Title: Clinton talks
of the higher purpose of infotech
Author: Bill Clinton
CII
Publication: Deccan
Chronicle, Hyderabad
Date: March 25, 2000
Once historians said
of your nation, India is the world's most ancient civilisation, yet one
of its youngest nations. Today, in this ancient city, we see leadership
to drive the world's newest economy.
One of the greatest joys
of being President of the United States for me has been to be involved
with the people at home who are pushing the frontiers of science and technology.
Many people believe that I asked Al Gore to be my Vice President because
he knew roughly 5,000 times more about computer technology than I did.
But I have learned every
day now, for over seven years. And I think it's very interesting for a
man my age - I'm 53, which is way too old to make any money in information
technology.... But it's very interesting - the terms that are used today
by young people and not-so-young people anymore had such different meanings
for me when I was in my 20s. When I was a young man, chips were something
you ate, windows were something you washed, disks were part of your spinal
column, that when you got older often slipped out of place, and semiconductors
were frustrated musicians who wished they were leading orchestras. The
world is a very different place today.
I want to speak briefly
about how our nations already are working together to seize the possibilities
of the Information Age, and about what we can do to make sure no one is
left behind. I particularly appreciated the Chief Minister's emphasis on
this in his remarks, because for me, the true test of the information revolution
is not just the size of the feast it creates, but the number of people
who can sit at the table to enjoy it.
It is incredible to think
about how far science has come in just the seven years and a few months
since I first became President. In that time we have explored a galaxy,
12 billion light years away: we, stove seen the cloning of animals. We
are just a few months away from completing the sequencing of the human
genome, with all that promises for improving the life and the quality of
life of people all around the world.
When I was elected President,
there were - listen to this - there were only 50 sites on the Worldwide
Web, in January of 1993. Today, there are more than 50 million. And it
is the fastest growing communication medium in history.
Here in India, tile number
of Internet users is expected to grow more than 10 times in just four years.
Ten years ago, India's hitech industries generated software and computer-related
services worth $150 million. Last year, that number was $4 billion. Today,
this industry employs more than 280,000 Indians, in jobs that pay almost
double the national average. Little Wonder, as the Minister said, Hyderabad
is being known now as "Cyberabad."
Now, I realise to many
of you this comes as no surprise, since the decimal system was discovered
invented in India.
If it weren't for India's
contributions in math and science, you could argue that computers, satellites
and silicon chips would never have been possible in the first place, so
you ought to have a leading role, in the 21st century economy companies
with names like Infosys, Wipro and, of course, Satyam.
Again I want to say that
I think Chief Minister Naidu deserves a lot of credit for giving you the
right kind of governance. There are some, people who believe - we were
talking about this before we came out here - there are some people who
believe that the 21st century world because the Internet will make the
globe more interconnected and we will have all kinds of connections with
people beyond our borders' that we never had before, and therefore, government
will become completely irrelevant to most people's lives. If you look at
the example of this State and this city, you see we need a different kind
of government. It can be smaller it can be far less bureaucratic; it should
be far more market-oriented; it should be smart, as I learned from the
Minister's chart. But it is a grave mistake to think that we can really:
go forward together without that kind of smart governance. And the Chief
Minister's role in your success I think is evident to all of you by your
response.
I'm, Personally intrigued
by the fact that you can get a driver's license on the internet and you
don't have to go wait in line, as you do in America. I have my driver's
license here and in a few months I may come back, because it may be the
only place I will have a license to drive. You may see me just tooling
around on the streets here, causing traffic jams.
I want to also acknowledge,
if I might, just very briefly, something which has already been mentioned
by previous speakers. And that is the remarkable success of Indian Americans
in this new economy from Suhos Patil, the chairman emeritus of Cyrus Logic;
to Vinod Khosla, who helped to build Sun Microsystems: to Vinod Dahm, who
created the Pentium chip. The remarkable fact is - listen to this Indian
Americans now run more than 750 companies in Silicon Valley alone, in one
place in America.
