Industry to bridge digital divide

As glorious as the Indian Information Technology (IT)
software exports story may be, the industry needs to go a step further and take
a hard look at using IT to bridge the digital divide, said Gopalkrishna Gandhi,
Governor, West Bengal.

"The industry should not romanticize the success of IT.
We should think ahead of software exports and we should not forget how it can
benefit all the people. Otherwise the software story would be a fractured
victory," he said at the inauguration of the fourth edition of Infocom
2005.

Quoting National Sample Survey statistics, Gandhi said that
there are still a lot of bitter truths in India such as poor PC penetration in
both rural and urban areas, and class, caste and gender divide that is also to
blame for the digital divide.

He further said that IT is not the personal and professional
plaything of the 300-odd millionaires in the IT industry but needed to connect
to the non-rich population as well.

Ramalinga Raju, Chairman, Satyam Computers lauded the efforts
of the West Bengal Government in supporting the IT industry's growth in the
state.

Echoing the Governor's comments on the industry's
responsibility to bridge the digital divide he cited Satyam's example of
shifting the company's internal business processes to a village close to
Hyderabad.

Priya Padmanabhan, Kolkata, Dec 22

(CyberMedia News)