About the Speaker
Kena Wani is 2020-2021 Postdoctoral Fellow with the University of Göttingen’s ICAS-MP programme in New Delhi. She has also recently joined the Ashoka Archives of the Ashoka University. Wani graduated in May this year with a doctoral degree in History from Duke University, USA. Her doctoral dissertation titled Remaking Capital: Business, Technology and Development Ambitions in Twentieth-Century Western India, studied the participation of commercial and business actors within developmental endeavours shaping urban, industrial and rural worlds of western India over the colonial-postcolonial conjuncture.
Abstract
Over the 1960s and the 1970s the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) and its successor programme, the Kheda Communication Project (KCP) were initiated in villages of western India in the region of Gujarat. These programmes involved the deployment of communication satellites towards the objectives of agricultural education and rural community development. My paper will develop a historical account of SITE and KCP. It will narrate how the promises of India’s Outer Space Programme prominently interfaced with the postcolonial state’s ambitions of reforming the feudal setup as well as the productivity of the Indian village. I will trace the braiding of these two objectives through the collaborations between agencies moulding the world of international developmentalism in the Cold War period and certain individuals like Vikram Sarabhai who had transitioned from a background in the textile business community of Ahmedabad to becoming an “expert” and an advocate of introducing new technological and managerial reforms within the activities of the Indian postcolonial state. These collaborations plotted the role of the satellites in rural development as a typically acontextual and place-neutral mode of crossing between temporal and cultural differences—thus the perfect chariot of a potential“leap-frogging.” I will show, however, that the actual functioning of SITE and KCP was rather predicated upon a palpable reactivation of existing rural contexts, whereby lines of inequality and social strife were brought into sharp relief within the activities constituting these programmes. My paper will further consider how newer models and imaginaries of understanding rural development that were borne of such technologically focused programmes came to terms with their experiences on ground, and how in spite of probable “failures” they faced, these programmes sought out a new life through the emerging discipline of “rural management.”
Report
"Rethinking the Histories of Rural Development: Satellite Broadcasting and Managerialism in Western India, 1960s-1970s" by Dr Kena Wani was a talk that encompassed different disciplines across the decades she covered. In her talk, she talked about how the two satellite programs, the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) and its successor program, the Kheda Communication Project (KCP) were introduced in the villages for agricultural education. However, it was not a linear project, for with the ambitions of a Postcolonial country, the promises of India's Outer Space program led by Vikram Sarabhai, a world plunged into the Cold War, and the social differences in the rural societies of Western India, there were various aspects to this proposed idea and its further implementation.
Her lecture was divided into five parts, the first being the International collaborations and early years of India's space ambitions, for which she used the reports presented by the Indian Committee for Outer Space Research. United States of America's space organization, NASA, needed a place to launch its satellite connection close to the equator. Vikram Sarabhai reached out to NASA, and as a result, an agreement was reached between the USA, the United Nations, and India.
In the second part, she talked about Vikram Sarabhai within the historical context. His enthusiasm to introduce technological reform was crucial in this work. He, unfortunately, died in 1971, before this satellite could be used to introduce the agricultural telecast on Television for the rural community.
In the third part, she talked about what is known as "leap-frogging". After SITE was introduced, Agricultural programs were screened twice a day, screened in public places. A new division with ISRO was established for administrating the television project called Development, Education and Communication unit (DCEU). After a year, KCP was introduced. What they tried to do was bring together different rural parts under one idea.
In the fourth part, she talked about the Evaluation and Experimentation of SITE and KCP. One of her primary sources for this was her interview with Late Hasmukh Baradi, who was one of the key presenters for SITE. Baradi was responsible for developing a story that showcased an older man's beliefs of dowry and child marriage being challenged by the generation. While it was enjoyed by the people, for people it was more of a form of escapism because of actors and professionalism rather than reality. A different show set up later was played in a village in Gujrat had a script written by the villagers and had parts played by the villagers. This helped tackle social causes more
Her final part dealt with The Arrival of "Rural management", a mode in which people reflected on the problems of rural development. There was much work done in the Kheda-Anand belt in Gujarat.
Dr Wani concluded that social reform was supposed to work in hand with agricultural growth. This became paradoxical, especially due to the rural politics playing in the locality where SITE and KCP were introduced. Her main point of argument was that business-like people and their cultures could not truly expect rural politics and apply these ideas according to it.
Report by Shubhr Aakriti, Undergraduate Class of 2022
