The Hindu : Karnataka News : `Sino-Indian friendship possible in IT sector'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 24, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

`Sino-Indian friendship possible in IT sector'

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, NOV. 23. The former Chief Minister S.M. Krishna said India and China had to work out strategic details together to become strong in the Information Technology sector.

Mr. Krishna was delivering an address on "IT revolution in India by Rajiv Gandhi" at Kunming of Yunan Province in China on Monday.

He said India was strong in the service sector while China was dominant in the manufacturing sector and there were no conflict of interests between the two countries. "With the greater interaction between leaders, administrators, and students, the two countries can learn a lot from each other and march towards becoming super economic powers in the next 25 years," he said.

The communication revolution started by the late Rajiv Gandhi changed the face of India. Any technology, if it was not related to life in general became irrelevant and absolute and if it was taken to masses, it became helpful, Mr. Krishna said.

The mushrooming of IT-related industries in the country could be attributed to the vision of Rajiv Gandhi. "If it were not for this great visionary, India may have never seen such immense IT development that has contributed to the economic growth of the country and generated countless jobs for the educated unemployed youth," Mr. Krishna said.

He said that 80 per cent of Indians were dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. In Karnataka, IT had been taken to rural areas by providing kiosks for farmers. These kiosks furnished computerised land documents within 10 minutes. In the light of such methods used to popularise IT in rural areas, the Harvard University was sending a team of researchers to study the use of IT in rural areas, he said.

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