GRAND RECEPTION: Afghan President Hamid Karzai having a look at the memento presented by the Tata Tele Services in Hyderabad on Tuesday. Minister for Information and Public Relations Mohammed Ali Shabbir is also seen.

HYDERABAD: "Our children in remote villages could access education and basic healthcare through your satellites." This was what Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai told National Remote Sensing Agency (NRSA) scientists here on Tuesday afternoon.

An 80-strong delegation of Afghan Ministers, people's representatives and officials watched in fascination as NRSA Director K. Radhakrishnan took them on a journey of India's space programme with specific reference to NRSA's core competencies and what India's nine operational satellites and 175 transponders were capable of delivering.

Dr. Radhakrishnan emphasised NRSA's work using satellites on tele-medicine and tele-education using Edusat and also how satellite imagery could be used for sustainable development. He said satellite images could be so focussed that they could pinpoint a 400 square metre extent of land and give a specific signature of what it contained.

In his response, Mr. Karzai said he could think of two areas where NRSA could help and spoke of how little children in villages surrounded by harsh terrain suffered from lack of basic healthcare and education.

The Afghan President said they could use NRSA's help in developing agriculture. "We can use your satellite imagery of our terrain and I am sure our rural development department has the money to pay you," he said, causing a ripple of laughter in the auditorium.

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