Contextual analysis of the adoption of a communications technology: The case of satellites in India

TELEMATICS and

INFORMATICS

Vol. 4, No. 2, pp. 151-158, 1987 Copyright © 1987 Pergamon Journals Ltd. Printed in the USA 0736-5853•87 $3.00 + .00

CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE ADOPTION OF A COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF SATELLITES IN INDIA* Bella Mody Abstract-Using India as a case study, this article examines the factors which influence the decision by a developing country to adopt a new technology such as communication satellites. A detailed chronology of the planning and experimentation that preceded implementation of the INSAT system is presented. The political, economic, and socio-cultural factors that appear to have influenced the decision are discussed, and a general model of contextual elements that may influence adoption and utilization of satellites is presented. Which Third World countries are going to adopt satellites? H o w do technological innovations such as satellites diffuse from the innovator-manufacturer to adopting nations such as Indonesia, India, the Arab states and Mexico? Why? What constellation of factors merged in these nations to make Indonesia and India early satellite adopters? What roles did foreign and domestic forces play at different time points? The diffusion of innovations research tradition addresses the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time a m o n g the members o f a social system.' This paper centers on the social system surrounding the process, the context of power within which the stages o f innovation diffusion take place.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT The general purpose of this paper is to illustrate the application o f contextual theorizing to enrich understanding of the actual performance of communication systems around the world. The central role of national prestige, political power and economic privilege in decision-making on communication (and all other national issues) is relegated to the position of temporary "irrational" deviance that is never explained in communication studies. Economics, political and cultural societal macro-level factors are treated as extra-communication variables within the purview of the sociologist, political scientist and anthropologist; the communication researcher as "social" scientist seems to conceptualize communication technologies as if they performed "extra-socially." A m o n g

Dr. Bella Mody is Associate Professor, Department of Telecommunications, Michigan State University. The author would like to acknowledge the suggestions for revisions made by Dallas Smythe and Heather Hudson. *An earlier draft of this paper was presented at the INTELSAT forum on Telecommunications for Development: Exploring New Strategies in October 1986 in New York. The author would like to acknowledge the suggestions for revisions made by Dallas Smythe and Heather Hudson.

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others, reasons for this neglect of context or setting include our use of normative ideal "rational" efficiency and effectiveness criteria for the analysis of actual performance. The data indicate case after case of non-conformity of practice with prescription.' The introduction and performance of communication technology frequently has more to do with economic, political and cultural contextual f/actors that surround it, and less to do with technical efficiency or cost-effectiveness of the innovation than our research and policies acknowledge. Depending on the specific time and place, relevant economic f/actors could be transnational satellite corporations, foreign commercial banks and concessionary lenders, and the domestic class structure. Political factors could include super power policies, foreign aid programs and domestic party politics. Cultural factors could range from the lingering influence of colonial rule on preferences of the elite, to interest groups based on religion, caste, tribe, sex roles and family norms. 3 The specific purpose of this paper is to highlight the role of economic, political, cultural and scientific-technical forces that are usually ignored in studies of communication practice through a brief reconstruction of how India decided that its future communication system would be satellite-based. Use of this "contextual framework" for comparative analysis of the satellite decision-making process in other adopting countries such as Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico is recommended to enable us to advance beyond gross generalizations about communication technology and national behavior to specification of similarities and dissimilarities under particular time-and-space conditions. Contextual analysis tells us which forces had or might have power to influence a communication system in what time period (See Figure 1). Thus, it has two advantages: One, contextual frameworks facilitate fuller analysis of why past projects were implemented successfully or not. Two, contextual frameworks enable the development of hypothetical scenarios with alternative contextual configurations (See Table 1) to help communication planners foresee economic, political, cultural, and scientific-technological contingencies in their surrounding environment that could influence the rise and fall of future communication technology applications. THE CASE OF INDIA Which foreign and domestic forces influenced India's adoption of a satellite over time, from the planning stages in the mid-1960s to the INSAT-1 domestic operational system in 1983? Space research began in India in 1962. The success of geosynchronous communication satellites demonstrated by Telstar and Syncom caused Indian space scientists to investigate the utility of such satellites in'countries that had not made massive investments in ground-based communication infrastructure. This investigation led to a proposal to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) that it fund the establishment of a Center for Training and Research in Satellite Communication for Developing Countries at Ahmedabad, India in 1965. An agreement was signed with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to use the UNDP earth station with NASA's second Applications Technology Satellite (ATS-2). In 1967, television transmission was restricted to Delhi, the capital of India. Broadcast planners had decided television would be introduced in the urban areas first, and then be extended, transmitter by transmitter, from city to town to district to village over several decades. Vikram Sarabhai, the first Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), was appalled: why was television being first introduced in the

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ILLUSTRATIVE CONTEXTUAL EFFECTS

ILLUSTRATIVE CONTEXTUAL CAUSES Feedback

......................., !

