India needs connectivity revolution : Mashelkar

Anand, Gujarat, Apr 16 (UNI) Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) director general Dr R A Mashelkar today said there was an urgent need for a ''Connectivity Revolution'' in the country to develop the rural India.

''We have had Green Revolution and White Revolution that is being heralded across India. What we need now is Connectivity Revolution'', Dr Mashelkar said.

Delivering the 25th annual convocation address of the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA), the scientist underlined the need for bridging the knowledge, technology and institutional divide between rural and urban India by harnessing the power of information of communication technologies.

''We must recognise that White Revolution empowered the small cattle owner through a launch of the co-operative movement. Now it is the time for farmers, artisans and craftmen to be empowered in cyber space through information and communication technologies,'' he said.

Dr Mashelkar, who is also the chairman of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), said though tremendous creativity and innovation existed in rural India, a large number of them never get due attention. Stating it was a challenge for the country to harness the creativity and innovation at grassroots level for generating new commercial and social enterprises, he said, ''The mission of making India innovative can't be fulfilled without widespread involvement of professionals, no matter in which sector and region they are working.'' The co-operative movement, Dr Mashelkar said, had a very vast network of community organisations which could become a vehicle for diffusing many innovations and value added traditional knowledge.

Praising the Operation Flood that helped in organising the dairy co-operatives in different parts of India, he said the country today needed developmental entrepreneurs, who would trigger a technological innovation based entrepreneurial revolution in the rural India.

Speaking on the occasion, IRMA chairman Dr Verghese Kurien, who recently resigned as chairman of Gujarat Co-operative Milk Marketing Federation (GCMMF), feared that the country was inviting a new form of colonialism by giving up everything in the name of liberalisation and globalisation.

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