The Hindu Business Line : `Infotech can help address development issues'

A lot of development issues and social sector challenges could be effectively addressed through information technology, says the World Bank's Vice-President and Chief Information Officer, Mr Mohamed V. Muhsin.

In an interview to Business Line here on the eve of the bank-sponsored conference on "e-transformation, opportunities in government, public institutions and finance" beginning here on March 16, Mr Muhsin said: "We know that IT has the power to transform public services; to lower the cost of government and improve its quality; to improve awareness of and responsiveness to citizen needs; and ultimately to spur economic development."

He said the three-day conference to be inaugurated by the Union Minister for Communications and IT, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, will have two streams, one for e-government and one for treasury and financial technology. It will also include several common sessions. Senior representatives from 60 countries and 400 delegates from major information system companies such as IBM, HP, SAP, Oracle and i-Flex, besides vendors such as Algorithmics, Comat, JP Morgan, Microsoft, OpenLink, Ortec, Polaris, Reuters, Tata Consulting and Technocomp would take part in the conference, he added.

Mr Muhsin said when "we talk about e-transformation we tend to think only about computer and connections. It is also important to realise that radio and television are an important tool to disseminate information and these tools can be a collection of old and new technologies."

Given that education is so important in India, he said, a highly competitive farmer or street-vendor asks for information, which the Government needs to feed through technology. On education as opposed to technology, Mr Muhsin said, "technology is a tool that will help education and that is a fundamental nuance that needs to get into the mindsets of people dealing with technology."

To a specific query as to the reasons why India borrows less than it used to do in the past from the World Bank, Mr Muhsin said, "we believe that we are here to help countries to improve their economies to foster growth and to reduce poverty. In the process, they look for development assistance and we do so on a demand basis." He said that if a country does graduate from borrowing to not borrowing then it is a very healthy sign as this is "a success not only to the country concerned but also for the Bank", for example Korea.

"There is every prospect that India can also graduate fully and it is a very healthy sign," Mr Muhsin said, adding that India doubled its growth rate over the last 10 years and lifted millions of people out of poverty during the reforms period.

In relation to the issue of conditionality which probably has influenced the perception that the Bank is "prescriptive and that some of the solutions that we may come out with may not be appropriate. It is not. Development is a very challenging, difficult and yet exciting undertaking. Nobody really knows the answer."

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`Infotech can help address development issues'