BUDGET 2000
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
COMMENTARY
GOVT&ECONOMY
Y2K: BIZ FEATURES
INDIA & THE WTO
CREDIT POLICY
BIZ IN THE USA
CARS & MOBIKES
MANAGEMENT
CASE STUDY
BIZ-QUIZ
USEFUL INFO
ARCHIVES
NEWSLINKS
SEARCH REDIFF

PM dedicates TIDEL IT park to nation

Shobha Warrier in Madras

Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on Tuesday night inaugurated Asia's largest technology park at Madras and dedicated it to the nation. The function was presided over the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, K Karunanidhi, Union ministers Murasoli Maran, Pramod Mahajan, Ram Vilas Paswan, Kumaramangalam and T R Balu. Vaiko and Vazhappadi Ramamurthy also in attended.

Inaugurating the TIDEL park, the prime minister said that the park represents a tidal wave carrying India's IT prowess to all the shores in the global cyber space." He agreed that India had achieved a lot in IT in a short time but "we must remember that we have a long way to go to realise our full potential. We need to consolidate our strengths and quickly overcome our weaknesses."

India had to concentrate on four areas if it wanted to be a superpower in information technology, according to the PM. The most critical area that needed all the attention was telecommunication infrastructure. He said that the Group on Telecom and IT Convergence, under the chairmanship of the finance minister, is preparing a draft of a new convergence legislation, and that the government is planning to open up national long distance telecom services to foster large-scale competition.

Accepting the long-pending demands of the IT industry to de-monopolise under-sea optical fibre connectivity, the government would address the demand sympathetically, he said. The government also has constituted a standing committee on bandwidth which would include the user industry and service providers, as the lack of high speed broadband connectivity was a major bottleneck in the growth of India's IT sector.

Dwelling more on the telecom services in India, the prime minister assured the Tamil Nadu chief minister who had repeatedly asked for improved telecom services in the state that DTS would be corporatised soon.

He cited IT and IT enabled education as the second area that needed the attention of decision-makers. The government has set an ambitious target of software exports worth $50 billion by the year 2008 and that will create 2 million jobs in IT. Unless more students are given quality education in IT, India will not be able to create meet the demand for trained manpower.

The prime minister urged the gathering to develop IT resources to revive and modernise traditional industries. "The bulk of software development is targeted for exports. Disturbingly, our domestic economy is absorbing very little so far. This imbalance is hurtful to the long-term sustainability of our potential in IT. Let us not forget that only a balance between efficient 'brick economy' and the 'click economy' can achieve India's national goals," he said

He urged all the government departments, the PSUs, banks and utilities to use IT more effectively and efficiently so that government can save a lot. He also cautioned that if English remained the only carrier of knowledge, India would not benefit fully from today's IT driven knowledge revolution. He congratulated Tamil Nadu for the efforts taken to promote IT in Tamil. "I would like all the states to emulate the example of Tamil Nadu to recreate their literary, cultural and artistic heritage in digital form in their respective languages. I am highly impressed by Tamil Nadu's rapid progress in agriculture, industry, education, healthcare and other social sectors.

Her concluded, "I would like to see, within the next 5-10 years, the Internet and related technologies and services to touch the lives of every Indian, irrespective of where they live and what they do."

In his presidential address, the chief minister proudly described the unique and important features of the TIDEL park. Other than being the largest and the most sophisticated IT park in India, it has the state of the art thermal energy storage system, which is the third largest in the world, next only to France and Japan!

He said that the government encouraged the creation of high bandwidth, optic fiber backbone networks to take universal access to Internet a reality, and work on the first project had already started.

The state government also plans to implement several electronic projects in district offices, regional transport offices, state tax offices, registrar offices, municipal services, etc. By 2008, the government wants to make all students digitally literate when they pass out of school.

Pramod Mahajan, Information Technology Minister, said "Without any hesitation, I can say the TIDEL park in Madras has world-class facilities."

Complimenting the IT professionals in Tamil Nadu, the minister remarked that many had complained to him that the kind of IT professionals that Tamil Nadu had was not available anywhere lese in India. He hoped that knowledge of IT would spread from the land of Ramanujam to the land of Bhasakara, from the south to the north. He requested the telecom minister to provide excess capacity in telecom communication as "what India needed was not enough bandwidth but surplus bandwidth."

Money