The Hindu Business Line : High bandwidth rural connectivity vital: President

The President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, talking to Dinesh Koushal, a visually impaired student of Delhi, who received a CD on `Reading aid for the blind' at a function in Hyderabad on Saturday. The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, and Mr Rama Raju, Managing Director of Satyam Computers, look on.

HYDERABAD, March 15

TO reach the benefits of information technology to the rural areas particularly in the areas of telemedicine, healthcare and e-learning, a high bandwidth rural connectivity holds the key, according to the President, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.

This potential of information technology had to be harnessed to usher in a knowledge-powered rural development. And this was possible only if these areas were made economically viable. By the end of the decade, the entire country would have IT-enabled services in the fields of human resource, customer interaction, finance and accounting, data search and integration, e-education, telemedicine and e-governance, the President said.

Speaking on `Knowledge society and its dimension' after dedicating the International Institute for Information Technology, Hyderabad (IIT-H) to the nation, he said, "Today IT and telecom are becoming the accelerators of service levels that could be extended to every citizen and multiplier of user segments sharing the knowledge products for development".

"Time has come for us to communicate our innovative contributions to global IT and gear up to become world leaders in the race of IT development and deployment. We have seen the growth of IT and telecommunication in India has established that the data transformed into information has a business proposition which has given a competitive advantage," he said.

"Our core competencies that can be exploited in addition to what has been planned in 1998 include information security, scientific software development, e-governance that can spearhead a strong domestic market, entertainment, education, hardware and chip design and wireless applications. If we explore these areas of our core competency, we can create Indian MNCs and could aim at a target of $ 150 billion by the year 2010. Our industry is capable of delivering the right goods every time and all the time," he said.

Complementing the IIIT-H research, the President said: "I am happy to note that IIIT-H has developed lot of reading aids for the visually handicapped and I am delighted to release the software."

Dr Kalam said by providing the use of a variety of technologies to enhance the capabilities of human surgeons, robotics would become an increasingly vital component in the medical world. Robotics surgery, where IIIT-H was working on, was certainly not a fancy equipment or technology for show. It is future.

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High bandwidth rural connectivity vital: President