NEW DELHI: A sum of approximately Rs 9 crore has been spent over the last three years by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) to provide the necessary satellite bandwidth to respective State Governments under the Gramsat Scheme.

The expenditure towards content generation and transmission is borne by the State Government of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Karnataka for the operation in their respective states. 

The details of the programme transmitted under the scheme have been under the purview of the concerned State Government. Generally, these programmes cover areas such as mass education, tribal culture, anganwadi workers’ training, fisheries, forest and environment. 

The State Governments concerned formulate the programmes to be transmitted on the Gramsat network and include programmes such as ‘Kuch Soche Kuch Samjhe’, ‘Bhor Honewali Hai’, Kahani Baba’, ‘Ek Tha Raja’, ‘Baat Hamari’, to promote tribal development and culture. 

The dedicated Gramsat satellite is being used by ISRO in keeping in mind the urgent need to eradicate illiteracy in the rural belt.

The Gramsat satellite carries six to eight high powered C-band transponders, which together with video compression techniques can disseminate regional and cultural specific audio-visual programmes of relevance in each of the regional languages through rebroadcast mode on an ordinary TV set.

The high power in C-band has enabled even remote area viewers outside the reach of the TV transmitters to receive programmers of their choice in a direct reception mode with a simple dish antenna.

The salient features of GRAMSAT projects are its communications networks are at the state level connecting the state capital to districts, blocks and enabling a reach to villages; providing computer connectivity data broadcasting, TV-broadcasting facilities having applications like e- governance, development information, teleconferencing, helping disaster management; and providing rural-education broadcasting.

The Gramsat projects have an appropriate combination interactive training at district and block levels employing suitable configuration; broadcasting services for rural development; computer interconnectivity and data exchange services; and tele-health and tele-medicine services.