culture. Critics always doubted Mrs. Gandhi's promise
to use INSAT to educate and address the needs of her culturally diverse country. The government
owns and controls the Indian Broadcasting Service, Doordarshan as it is called. Her critics
accused Mrs. Gandhi of using television as a vehicle for self-promotion, in particular
by keeping a tight rein on television news. The government owned broadcasting service
airs half a dozen 10 to 15 minute news reports a day. The reports consist mostly of commentators
reading national news because the news organizations are still too ill-equipped to provide much
on location regional coverage. The news is presented in either English or Hindi. Individual
news stories are not necessarily read in both languages.
Over the years members of parliament and the national press have called for the state to
hand broadcasting over to an autonomous body. Thus far the government has resisted. Mrs.
Gandhi defended the government's monopoly on broadcasting saying it was necessary to
ensure the balance between entertainment and educational programming vital to a developing
country. India is the world's largest democracy and the implications of total government control
over a powerful news medium are sobering. Post media, electronic media particularly
in this country, has been in the hands of the government. And the government through
whatever bureaucratic or political network it operates has tried to centralize authority.
Now what's now going to happen insofar as insight is concerned is that you will now
be able to reach out to people in one shot, put across ideas in one shot sitting here
in Delhi. The Indian broadcast system faces a dilemma. For the most part it is located
in the city and influenced by the middle class. This new urban elite wants more entertainment
and has less need for educational programs. But catering to these tastes will not fulfill
the government's commitment to use television as a tool for development. Indian television
has reached a crossroads. Critics argue that control of INSAT's broadcast schedule must
become more decentralized. Both politically and culturally it must meet the needs of all
of India. I think over-centralization would lead to very inefficient use of the medium
because nobody has all the wisdom. And in fact it may lead to homogenization and in
some sense you may say it can lead to indoctrination. Not in political sense necessarily but indoctrination
with values which pertain to only one center. And that is not interaction. If we have to
have development we have to have interaction. And in order to have interaction it's necessary
that origination of ideas, images, programs should take place in many many places. So
decentralization is absolutely essential if the programs, if the whole effort has to be
towards development. It depends on how it is decentralized and what use is made of it.
Because if by decentralizing the tendency is to create a divisive attitude and that
would not be good because we have to keep national unity in view all the time. In making
all these programs it is absolutely essential that the inputs, that the access to the medium
is provided by the potential beneficiaries. Otherwise it just becomes propagandizing or
it becomes sermons. So it has to be a live thing. Everybody can't have a microphone in
front of him but on the other hand he should have an access to be able to get to the medium
so that the medium becomes an interaction. Still in its infancy, INSAT took 20 years
to become a reality. Now there are more than 30 million television sets in India and the
number is steadily growing. INSAT was a major technological feat linked to a philosophical
commitment to development. As a microcosm of the impact of technology on the third world,
India's experience with INSAT will be carefully watched. It is not necessary that space technology
should lead to increase of inequalities. However if it's not properly used it could be. There
is a lot of discussion going on in India as to how to use the new technology but I am
exceedingly optimistic. A country which took the courage to do a massive experiment like
site before anybody else had done such an experiment anywhere else and which went on
to then have an INSAT with a commitment for using communication for social purposes, I
think the discussion is definitely going to lead to a direction which will be beneficial
and which will go in the right direction. There will be further concentration of political
power in the hands of the urban elite as the satellite programs start reaching out to the
people. There will be an effort made to condition people's minds around individuals, around
parties, around leaders and around an elitist order and at the same time an attempt made
to numb their conscience. Nobody is going to discuss to them about what is happening
in Indravilli where 100 odd goons were massacred. Nobody is going to tell them why it is necessary
to organize themselves and assert their authority, assert their power, assert their own democratic
rights. Nobody is going to discuss this. It is not being discussed today on Indian television
or on Indian radio and it is not going to be discussed tomorrow. Holistic use of communication
is what I would like to see that we should not differentiate communication, broadcasting,
telecommunication from educational activity, health activity, agricultural extension and
so on. Every time we want to do a new thing, we put a new structure out there. Education
people have nothing to do whatsoever with agriculture extension people or health people.
Health has nothing to do with social problems and broadcasting has nothing, whatever to
do with all this. Unless we mix all these and say that this is one way of people getting
together with each other, getting in touch with each other, transferring information,
unless we begin to do that, we are not going to make proper use of the new opportunities.
On October 31, 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated. Television provided the means for millions
throughout the country to watch her funeral. Mrs. Gandhi had pledged to bring about a new
social order through mass communication. She promised to use the new communication technologies
to further India's development. Television is her legacy. Now, as a new political era
begins, it remains to be seen whether the promise will be fulfilled.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
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