SC E INT S F Iu C IbN T -Forei E o a io n tC ita nlH alN C IgA nL

~

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SCIENTIFIC-TECHNICAL f

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS SOCIO-CULTURAL Foreign National Sub-National

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POLITICAL~ Foreign National Sub-National

~ Ownership Financing Management Professional Values Training Hardware Software

~ SOCIO-CULTURAL

Beneficiaries _

~POLITICAL

Figure1. Contextualdeterminants and contextualoonsequences of n~ionalcommunicationtechnology sy~ems.

information-rich urban areas full o f other media, when the information-starved population in rural areas needed information and education most? Having learned about NASA's plans for a sixth satellite that would put urban and rural receivers on an equal footing, a team of Indian engineers went to NASA in June 1967 to study the cost and coverage advantages of a satellite delivery system over a conventional terrestrial alternative for India.' The 1967 ISRO-NASA study team compared four delivery systems: conventional rebroadcast stations with terrestrial microwave interconnections, a strictly satellitebased broadcasting system, conventional rebroadcast stations with satellite interconnection, a hybrid system o f rebroadcast stations for high population areas, and a satellite for interconnection and transmission to low-population density areas. Their evaluation showed that the hybrid system gave the least cost solution. It was found that the terrestrial system planned by the broadcast agency would cost three times more than the hybrid satellite-cum-terrestrial system. Thus, a recommendation for an Indian Nation-wide SATellite-based communication system called INSAT was made by the team of Indian scientists and engineers. This was a dozen years before the Indian National Satellite was actually launched. Two items are noteworthy here: the proposal originated with Indian engineers and space scientists and not a foreign manufacturer, and it took a long time to be implemented. Reasons for this will become clear in the analysis that follows. Indian space scientists were eager to demonstrate how space technology could pro-

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vide a television signal that would not discriminate between village and city. However, they cautioned against quick unplanned nation-wide expansion of television: preparation of useful software and the organization of logistics on the ground would require more time for resolution than the hardware challenges they would handle, they predicted. This was the lesson from the unsuccessful national expansion of the successful small UNESCO pilot project in rural radio conducted in 1958. Unfortunately, the lesson was not learned. ~ The joint ISRO-NASA study team recommended a limited pilot project of the proposed hybrid system to identify problems in advance, and develop expertise in handling them, prior to national coverage under the INSAT national operational system. The possible Indian pilot project preparatory to the operational Indian National Satellite system, INSAT, was called Satellite Instructional Television Experiment, SITE. To gain insights into the social and organizational problems of using television for rural development until NASA's ATS-6 was available for experimentation, the Indian space agency proposed a domestic pre-pilot pilot to the Delhi television station, and the Indian Agriculture Research Institute in 1967. The objective was to run an agricultural education television project that would pay special attention to the problems of effective software development, receiver maintenance, and audience information utilization. It installed 80 television sets in villages outside Delhi. An independent evaluation found significant gains in the audiences's knowledge, attitudes and overt behavior but listed enormous field logistics problems involved in deploying television for rural development. The problems were organizational, not technical: how to select villages for television installation, what kind of a television receiver maintenance plan to have, how to select motivated discussion leaders and create "teleclubs" for community viewing and action, and what to do about the absence of an agricultural infrastructure to facilitate adoption of the televised agricultural tips. It is worth mentioning that these problems indentified through field research twenty years ago have not been adequately resolved in the INSAT system today. Why did NASA choose India as the place to demonstrate direct broadcast capability of their satellites and thus promote market development? In 1968, Stanford University communication researchers Wilbur Schramm and Lyle Nelson compared the appropriateness and readiness of Brazil versus India for such a pilot project: India was selected. DOMESTIC ACTORS Major domestic actors were Indira Gandhi as cabinet minister responsible for space research and Prime Minister, the government's pioneering space agency as initiator, the broadcasting agency, and the health, agriculture, family planning and education agencies. Thus, the primary actors represented the scientific and political contexts. The broadcasting agency was unwilling to accept the research finding that the satellite delivery system would be an improvement over their terrestrial plan. The reason for their lack of interest in satellites was because they perceived television transmission as their responsibility: why was the space agency encroaching on their turf? The ministries of agriculture, education, health and family planning, major users of the nation-wide information-extension outreach facility that a satellite would offer, claimed they were content with their present rural outreach efforts, although they were limited to a small number of field workers. Unless they got an increase in their staffs and budgets that would help expand their bureaucratic empires, they perceived satellite outreach capability as another chore. "What's in it for our bureaucracy?" was the early

