Portal for rural people: info on farming, health, education

New Delhi, July 4 (UNI) President Pratibha Devisingh Patil today inaugurated the India Development Gateway portal, www.indg.in, that provides information to the rural community in the areas of agriculture, health, primary education, energy and e-governance.

The portal, developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), is available in six languages - Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali and English.

In her address, the President said it should be further expanded to include other Indian languages for wider relevance and acceptance.

Observing that India was in the process of transformation to a Knowledge Society, she said information and communication technology (ICT), no doubt, had played a pivotal role in enabling this transformation.

India relied on its talented work force to generate a knowledge revolution. ICT had had a positive influence in almost all spheres of our everyday life and the nation's economy at large.

The function was attended by Communications and IT Minister A Raja and Minister of State Jyotiraditya Scindia.

Ms Patil said India Development Gateway initiative had the potential to address the critical issue of bridging information gaps. ''I strongly believe that our endeavour should be to make information through knowledge portals available to all sectors of the economy and social life as well as to all sections of society.'' The portal had thrown open a window of opportunity to the rural development sector as a whole, in which relevant and credible information specific to rural development had been put together.

UNI SN RL DS1425