GLOBAL AND CONCENTRATED APPROACH
REQUIRED TO ADDRESS URGENT NEEDS OF PEOPLE : SHRI SHOURIE
ADDRESSES
WORLD SUMMIT ON INFORMATION SOCIETY AT GENEVA
The Minister for
Communications, Information Technology and Disinvestment, Shri
Arun Shourie has urged the countries to concentrate and sharpen
the focus on those projects which will spell immediate benefits
to people at large and lift them into the ‘New Information Society’.
The Minister was addressing the World Summit on Information Society
at Geneva today. He said that "we should through the new technologies
address specific and urgent needs of our people". He suggested
focussed efforts to be undertaken in areas specially abolishing
illiteracy, upgrading existing educational institutions, tele-medicine,
enabling the disabled specially the print disabled and codifying
traditional knowledge for instance, household indigenous remedies
for common ailments.
Highlighting important
software applications developed and adopted in India, Shri Arun
Shourie said that Indian firms equip people in over 55 countries
for the Information Society. Several cyber cities and training
centres in other countries are being set up. In this connection,
he referred to the recent setting up of the Kofi Anan Centre for
Excellence jointly by the Prime Minister of India and the President
of Ghana in Accra via. Video tele-conferencing. He said that Indian
Government would redouble such initiatives. About the constitution
of a Working Group to ascertain the feasibility and effectiveness
of setting up a Fund for Advancing Information Society by the
Summit, the Minister offered greater assistance financially and
by way of training and equipping people for the new Society and
by sharing substantial experience that India has acquired in the
spheres of e-governance, tele-medicine, imparting literacy, information
security, language technologies etc. The Minister urged that the
group should examine issues relating to Internet Governance and
help in devising ways to prevent terrorists and other adversaries
from disrupting such progressively integrated systems.
Speaking about India’s
accomplishments in the field of Information Technology, the Minister
stated that India earns around $11 billion from the export of
IT services and products every year. One-third of the start-ups
in Silicon Valley were by Indians. In India, over hundred of the
Fortune-500 companies have set up R&D Centres and three-fourth
of the world’s CMM Quality Level V companies are located here.
Giving details about expanding infrastructure for Information
Society rapidly, Shri Shourie stated that 1.3 million subscribers
to mobile telephony are being added every month and 500,000 Kms
of fibre optic network have already been laid throughout the country.
In some States, all
land records have been digitised so that farmers can secure title
documents etc. without having to wait upon the village official.
Similarly, by installing tele-medicine infrastructure software,
we have enabled patients in distant, isolated communities to receive
the best medical diagnosis and advise in the foremost of our hospitals.
To enable people to access the new technologies, software has
been developed that transforms text that will soon convert speech
automatically from one language to another. For visually impaired
persons, a software is already in use in India which converts
printed text into electronic form and then print the text in Braille
and transform the text into speech. Shri Shourie assured Mrs.
Kicki Nordstrom, President of the World Blind Union that he would
send text to voice software that will read aloud all the papers
the moment they are accessed on the website.
While concluding
his Address, Shri Shourie called upon the participating nations
to adopt a few specific projects of global reach and global significance
and organise coordinated research on them. He said that "the Summit
should now go beyond declarations. We should agree on a few actual
programmes that we will execute in mission mode – so that when
we meet in Tunis two years from now, we are not just deliberating
on the next declaration, but are celebrating actual accomplishments".
He commended four projects namely, use of ICT to abolish illiteracy,
developing universal network language, bringing text to voice
and voice to text software to perfection and laying of infrastructure
to the very doorsteps of the people.
Geneva Summit is
addressing the broad range of themes concerning the Information
Society and adopt a declaration of principles and an Action Plan,
addressing the whole range of issues related to Information Society.
The next World Summit will take place in Tunis in 2005. Development
themes will be key focus in the Tunis Summit.
