The Hindu Business Line : Devise IT project for masses, India urges Asian nations

Mr Arun Shourie, Union Minister for Information Technology, and Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, going around the `Infothela' at the Asia IT Ministers' second summit in Hyderabad on Monday. Infothela is a cart providing Net connectivity on mobile, designed by Media Lab and IIT Kanpur to reach out modern communication technologies to rural areas. -- A. Roy Chowdhury

Hyderabad , Jan. 12

INDIA has called for concerted efforts to brave the measures by some Western countries to put roadblocks for the outsourcing of information technology from Asian countries.

Inaugurating the two-day second Asian IT Ministers' Summit here, Mr Arun Shourie, Union Minister of Communication and Information Technology and Disinvestment, said that it was unfair to make others open their markets for free flow of goods, while attempting to close their own markets for the IT services market.

Strongly advocating the usage of IT for widespread grass-root level applications, he called the conclave to devise a "major project that can influence the peoples across the region".

``Select one great project for the region and prepare a time-bound programme to ground the same. Identify the core competencies of each country in the region and volunteer to execute the agenda set by the summit," he appealed to the 32 IT Ministers attending the summit, referring to the failure in the implementation of the action programme set by the maiden summit held in Seoul in 2002.

He also asked the representatives to enrich the summit Web site (http://asiaitsummit.nic.in) by providing information on various IT products and solutions that could be put into use elsewhere, too.

In his Presidential address, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, said ``if ICT has to have any meaning for the developing countries, it has to address the needs and requirements of the poor.''

Elaborating on the State's initiatives on the e-governance front, he said call centres would be set up to listen to public grievances.

``These calls will be diverted directly to the functionary's cell phone,'' he said.