[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
NEWS: India must use IT as tool for social transf.: Pitroda
India must use IT as tool for social transformation: Pitroda
(INTERVIEW)
By Sumeet Chatterjee, Indo-Asian News Service
New Delhi, Sep 18 (IANS) India must use the powers of IT and a huge
workforce of low-cost professionals with proven research skills to
bring about rapid social transformation, according to telecom guru
Sam Pitroda.
The opportunities in IT for India don't lie in software exports or
call centres, but deploying IT for social transformation processes
such as education, health, sanitation and water, said Pitroda,
chairman of WorldTel.
WorldTel, an organisation set up by the Geneva-based International
Telecommunications Union, is committed to developing communications
infrastructures on a commercial basis in the third world.
"We are so happy with our software exports. But its time we emphasis
on what we can do with it at home to fulfil basic human needs and
bring about a change in people's live in cities and villages,"
Pitroda told IANS in an interview.
According to Pitroda, most of India's talent is busy solving the
problems of the Western world and not that of their own country.
"We have a huge resource base of computer professionals but most
often their energy is harnessed to solving other people's problems in
the advanced countries of the world," said the technocrat-turned-
entrepreneur.
"When are we going to use their skills to solve the problems in our
own backyard?"
Pitroda, currently visiting India, said many villages in the country
still had no access to drinking water, sanitation and education, and
technological advances have not touched their lives in any manner.
"We are indeed at crossroads. We really need to define what kind of
nation we want to build. I see emphasis on IT only for exports. But
we don't understand the fact that IT is the key to transform the
society.
"We can make our systems more open and efficient through use of IT. I
think we have a very wrong idea of what IT can do for a country like
India with one billion people. The real issue is social integration
of IT and that is not happening."
Pitroda, who was an adviser on Technology Missions to late Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi, said IT solutions can help India tackle
problems in core areas of governance, commerce, finance, education,
health, agriculture, legal issues and employment.
"From opening a bank account to getting admission to a university, we
are forced to fill innumerable forms and this puts bureaucratic
hurdles in the way of people. Let's use IT to simplify life and
enable people to get things done faster."
Regretting that primary education in many parts of the country has
not changed for many decades, he said increased use of IT would
enable the people to question everything that existed and create new
systems of work and values.
Although knowledge industry has taken roots in India, the country is
still far away from becoming a technology hub in the global
marketplace in the absence of proper infrastructure and "confusion"
in government policies.
"Today we have about seven million mobile phones in India. In
contrast, China adds five million phones every month. In the next two-
three years, we would need about 100 million fixed telephone lines up
from over 30 million now.
"So the telecom revolution is yet to begin in India," said Pitroda,
who migrated to the U.S. in 1964 and has more than 50 patents in his
name in the area of communications technologies.
India's IT software and services sector, exports grossed $7.68
billion of revenue in the year to March 2002, a growth of 29 percent
over revenue of $6.23 billion in 2000-01.
The government, a late convert to the domestic software industry's
prowess, has pinned its hopes on the sector to move the economy to a
high-growth path.
The boom in the country's IT industry in the last few years, however,
has failed to arrest a divide between those riding the crest of the
information technology boom and millions of poor.
--Indo-Asian News Service
