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Staff Reporter

Industries Minister accepts suggestions on knowledge park

MALAPPURAM: The first meeting of Government officials, industry experts and academics on the proposed knowledge park being set up near Kozhikode turned out to be an enriching one for the organiser, Kinfra, on Saturday. Industries Minister Elamaram Karim, who chaired the meeting, accepted many suggestions raised by experts.

The meeting, held at Kadavu Resort near Ramanattukara, agreed that instead of creating an employment-generating centre, the knowledge park would lay stress on facilitating fundamental research and development of technologies. It will serve as a nodal point for knowledge-based organisations, besides incubating knowledge-based business start-ups.

Making a presentation on knowledge parks, Industries and Commerce Principal Secretary T. Balakrishnan said ICICI was asked to conduct a survey in different cities and prepare a manual for development of knowledge parks.

ICICI runs the country's first knowledge park in Hyderabad.

Speaking on `potential for development of knowledge industries in Kerala,' P.K. Kurian, Secretary, Investment Promotion, said the State was churning out nearly 50,000 engineering and science degree holders every year. He said the State's engineers excelled in quality as 14 per cent of the country's IT professionals were from Kerala.

R. Sayikrishna Raju, chief manager (operations) of ICICI Knowledge Park, Hyderabad, said the park set up on 80 hectares of land encouraged research and development rather than manufacturing. The Hindu consulting editor for IT Anand Parthasarathy said the knowledge park would provide a huge opportunity for small IT companies too.

Investors

Quoting the success story of Adastral Park in a small place like Ipswich, UK, he said knowledge parks could certainly be set up in Kozhikode. Even while suggesting a stake for local bodies in the proposed knowledge park, Mr. Parthasarathy said the real investors were in the West Asia, which was only four or five hours by flight from Kozhikode.

Tim Poston, IT professor from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, said the proposed knowledge park should have a culture of attention to the user. Today's engineers lack a culture of thinking how the user works and how the user thinks, he said.

This, according to him, was the reason for the death of technically smart products.

The proposed knowledge park should be made user-friendly to both body (ergonomics) and mind.

G. Vijayaraghavan, president of Venture Management Associates, requested the authorities not to fill up the proposed knowledge park with BPOs and ITES.

He said the park should be made part of a larger development plan for Malabar. K.R. Srivathsan, Director, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management-Kerala (IIITMK), Thiruvananthapuram, said the knowledge park should be used as a means to rejuvenate our education system.

The participants teleconferenced with Deepanwita Chattopadhyay, CEO of ICICI Knowledge Park, Hyderabad.

The meeting reached a consensus that mere employment should not be the criterion for the knowledge park. It should rather be knowledge driven.

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