Lifelines of National Economy
Airways and communication
Describe India's air transport and communication networks.
Airways: fastest and most comfortable. Planes cross high mountains, deserts, thick forests and long stretches of ocean easily. Think of the north-east: big rivers, broken hills, dense forests, frequent floods and international borders. There, air travel makes getting about much easier.
Helicopters and cheap flights.
- Pawan Hans Helicopters flies for ONGC to its offshore oil sites, and to hard-to-reach areas: the north-eastern states and the interior of Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.
- UDAN ('Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik', let the common citizen fly) encourages airlines to fly regional and remote routes, so that flying becomes affordable for ordinary people.
Post: the largest network in the world. India Post carries letters and parcels.
- First-class mail: cards and envelopes; airlifted between stations.
- Second-class mail: book packets, registered newspapers and magazines; sent by surface (land and water).
- Six mail channels speed up delivery in big cities: Rajdhani, Metro, Green, Business, Bulk Mail and Periodical.
Phones and Digital India. India has one of Asia's largest telecom networks. More than two-thirds of villages have STD telephone service, at the same rate everywhere, thanks to space and communication technology working together. Digital India prepares the country for a knowledge-based future: 'IT (Indian Talent) + IT (Information Technology) = IT (India Tomorrow)'.
Mass communication. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, books and films entertain us and tell us about national programmes and policies.
- All India Radio (Akashvani) broadcasts in national, regional and local languages.
- Doordarshan is the national TV channel, one of the largest land-based networks in the world.
- Newspapers come out in about 100 languages and dialects: most in Hindi, then English, then Urdu.
- No country makes more feature films than India. The Central Board of Film Certification certifies Indian and foreign films.
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