The Hindu : Business : India-Japan forum to explore ties in ICT sector

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Wednesday, Aug 24, 2005

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India-Japan forum to explore ties in ICT sector

Special Correspondent

Wednesday's meet will witness the signing of three MoUs

NEW DELHI: The first meeting of the India-Japan ICT ministerial forum will be held here on Wednesday with Minister of Communications andInformation Technology Dayanidhi Maran and Japan's Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications Taro Aso leading their respective delegations. The Japanese delegation will comprise over 100 members, representing the Government and the industry while the Indian delegation will comprise members from leading Indian ICT companies, the government and R&D agencies. The Japanese Minister has arrived here at the invitation of Mr. Maran.

The forum is the outcome of a programme of cooperation, comprising eight initiatives chalked out by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister of Japan Junichiro Koizumi during the latter's visit to India in March. The New Delhi meet will mainly aim at the opportunities for increasing ties between Indian and Japanese institutions and industries in the fast growing sectors of IT and telecommunications and the need to leverage the complementarities of each other.

The Ministerial level meeting will see the signing of a joint statement for bilateral cooperation in communications and information technology, wherein both sides will seek to develop joint proposals in R&D, HRD in the ICT sector, e-governance, IT enabled services, e-commerce, communications and IT software, rural telecommunication and ubiquitous network society.

The ICT forum will also witness the signing of three separate MoUs by Nagao Makoto, President, National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT), Japan, with S. Ramakrishnan, Director General, C-DAC, Vijay Madan, Executive Director, C-DOT, and Gautam Barua, Director, IIT Guwahati, to undertake joint programmes in R&D and HRD in the ICT sector.

The MoU between NICT and C-DAC envisages cooperation on information and telecommunications research.

Industry presentation

The second part of the session will see presentations by Indian and Japanese industries. The presentations by the Indian delegation will be delivered by Nasscom President Kiran Karnik, Chairman and MD of Reliance Infocomm Anil Ambani, CEO of TCS S. Ramadorai, Chairman of Satyam Computers Ramalinga Raju, Bharti telecom chief Sunil Mittal, Cognizant Tech CEO Lakshminarayan and Sify CEO Ramaraj. Top CEOs from Japan will also make presentations.

The ICT Forum will constitute working groups, to be primarily led by the industry in of areas broadband, mobile communications, e-governance, information security, R&D and ubiquitous computing.

The Japanese Minister is likely to extend overseas development assistance (ODA) to India to take ICT to schools with an objective of stimulating millions of young minds in information and communications technologies.

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