The Hindu : Business / Briefly : Call for technology strategy to help village poor

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Wednesday, Mar 08, 2006

Business

Business - Briefly

Call for technology strategy to help village poor

Special Correspondent

`We need to respect efforts to create wealth'

KOCHI: Leading technology entrepreneur Javad Hasan has called for a technology strategy to take the benefits of technology to Kerala's villages.

"We need a technology strategy, not just an information technology strategy," Mr. Hasan said presenting his views on `IT's role in Kerala's development' at a development seminar organised by the Congress party as part of its ongoing State conference. Merely producing `computer coolies' would not add to the wellbeing of the people, he said.

Mr. Hasan said Keralites did not appreciate acquisition of knowledge and applying the acquired knowledge for the creation of wealth.

This was because of the influence of `discredited ideologies' had been dumped in other parts of the world.

"We need to respect efforts to create wealth, because the wealth created can be used for raising people's standards of living and creating employment opportunities," he said.

This was because the wealth created can be used for raising people's standards of living and creating employment opportunities," he said.

He called for a Kerala-Japan-West Asia cooperation for improving the State's development - Japan had the right technology, West Asia had the money and Kerala had the manpower.

He said his company had been wooing Japanese investors to invest in Kerala, rather than in Bangalore or Hyderabad.

B.A. Prakash, head of Cochin University's Economics Department, presenting a paper on unemployment, pointed out that nearly one-fifth of the Kerala's work force was unemployed compared to the national average of 7.7 per cent. About 43 per cent of the rural workers were self-employed.

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