'Our aim is to connect rural India and have all Panchayats connected with broadband' Sachin Pilot

One of the few young members of the UPA government, Sachin Pilot -- Minister of State for the Department of Information Technology (DIT) -- has taken charge of this portfolio at a time when there are great expectations from the information, communications and technology (ICT) industry.

There is a digital divide in our country and through the efforts of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), we are trying to brigde it by making IT more accessible and amiable to localised societies. For instance, our language initiative for making available free software will end this year when these softwares will be availabe in our 22 official languages. The rollout of 100,000 Common Service Centres (CSCs) by next year is another initiative.

Till now, 40,000 CSCs have already been rolled out. Another initiative relates to the interlinking of research and educational institutes through the National e Governance Plan (NeGP). These are backed by the government and are part of the objective to have all stakeholders on board. These services make the entire process transparent and the life of the poorest man better. However, the support of the state governments is important here.

The CSC initiative is a Public Private Partnership (PPP) one and requires local entrepreneurs. So local entrepreneurship gets a boost. For instance, there are popular services that were not envisioned before. The government provides the logistics support and bandwidth for these projects but it's the entrepreneur who is finally responsible for running the CSCs. We have discovered that most of those who run the CSCs are local graduates besides small firms that have take the task of running these centres.

SACHIN PILOT