Technology should go rural: Pitroda

Monday, 10 May 2004, 19:30 IST
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MUMBAI: Technology evangelist Sam Pitroda may have donned yet another hat of helping the century-old Congress party rejuvenate itself, but he has not lost that zeal when it comes to preaching the virtues of technology. The man responsible for taking telecommunications to the remotest corners of India, Pitroda wants to make the nation a powerful state in the new millennium and proffers some simple solutions on how it should go about achieving the goal. "Technology in India is urbane, elitist, exotic, intimidating and sexy," said Pitroda, who recently promoted a telecom solutions company, C-Sam Inc., which has a development centre in Gujarat's Vadodara city and offices in Britain and the US. "What is needed is that it should reach the rural masses," Pitroda told IANS in an interview while here to campaign for his late friend and former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's Congress party. "There are two reasons we need telecommunications and IT. They not only can only help Indians create wealth, they can also create wealth of their own. Unless we have both, we have no future as a nation," he said. "High technology can put unequal human beings on an equal footing. But this whole information revolution has not been clearly understood by people in India. They think they are somehow not going to be affected by it." Pitroda, who once took on global telecommunications giants and fashioned India's indigenous telephone exchanges as head of C-Dot, or Centre for Development of Telematics, feels that the government should also encourage the growth of big companies. "We need giants or monsters like Reliance who are doing a marvellous job in the telecom sector," he said. "We need a giant company to rejuvenate the legal system. We should have a system which takes off the hurdles faced by litigants." Pitroda did have praise for some new-economy companies such as Wipro, Infosys Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services, which have all become $1 billion giants in their fields. "But are only solving the problems of the West. We need companies who look inward," he said, adding: "The choice is between either agriculture reaping our technological benefits, or Citibank." Pitroda, who also wears the chief executive's hat for WorldTel, an international telecom corporation, also spoke of a new product developed by C-Sam, which was launched in Japan recently and has been a "runaway success". Called 'Digital Wallet,' it will help India upgrade all its telephone kiosks into full-fledged money transaction centres, he says. "With the use of smart phones, a person will be able to make financial transactions at any of public call offices across the country," he explained about the new product. "We can use the basic infrastructure available in the country and develop an intelligent supporting software," he said. "The digital wallet should be able to transact through bites and bytes. We are aiming to bring about paperless world and change the entire transaction business. I plan to build a large global company for mobile transactions," he added. "A pilot project was already under way in Mumbai in association with the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL) and we are planning to conduct more such trials in other cities as well," he said. C-Sam has filed for eight patents for the product of which four have been issued. "We are talking to all Indian operators. I plan to ride on the available infrastructure." Pitroda, who has some 50 patents to his name in the US, criticised Washington's stand on business process outsourcing (BPO). "It is a big mistake it (the US) is making. As a champion of globalisation and unquestionable leader, it should not know that globalisation has its consequences," he said. "Even otherwise, every dollar that goes out as BPO, comes back to us with three dollars."
Source: IANS