current solutions also call for research and 

 development on new, more effective transport methods, 

 new sources of energy, and greater consistency between 

 urban design and choice of transportation technology. 

 The institutions suggested as centers for 

 transportation research and training in the United 

 States and in the U.N. system should help support or 

 carry out these activities. 



5. New Initiatives for the Use of Communications 



In most developing countries, basic communication 

 services are woefully inadequate. The communications 

 gap 1 in telephone service, radios, television, and 

 printed matter is an obvious factor in the income 

 disparity between rich and poor. 



Modern communication and information technologies 

 now make it possible to shift part of the 

 communications burden from the transportation sector. 

 Improved communications can now help break down rural 

 isolation and promote better education and health care, 

 changes in urban design, and more dispersed regional 

 settlement. Recent reductions in costs and 

 improvements in performance indicate that improved 

 communications technologies could become a major new 

 force in development. 



The Promise of Modern Telecommunications 



Modern telecommunications offers new opportunities 

 for rural development. The United states has played a 

 leading role in India 1 s Satellite Instructional 

 Television Experiment (SITE) , for example. This one- 

 year project supplied 2,400 remote villages with 

 television through direct telecasting from a satellite 

 transmitter to village television sets. By the end of 

 the year, between 120,000 and 190,000 people were 

 watching on any particular night. Television to date 

 has been an urban service limited to the immediate 

 vicinity of the big city, but SITE made it possible to 

 contact the most impoverished people who have always 

 been completely cut off from information sources. SITE 

 instructional materials were produced specifically to 

 help overcome the rural gap in knowledge, focusing on 

 the classroom, the community viewer, and the teacher. 



The SITE effort related its programs to 

 agricultural techniques, health and hygiene, family 

 planning, and education. Feedback studies indicate a 

 high interest in do-it-yourself approaches of all 

 types, and in agricultural techniques and animal 

 husbandry. More mixing of castes by the viewing 



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