Now, as again I learned
on the screen, we're moving from brain drain to brain gain in India, because
many are coming home.
The partnership of Americans
and Indians proposes to raise a billion dollars for a global institute
of science and technology here. I have no doubt they will succeed. After
welcoming, your engineers to our shores, today many of our leading companies-
from Apple to Texas Instruments to Oracle - are coming in waves to your
shores. I'm told that if a person calls Microsoft for help with software,
there's a pretty good chance they'll find themselves talking to an expert
in India, rather than Seattle. India is fast becoming one of the world's
software superpowers, proving that in a globalised world, developing nations
not only can succeed, developing nations can lead.
One of the reasons India
is finding so much success, I believe, is because of your enduring values
of nationhood. Fifty years ago, Prime Minister Nehru had the vision to
invest in the Indian Institutes of Technology. I am very proud that the
United States helped in its early development. Today, not only are its
graduates leading the information revolution, India has the second largest
pool of trained scientists in the entire world.
As I said, we have to
do more together. Two of our leading associations, the US-India Business
Council and Your Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry,
will launch a dialogue to take our infotech trade to new heights, to create
more jobs and more opportunities in both our nations.
But as I said at the
beginning, in the midst of all this celebration of tomorrow, and in the
midst of all of our satisfaction at our own good future, there is something
we cannot forget. It's a good thing that we're creating lot of 25-year-old
multi-millionaires; it's a good thing that were seeing the latest Indian
start-ups shoot up the Nasdaq; but this whole enterprise cannot just be
about higher profits, there must also be a higher purpose.
In India today, as in
America, there is much to do. Millions of Indians are connected to the
Internet, but millions more aren't yet connected to fresh water. India
accounts for 30 per cent of the world's software engineers, but 25 per
cent of the world's malnourished. And there are other statistics, which,
given the wealth of the United States, I could cite you about our country
which are just as troubling and challenging.
So our challenge is to
turn the newest discoveries into the best weapons humanity has ever had
to fight poverty. In all the years of recorded human history, we have never
had this many opportunities to fight poverty. And it is good economics
to do so.
There is so much we can
do, for example to he the poor have better health care. This morning I
was at a clinic in Mahvir and I helped to immunize a child against polio.
Together we have nearly
eradicated this disease, but tuberculosis is still a major problem, malaria
is on the rise, HIV and AIDS are big problems for you, as they have been
for years for the United States. These are global problems. We must find
a science to solve them and the technology to disseminate those solutions
to all people, without regard to their income.
There is much to do to
protect your planet and those who share it with us. In Agra, I saw some
efforts that local citizens are making to clean the air and preserve the
Taj Mahal.
I talked to an engineer
who is doing his best to clean up the Ganges river that he worships as
an important part of his faith and his country's history.
Yesterday, I was in the
national park in Rajasthan to see the magnificent tigers. And I learned,
much to my dismay, that, from a man who has spent a great deal of his life
and risked a lot of his life to save those tigers, that last year still
20 of them were poached and you are still in danger of losing them. They,
too, are an important part of your heritage and your future.
We must find a way to
help people make enough money and have a decent enough income that they
wish to preserve the environment and the biological species with which
we share this planet. This is very, very important, and technology has
a big role to play in all of this.
This week, you are establishing
a green business centre here in Hyderabad, with some assistance from USAID,
to bring the private sector and local government together to promote clean
energy development and environmental technology.
This is a profoundly
important issue and I hope that this city will lead your nation and help
to lead the world toward a serious reassessment of our common obligation
to reverse the tide of global warming and climate change. Because, in the
new economy, you do not have to pollute the atmosphere and warm the planet
to grow the economy. In the new economy, you can create more jobs by promoting
energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy than by polluting the
environment.
The economic wave of
the future is in environmental preservation, not in environmental destruction.
That is a lesson this city can teach the rest of your nation, people in
my nation and people throughout the word, and I hope you will do it.
