Development and Educational Communication Unit, Indian Space Research Organization, Ahmedabad, India, Email: hpjoshi_decu@sac.isro.gov.in, gayatri@sac.isro.gov.in.
The potential of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be well used in developing countries by creating an appropriate knowledge and organizational support. The new and emerging technologies have a phenomenal growth in ushering a knowledge based society with more conscious, humane and better informed citizens. If we aim at addressing the nation as a whole or one segment of population across the country, satellite communication would be one of the preferred media of communication. The Development and Educational Communication Unit (DECU) being the social arm of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has been conducting several studies for the fishermen community with specific objectives. From our experiences, we have realized that the modern fishermen require timely, reliable and accurate information on meteorological and oceanographic parameters. Communication – either in the form of sharing of information or intimation of any disaster – is one of the crucial needs, especially when they are into deep sea fishing. The gadgets like Very High Frequency (VHF) and mobile phone are important tools for communication but have limitation in terms of connectivity, which ultimately reflects in limited use of the devices. Each experience has contributed towards the designing and development of devices that are most suitable to the target audiences, with some amount of customization. In this paper, we would describe the role of ICT for fishermen community in general and satellite communication in particular.
ISRO, educational communication, development communication, ICT, fisher folk
