Gujarat missed the IT bus, say Pitroda

Ahmedabad, Jan 21 (UNI) Dr Sam Pitroda, who pioneered the communications revolution in the country, has rued that Gujarat has ''missed the IT bus'' and said that the state needs to make huge investments in human resource development to develop the information technology sector.

In an apparent reference to the Infocity near Gandhinagar, he said, ''By merely putting a building and having four to five offices of BPOs did not mean you are creating an IT hub. Champions can only carry out an IT revolution. Also, what you need is human capital.'' Mr Pitroda stated this while replying to queries after his talk on ''Indo-US relations, and Impact of Nuclear Deal'' organised by the Indo-American Chamber of Commerce here yesterday.

''The destination names that first come to our mind in IT are Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and even Pune, but not Gujarat,'' he said.

He explained that Bangalore did not become the IT hub by accident but because of excellent human resources available at its disposal.

''It had the Indian Institute of Science, and various technical and research institutions there. It has the space research body, the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and they all encouraged the IT development,'' he said.

He regretted that though Ahmedabad also has a few premier research organisations, but ''we have not capitalised on them''.

Earlier speaking on the Indo-US nuclear deal, Dr Pitroda said it was a win-win situation for both parties. ''It is a landmark decision, we could not have expected a better deal. While India gets to use nuclear power to go for rural lighting on a massive scale, for US it is a big business deal.'' He said there was no alternate solution other than nuclear energy to meet India's energy demands and so all Indians should welcome it.

He praised the efforts of several Indian-Americans who had persistently lobbied to get the deal cleared. ''They first approached African-American senators and convinced them about how the nuke power could light up many a home in India and went on to convince all others. They had put tremendous efforts for the passage of the deal.'' He said Indo-US relations look extremely solid as is reflected in the multiple visits of US delegations to India. ''The US is very keen to have good relations with India. Business to business relations are very critical for it. This apart, they easily get trained workforce from India than they would from anywhere else,'' he observed.

UNI