There is still much we
can do in science and technology to feed the world's people.
American and Indian scientists
are working in the biotechnology industry to pioneer new crops more resistant
to pests, diseases, more nutritious, with higher yields per acre.
There is much we can
do to protect the rich cultural diversity of our planet.
I know that some worry
that globalisation will produce a world where the unique gifts nations
and peoples bring to the world are washed away. I do not believe that.
If we do the right things, the Internet can have precisely the opposite
effect.
Look at India, with 17
officially recognised languages and some 22,000 dialects. You can get on
the Internet today and find dozens of sites that bring together people
who speak Telugu from every part of the world. You can download fonts in
Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese and Bengali. You can order handicrafts made
by people from every part of India - I saw one of the sites just before
coming in here. And you know the proceeds are going to the people in need.
The new technology can
reinforce our cultural distinctions while reaffirming the even more important
fact of our common humanity. And India can also help us lead the way in
doing that.
Now, finally let me say
we cannot work to lift what has been called the "Silk Curtain," which has
divided the United States and India for too long now, only to have a digital
divide arise in both our countries between the haves and have-nots. In
America, we have worked very hard to wire all our schools to the Internet
and we've made great progress. We are now going to provide some $5 million
through AID to help bring the Internet to schools and businesses in under-served
areas in rural India. This state is doing a remarkable job in providing
the Internet to people all over the state, in the smallest, poorest villages.
We have to bring government
services with printers to every villages, so people can see in basic ways
what it is they need to do to improve the health care of their children.
We need printers with computers on the Internet with all the educational
software available. If we could do that for every village in South Asia,
in Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle East, then overnight the poorest
places in the world could have access to the same learning materials that
only the richest schools offer their students today. We can do that if
we do it together.
And it isn't just good
public values; it would be good economics. It would mean, among other things,
that the world's most populous nation would have the world's largest number
of educated people, and therefore, in no time would have the world's largest
economy. Doing the right thing is good economics in the Information Age,
and we have to do this together.
Finally let me say that
we just want to be a good partner with you in all these endeavours.
Two days ago in Delhi
I signed an agreement to create a US-Indo Science and Technology forum
to bring scientists from our nations together to discuss future cooperation.
Today, the top science
minds in our two governments are sitting down together to begin a dialogue
on how we can conduct new research across a whole range of scientific frontiers.
There is a lot we can do.
But, you know - as I
said before I came out here, I visited a lot of the booths, I met a lot
of the business people, and I also was treated by the Chief Minister to
a video conference with people in all 23 districts of this State who are
working on empowerment projects, who had access the microcredit. I learned
something I didn't know before I got here, which is that 20 per cent of
the people in the world, in poor villages who have access to microcredit,
are in this state, in India. And that's something my wife and I and our
administration have worked very hard on. We financed through AID about
two million microcredit loans all across the world every year.
So I saw all this. And
I would say there's one thing that I hope my country will learn from the
values expressed in the Chief Minister's speech, in the local government
councils I have visited here, in the local women's communes I have visited
here, working on all kinds of economic and educational issues, and that
is that the two most important things that we can promote in the new world
are empowerment of individuals and a sense of community. And if you do
one without the other, you will not succeed.
Very often, people who
are very interested in empowerment don't have much interest in community.
When they're talking about empowerment, they mean their own empowerment.
And very often, a lot of people who have always cared deeply about community
are almost a little suspicious of empowerment. But the lesson that you
are teaching us is that we must do both together.
We are here to talk about
the future of cyberspace. "Cyber" comes from the Greek word "kybernautis".
It means helmsman, one
who steers the ship. So I am here to say I, admire what you are doing to
steer the ship of this state into the future. I want to steer with you.
But we cannot forget the simple message that, no matter how much new technology
there is, the two things we must remain committed to are empowerment and
community. Everyone counts. Everyone should have a chance. Everyone has
a role to play. And we all do better when we help each other.
Thank you and God bless
you.