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Techno park turns into 'fortress' for Li Peng's visit

Fakir Chand in Bangalore

The sprawling International Technology Park at Whitefield on the outskirts of Bangalore was turned into a 'fortress' for the visit of People's Congress of China chairman Li Peng Tuesday morning.

Around the time Li was on his way to the venue, the city police began rounding up several protestors to prevent any demonstrations against the visiting dignitary.

Right from the word go, the city police went into a frenzy since morning to block all roads leading to the techno park, which was entirely sanitised to keep the public as well as the press corps out of bounds.

The security was so tight that hundreds of the Tibetan students and refugees living in some parts of the city were not even allowed to stir of their hostels and homes since Li arrived in the city on Monday afternoon.

"We are under house-arrest as we were told not to move out till Li leaves Bangalore on Wednesday morning," lamented a Tibetan student staying in one of the hostels.

When Li drove in at the appointed hour, even the techies working in many IT companies dotting the techno park had a taste of police high-handedness as they were all stopped in their tracks till Li vanished inside the premises along with his wife and other Chinese delegates.

Expressing displeasure at the frisking and other security measures enforced, a software professional said: "The police had turned the techno park into a 'forbidden city' for over three hours."

Television crews, press photographers and media persons were prevented from entering either the towering buildings 'Innovator' or 'Discoverer' to cover the event.

An ITP spokesperson told rediff.com in Bangalore that the Chinese embassy in Delhi had instructed the techno-park authorities, besides the police and the protocol office to keep even the media people at bay in the wake of vociferous protests and violent demonstrations staged in Delhi on Sunday, leading to police firing and lathi-charge by the police.

As scheduled, Li was first taken around Huawei Technologies, the only Chinese IT company in the techno-park, and given a presentation of what software was being developed by its CEO Jack Luke.

Li was surprised to learn that over 100 Chinese software engineers were working at the wholly owned subsidiary of the Shenzen-based global IT company.

He also had a feel of the hi-tech facilities, and sat for a while at one of the work-stations to log in and check programmes.

Li then walked into Lucent Technologies for a first hand account of the software products and solutions being developed there. He was also given a presentation of the activities undertaken by the Indian subsidiary of the global telecom major.

Moving across the building, Li stepped into the Discoverer tower for a reality check of the work being done by Sanyo Technologies of Japan, in collaboration with the Bangalore-based BPL.

Though not in the schedule, Li took the opportunity to also walk into Tata Consultancy Services software centre to get a feel of the advances Indian IT companies are making in the convergence technologies.

At the conclusion of the two-hour visit to the ITP, Chinese party's deputy director Lu Congmin told rediff.com that Li was keen to note the Indian strengths in the IT sector for future partnership between the companies of both the countries.

"Li's visit is an exploratory one, in the run-up to the visit of other delegations in the near future as China is keen of leveraging its expertise in the hardware sector and consumer electronics with the skills of the Indian software sector. Such a technology synergy will make the two countries a force to reckon with in the global IT market," Lu affirmed.

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