Abstract
The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) was a major NASA applications satellite program for educational TV in India. The project involved the use of NASA’s Application Technology Satellite-6 (ATS-6) to broadcast educational programs directly to television sets placed in different rural clusters. The agreement for SITE was signed between NASA and India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in 1969. The project was executed from August 1975 to July 1976 and received a great deal of media attention in the country. It was touted as a massive experiment in social engineering and was hailed by some enthusiasts as the world’s largest sociological experiment.1 The British science writer Arthur C. Clarke called it the “greatest communications experiment in history.”2
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
K. Kasturirangan, “Share and Care for a Better World—The Engine for Future of Space,” Acta Astronautica 54: 11–12 (June 2004), 867. The author was the former director of ISRO.
Yash Pal, “A Visitor to the Village,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 33:1 (January 1977), 55. Arthur C. Clark was the consultant to the SITE project since its inception.
Kiran Karnik, “Societal Benefits of Space Technology,” Acta Astronautica 19:9 (September 1989), 771–777.
Romesh Chander and Kiran Karnik, Planning for Satellite Broadcasting: The Indian Instructional Television Experiment, reports and papers on mass communication, 78 (Paris: Unesco, 1976);
Srinivas R. Melkote, Peter Shields, and Binod C. Agrawal, International Satellite Broadcasting in South Asia: Political, Economic, and Cultural Implications (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998);
Binod C. Agrawal, Social Impact of SITE on Adults (Ahmedabad: Indian Space Research Organization, 1977); The SITE Experience (Paris: Unesco, 1983); Satellite Instructional Television Experiment: SITE Winter School, January 16–28, 1976 (Ahmedabad: Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organization, 1976). 7. Arthur
C. Clarke, “Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations Give World-wide Radio Coverage,” Wireless World (October 1945), 305–308.
For a detailed account of early communication satellites, see David J. Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications, 1945–1965 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002).
Hugh R. Slotten, “Satellite Communications, Globalization and the Cold War,” Technology and Culture 43 (April 2002), 315–350.
Dennis Merrill, Bread and the Ballot: The United States and India’s Economic Development, 1947–1963 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1990), 5.
William Burr and Jeffrey T. Richelson, “Whether to ‘Strangle the Baby in the Cradle’: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program, 1960–64,” International Security 25:3 (Winter 2000/2001), 54–99.
Vikram Sarabhai, Science Policy and National Development (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1974), xiv.
W. W. Rostow, Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960). For a closer analysis of Rostow’s work and on modernization, see
David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham, eds., Staging Growth. Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003);
Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology. American Social Science and “Nation Building” in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press: 2000);
Nils Gilman, Mandarins of the Future. Modernization Theory in Cold War America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
John V. Vilanilam, Mass Communication in India: A Sociological Perspective (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2005), 154.
Nick Cullather, “Miracles of Modernization: The Green Revolution and the Apotheosis of Technology,” Diplomatic History 28:2 (April 2004), 231.
Bella Mody, “Contextual Analysis of the Adoption of a communications technology: the case of satellites in India,” Telematics and Informatics 4:2 (1987), 151–158.
For more on the ATS satellite, see Arnold Frutkin, “Direct/Community Broadcast Projects Using Space Satellite,” Journal of Space Law 3:1 & 2 (January 1975), 17–24; K. Narayanan, “Special Features of ATS-6 Satellite” in SITE Winter School, Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, 43–52.
For the SITE broadcasts the satellite received the signals from earth at 6 gigahertz and sent them back down at 860 megahertz. The satellite transponder (which received the transmitted the signals) handled one video picture and two soundtracks simultaneously. See Clifford Block et al., “A Case Study of India’s Satellite Instructional Television Project,” AID Report (January 1977), 4.
Raman Srinivasan, “ Goods and Gods, Being a Narrative Disquisition on the Poetics of Technology in Post-Traditional India,” PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994, 118.
For production of programs, clusters were set up at the base production centers at Hyderabad, which produces programs for Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (in languages Telegu and Kannada), in Cuttack, which produces programs in Oriya language, and in Delhi, which produces programs in Hindi for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Bihar. These are small studios, which capsule the program in advance and keep up a regular flow of tapes to Ahmedabad for direct telecast. A. Shroff, SITE: Software Aspect in Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, SITE Winter School (January 16–28, 1976), Space Applications Centre, Indian Space Research Organization, Ahmedabad, India, 87.
Delbert D. Smith, Teleservices via Satellite: Experiments and Future Perspectives via Satellite (Boston: Sijthoff & Noordhoff, 1978), 120.
Dipak C. Talapatra, “The Indian Space Program,” IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine 8:2 (February 1993), 14.
For an anthropological analysis of the Palapa satellite in Indonesia, see Joshua Barker, “Engineers and Political Dreams: Indonesia in the Satellite Age,” Current Anthropology 46:5 (December 2005), 703–727.
See Daniel R. Headrick, The Tools of Empire: Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).
Copyright information
© 2013 John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan, and Ashok Maharaj
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Krige, J., Callahan, A.L., Maharaj, A. (2013). Satellite Broadcasting in Rural India: The SITE Project. In: NASA in the World. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340931_12
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340931_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-34092-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34093-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)