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reaction of many government agencies. Whether a satellite would help serve the unserved rural majority of India did not seem to be the primary concern. The Finance ministry wondered why expensive national television coverage was a priority when India's development education-information-extension planners had not harnessed the potential o f radio to this end yet. Rural administrators feared that television would raise villager aspirations that they would not be able to meet. The Defense ministry was against the satellite pilot project using the ultra-high frequency band: It had been their preserve, up to this point in time. Some economists compared the rates of return on expenditure on television versus expenditure on new primary schools, health clinics and other contributions to the nation's development, and found television wanting, irrespective of how sets were to be distributed. To establish consensus among all domestic actors involved in India's satellite television future, the Government o f India set up an ad hoc National Satellite Telecommunications Committee (NASCOM) in 1968. Representatives o f all concerned government departments attended ten meetings chaired by Dr. Sarabhai over the following year. His charm and dynamism were rewarded in February 1969: NASCOM submitted a report to the Cabinet recommending the SITE project. In the Fall of 1969, the Indian and U.S. space agencies finally signed a memorandum of understanding. The U.S. would provide India with four hours of satellite time for a year, without payment, to enable India to: • Acquire experience in the development, testing and management of a satellitebased instructional television experiment. • Determine optimal system parameters for its national system. • Demonstrate the potential value of satellite communication for Indian needs.

FOREIGN ACTORS Major foreign actors were NASA, ITU-UNDP, and later, Ford Aerospace which won the contract to build the first series of Indian communication satellites. Minor roles were played by General Electric, Hughes Aircraft, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (where Indian and U.S. scientists had studied together as graduate students) and representatives of Western European nations at the ITU's World Administrative Radio Conference. The roles of NASA and I T U - U N D P have been described earlier. Simultaneous with preparations for pilot project SITE in 1969, Indian scientists and engineers were planning ahead for INSAT. Work was proceeding on a satellite launch vehicle. Studies on systems configuration parameters for INSAT were conducted with GE, the NASA contractor for ATS-6, and Hughes Aircraft, GE's sub-contractor for the communication transponder. A far-sighted agreement focussed on indigenization of hardware was reached to provide on-the-job training for Indian engineers during the construction of ATS-6. In 1970, engineers from the Indian space agency and Lincoln Labs at M.I.T. undertook a joint study on the spacecraft for INSAT. With the 1971 Bangladesh War, Indo-U.S. relations soured and collaborative efforts came to a halt. Domestic preparations for satellite use suffered a near-fatal blow as a result o f the sudden death o f pioneer Sarabhai. A postponement in the launch of ATS-6 proved a boon: it gave the space agency time to regroup and get back into gear.

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PILOT PROJECT SITE The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment started in August 1975, ten years after it was envisioned. It was designed to provide experience to enable the design and management of the domestic Indian national satellite system. The evolution of a locally-suited uniquely Indian satellite configuration and deployment plan was the purpose.

INSAT The decision on INSAT was made much before the experimental year was out, and much before the social evaluation data was in. The question was: would the Central Cabinet consisting of politicians from the ruling party decide that India should have it's own domestic multi-purpose satellite-based communication system? What criteria would they use? The technical data and the cost alternatives had been known since 1968. It was now five months into SITE: December 1975. The satellite and the locally designed sets were working very well; Doordarshan, the television authority, had been transmitting programs for four hours a day, even though their production quality and utility to rural audiences was uneven. In the fifth month of the efficiently working SITE, the Indian Cabinet announced that it had decided the future communication system of the country would be satellitebased: INSAT was approved. The reasons for the timing of this approval are speculative. They include the need to reduce the discontinuity in direct broadcast reception time between SITE and INSAT that was inevitable. Evidence of the efficiency of the Indian space agency as satellite systems managers was abundant in the first few months. Doordarshan had proved it could transmit four hours of programs a day. Many felt the most decisive reason was the demonstration of the political advantages of a government-controlled communication system that reached villagers in the remotest corners of the country with the official line from the party in power. The daily satellite news program gave the then-beleaguered Prime Minister (who had lost the election, suspended the Constitution and imposed censorship on all media) instantaneous monopoly access to voters. In the Indian context of government-owned and operated television, direct broadcast television had proven its power to the chief political force in her time of greatest need. INSAT became operational in 1983. It was built to Indian specifications by Ford Aerospace with over one hundred Indian engineers in residence throughout. Presently, the INSAT-enriched hybrid Indian communication system transmits educational programs produced by the Ministry of Education to primary schools in the mornings and university-education enrichment programs financed by the University Grants Commission in the afternoons. Rural adult education in agriculture and health are broadcast in the evenings, sandwiched between national news, entertaining movies produced by the domestic equivalents of Hollywood, and soap operas sponsored by advertisers. The educational purposes that inspired Sarabhai and his colleagues in the Indian space agency in the 1960s and 1970s are mentioned rarely in the 1980s. The excitement in this decade is provided by Doordarshan opening itself to private producers and advertising agencies as a result of its "going commercial" in the post-SITE era. Advertising revenues were $640,000 in the first year; ten years later, in 1985, advertising revenues were $52 million. Doordarshan estimates that it will be in a position to sell 80°70 of India's population

