While Inaugurating the Bangalore It.com 2002

Our Future in It

I am delighted to inaugurate Bangalore IT.com which is one of the Asia's biggest IT and telecom event. 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. I would like to congratulate the Government of Karnataka and all the organizers who have been instrumental in making this mega event possible year after year to enable the country to showcase its innovative contributions to global IT and to be aware and gear up to become the world leaders in the race for IT development and deployment.

We have seen that 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. I am sure by the end of this decade, entire India will have IT enabled services in the fields of human resource, customer interaction, finance and accounting, data search and integration, e-education, tele-medicine and e-governance.

The Indian Software Industry:

Today the software industry in India is nearly 10 billion dollars strong, with a flat domestic market of 2 billion dollars contributing 16% of nation's exports. While in the next ten years, we aim at the Nation's GDP to be doubled, the software industry's contribution is expected to increase at least 10 folds. Software industry is becoming a formidable component of the nation's wealth, a position that warrants self-congratulations certainly.

After the September 11th incident, the Industry went through hiccups. Though it must be said in defence of our great visionaries in the Indian IT field that India did not feel the pinch as much as other developed nations, many Indian companies did shut down and many young graduates went jobless - albeit temporarily. The basic lesson that we have learnt from the clear writing on the wall in the post September 11 era, is that "our software industry has to be made more robust and less fragile, if we are going to make it the most significant contributor to our economy". I would like the IT leaders gathered here, to think of ways and means by which the IT industry can be made more robust and almost insensitive to incidents outside our shores. Tremendous market potential that exists in our country in the area of tele-education, tele-medicine, info-tainment, e- governance etc., need to be explored and enchased. If IT touches India every one of the billion people, the IT market will be phenomenally large. This will ensure absolute robustness. But, growing the domestic market today has been left mainly to the government. I would request the Indian IT Industry to evolve a long term strategy and make thoughtful investments and grow the domestic market without solely depending on the Government. This in the long run will show that one can do IT business with social benefits and still make an economic sense. In addition our client base can be expanded actively to include the most wealthiest continent- Europe, countries such as China, Korea and Japan and many other developing countries.

I request the Governments, Industry and the academia to take this issue of increasing the domestic IT segment through strong and sustainable use of IT for Education and Health care by bringing out a blue print. Let us look at our IT industry employing 500,000 people earning 10 billion $ which is one percent of the world market, from another perspective. An International Software company with 50,000 employees earns 20 billion $ through its world wide operations.

In current trend, if we have to reach 80 B$ we may have to multiply our workforce 8 times which will not make our operations competitive. Hence our software industry has to move up the value chain, come up with innovative products that will sweep the world. I am confident that the Indian Industry would soon come up with such mega initiatives. A country which has seen what is networking of talents to make more than 20,000 man year projects in satellites, fighter aircraft, launch vehicles, atomic energy and missiles, can certainly think of networking of talents in our industry, research laboratories and the academia to ensure that many Indian Multinationals emerge very soon- multinationals which make products that bring per capita revenues almost ten times higher than what we do today- Today, our IT Industry is proud that 260 of the Fortune 500 companies are its clients- When we march towards the Developed India, I would like the IT Industry to lead the march by proclaiming that "260 of the Fortune 500 companies are Indian MNCs"- this is my dream.

Indian Hardware Industry

While we see the stupendous growth of the software Industry, one can not forget that this has also come about with investments on Hardware of foreign origin such as almost 1.88 million PCs, over 2 Lakh hubs etc. - The rapid penetration of Cell phones and the possible standardization of "Citizen Smart Card" shows that by a proper planning, the country would find a gold mine in the hardware industry.

A mission for bringing out a national citizen card for multiple use such as voter ID card, bank operations card, ration card has to be initiated. The National citizen card / smart card has to be an integrated approach from multiple departments and industries. I understand that technological requirements for such a card is within our capabilities and capacity. I would urge Indian electronics majors to form consortium with local chip manufacturers to rise up to this emerging market.

In the next twenty years, we will witness wearable computers with disposable wireless enabled hardware, the possible entry of low cost robots and even the Cyborg. The "thinking and spiritual machines" are talked about as reality. The hardware market will grow far more faster than anything that we have witnessed so far. My belief is that relying only on SW, may not be the best strategy for the future. India should emerge as not only a "Software Giant" but an "ICT giant" with equal strength in SW, HW, embedded systems design, integration, and total end to end solutions.

Knowledge society components

In the 21st century, a new society is emerging where knowledge is the primary production resource instead of capital and labour. Efficient utilisation of this existing knowledge can create comprehensive wealth for the nation. Such a knowledge society has two very important components driven by societal transformation and wealth generation. The societal transformation has to be through large-scale development in education, healthcare, agriculture and governance. These in turn will lead to employment generation, high productivity and rural prosperity. How do we do that?

For us to be in the Knowledge society, we need three networks - The Knowledge Network, the Transport Network and the River Network. I am very happy that the IT industry of the country had amply demonstrated the economic advantages and possible wealth generation by the electronic network- this network permits knowledge to pass between villages, towns, cities and even the continents. The IT industry has shown that by transferring bits and bytes across geographically disperse locations, knowledge multiplies and generates wealth. The national initiative in building golden quadrilateral transport super highways crisis crossing the country is already underway and will soon become the pride of the nation. In similar way we need connectivity among the villages providing them urban amenities.

PURA - Providing Urban amenities in Rural Areas

I envisage Rural Models to share / augment service capabilities to cater to the IT enabled service demands from local in addition to foreign sources. Such models should aim to provide opportunity for rural economic development and prosperity. Youth in the rural localities could be easily trained to cater to requirement of IT enabled service industries. We can get place and manpower at very cheaper rates when compared to urban localities. This will also aid in stopping movement of families towards urban localities. The model envisages a habitat designed to improve the quality of life in rural places and makes special suggestions to remove urban congestion also. Naturally our most demanding urban problem is that of congestion removal and efficient supply of water and effective waste disposal in every locality are the paramount civic needs. There is a minimum size below which a habitat is not viable and not competitive with the existing congested city. At the same time, the existing congested city is not economical compared to a new town once a minimum size of expansion is crossed.

Knowledge powered rural development is an essential need for transforming India into a knowledge power and high bandwidth rural connectivity is the minimum requirement to take education, health care and economic dynamism to the rural areas. Knowledge society leading to knowledge super power can prosper and survive only in the environment of economic security and internal security. Nation has to work for transformation into 'developed India'. Road maps on certain areas have been generated where we have to work for. PURA will show how electronic connectivity can be used to reduce the load on physical transport network. For example, if you can find that you can book your railway tickets through the web in a secure and reliable way, you will not have to take the car or scooter and go to the railway station. Many day to day activities that require you to commute can be done electronically, even generating a new breed of workers- particularly in our Women - who telecommute.

Conclusion

IT would become potent tool in integrating the nation. The remote localities that are now feeling a sense of neglect will no longer feel so. Time and distance will be condensed to bring about a nation that is efficiently small competitive and dynamic.

Civilisation that does not have the knowledge of technology or the technological nations without experience of civilization, cannot innovate newer economy. India has rich civilization and post independent India has focused itself as a technology leader in Space, Defence, Atomic Energy, Agriculture and certain areas of Industry. With IT and telecom emerging as core competence as nation, transforming India into a knowledge society, I see the developed India is not far. My best wishes to the Information and Communication Technology Community.