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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.
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.
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Participants