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to advertisers when it has 370 transmitters in 1990. Advertising revenue projections for 1990 are $170 million. 6 It was frequently predicted before SITE that the INSAT television component would be financed completely by the telephony payload. It was also mentioned that telephony revenues would be such that they would cover the capital costs of the satellite hardware in the first three years o f its seven year life. Growth in the economy has led to the major increases in demand for telephony that were predicted. Additionally, corporate growth has led to a demand for long-distance telephony and data communication networks. Approximately 40% of India's long-distance telephony traffic is routed via the satellite. Weather forecasting has improved significantly since INSAT. IMPLICATIONS

What are the lessons from this narrative for researchers trying to understand when and why some countries adopt communication technologies and others do not? The idea of a satellite for India was initiated by scientists on grounds o f technical efficiency, educational equity and cost benefits in the mid-1960s; the final adoption decision was made by politicians who were concerned with what they could get out o f it in December 1985. Its greater-than-expected financial viability in the mid-1980s is a result of unforeseen activity in the economy leading to an expanded middle class, liberalization o f regulations, and the high-technology bias o f the new political regime headed by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The present political context is distinct from the emphasis on the rural poor in the previous time period. Indications are that the Indonesian satellite adoption process was influenced by different contextual actors, a different sequence of events, and a much shorter decisionmaking cycle. There appear to be major differences in the contexts o f the Mexican and Arabsat systems as well. Therefore, to make generalizations in terms o f Third World countries is to think in unwarranted superficial generalities. The implication for communication researchers is that we must study (and know how to study) communication and apparently extra-(neous)communication variables, be they scientific-technical, economic, political and cultural when they influence communication decisions. This requires broader conceptualizations, and multi-disciplinary methodologies. The influence o f contextual factors on communication variables on their surrounding environment is illustrated in Figure 1. Table 1 is an illustrative analytical matrix to help the researcher list dominant contexTable 1. Matrix of F/actors Surrounding and Influencing Communication Systems (With Illustrative Entries from the Indian Case). Economic

Scientifictechnical

Political

Cultural

Foreign

Foreign exchange shortages

NASA

Support from U.S./ U.S.S.R.

Reliance on U.S. programs

National

Pressure from advertisers

Excellent staff

Multi-Party democracy strong civil service bureaucracy

Great Value on preservation of National Culture

Sub-national

Local industrial lobby

Poor at local level

Multiple splinter groups

Strong Islamic-Hindu tension

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tual factors at each phase in the life-cycle of a communication technology or system under study, thus recognising the influence of the changing spatial context. Perhaps one reason it took India 20 years from conception to implementation of a satellite-based system was because its scientists wanted to reduce dependence on foreign sources by slow transfer and indigenization of the technology. Additionally, the nature of the civil service bureaucracy and multi-part organization of the political system in India required more time-consuming establishment of consensus at several levels. Contextual analysis would indicate that whether old or new technologies will promote self-reliant national development or dependent development will depend on the interests of economic, political and other dominant factors in the context that deploys the technology, rather than on the technology alone.

REFERENCES 1. Rogers, E. M. Diffusion o f Innovations. New York: Free Press (1983). 2. For a more recent example from American Samoa, see Nelson, Lyle, et al. Bold Experiment. Stanford Ca.: Stanford University Press (1983). 3. Mody, B. First World Technologies in Third World Contexts. In E. M. Rogers and E Balle ed. The Communication Revolution in North America and Western Europe. New Jersey: Ablex (1985). 4. Indian Members of the Joint Study Group on Satellite Instructional Television. Satellite Television: A System Proposal for India in Space Research in India. Ahmedabad, India: INCOSPAR, Physical Research Labs (August 1968). 5. Schramm W. and others. New Educational Media in Action: Case Studies for Planners. Paris: Unesco. (1967) 6. Audience Research Unit. Television in India. New Delhi: Doordarshan Kendra (1985).