The Hindu : International : In Mongolia, after Vajpayee

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jul 09, 2005

International

International

In Mongolia, after Vajpayee

Mukund Padmanabhan

IT dreams in Ulan Bator are built around a school established with an Indian grant

AT THE FOREFRONT: Director B. Damdinsuren outside the Atal Bihari Vajpayee School. — Photo: Mukund Padmanabhan

ULAN BATOR: "Vajpayee? He is Indian, no? And has something to do with computers?" The average Mongolian knows next to nothing about India, but the name of India's former Prime Minister rings a faint bell with some residents of Ulan Bator such as this university student.

And well it might. For, guess which institution is at the forefront of training Mongolians in information technology and related areas? The Atal Bihari Vajpayee School of Telecommunication and Information Technology.

Established in 2002, when the National Democratic Alliance was in power, with a Government of India grant of $1 million, the institution has earned the reputation of being the best IT centre in Mongolia. "It is the most modern," says Gauri Shankar Gupta, the Indian Ambassador to Mongolia. "There is no better in this country."

The school operates out of a spacious but prosaic building located a 15-minute drive from the centre of Ulan Bator, a city that is rarely visited but is slowly emerging as an exotic tourist destination. It is the only institute in Mongolia that offers training and retraining of those with bachelor, masters and PhD degrees in a wide range of subjects including telecommunications, radiocommunications, information technology, informatics, library automation and television engineering.

The Indian grant has been used to set up a H.E. A.B. Vajpayee Centre of Excellence within the School. Special `laboratories' train students in Java, Microsoft and Cisco platforms and a satellite video conferencing facility links the school with the National Informatics Centre in New Delhi.

Indian financial support has been also used to create five Internet community centres in far flung provinces such as Selenge, Umnugobi, Khentii, Gobi-Altai and Arkhangai. Five more centres will be established this year. The process will involve electronically linking this vast but sparsely populated nation of 2.7 million to other regions within the country and in the rest of the world. IT is potentially an important component of Mongolia's growth dreams.

"The Vajpayee Centre is very important not only for this institution but for all of Mongolia," says Professor B. Damdinsuren, its Director. "Apart from the general courses we offer on IT, we also train Mongolians in special fields that are related to their work." The school was recently made a part of the Mongolian University of Science and Technology.

More than 400 students have completed courses ranging from programmes lasting two or three weeks to full one-year diplomas. But the school says it needs more money to keep up with the changing requirements of IT education. "We need our trainers to be taken from first level to the next. We also need more hardware," says Mr. Damdinsuren. Has India promised to commit more funds? "We have had several discussions. And we are still waiting."

"Perhaps, Mr. Vajpayee can help," says the university student when told about the resource crunch. "He must have made plenty money from computers, no?"

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International

News Update

Stories in this Section

G-8: massive boost to aid

London blasts killed 50: police

Terrorists' strategy is to hit "soft targets"

China, Japan offer help to fight terror

Many spoilers working to scuttle G-4 resolution

Egyptian envoy killed, says Al-Qaeda

Uzbekistan steps up pressure on U.S. to close base

Philippines political crisis deepens

In Mongolia, after Vajpayee

Global media organisations to visit Nepal

"Step up relations between China, Russia"

Barbaric: U.K. Hindu forum

"English, just another Indian language"