Name of Source : www.yentha.com

22-07-10 Shashi Tharoor and Nick Burns on The Future of the US-India relations Part 2 from Aspen Institute India on Vimeo.

Name of Source: Vimeo.com

22-07-10 Shashi Tharoor and Nick Burns on The Future of the US-India relations Part 1 from Aspen Institute India on Vimeo.

Name of Source: Vimeo.com

The ITU, a United Nations body, established the commission in partnership with UNESCO, and the joint chairmanship was no accident. The UN recognizes that if the information revolution is to advance further, it will take a public-private effort. As ITU secretary general Hamadoun Touré has put it: “In the 21st century, affordable, ubiquitous broadband networks will be as critical to social and economic prosperity as networks like transport, water and power.”

The Swiss writer and playwright Max Frisch once dismissed technology as “the art of arranging the world so that we need not experience it.” Today, however, technology is essential to effective participation in our world. And, although mankind cannot live by technology alone, the information revolution has liberated millions of people.

Information is liberating in the traditional political sense of the term: the spread of information has had a direct impact on the degree of accountability and transparency that governments must deliver if they are to survive.

It is also liberating economically. Information technologies are a cost-effective form of capital. Estonia and Costa Rica are well-known examples of how information-access strategies can help accelerate output growth and raise income levels.

Some of the least developed countries, such as Mali and Bangladesh, have shown how determined leadership and innovative approaches can, with international support, connect remote and rural areas to the internet and mobile telephony, thereby helping to liberate subsistence farmers who were previously tied to local knowledge and local markets. Likewise, mobile networks are delivering health services to the most remote areas of India.

One successful UNESCO initiative is the creation of multipurpose community telecenters throughout the developing world, providing communication and information facilities – phone, fax, internet, computers, audio-visual equipment – for a wide range of community uses. India’s Unique Identification Number project, under the capable stewardship of information-technology pioneer Nandan Nilekani, will enable access to government, banking, and insurance services at the grass-roots level.

There is no doubt that the Internet can be a democratizing tool. In some parts of the world – and certainly in most of the West – it already is, since large amounts of information are now accessible to almost anyone. But the stark reality of today’s world is that you can tell the rich from the poor by their internet connections.

Indeed, economic development nowadays requires more than thinking only of the poverty line; one must also think of the high-speed digital line, the fiber-optic line – indeed, all the lines that exclude those who are not plugged into the possibilities of our world.

But the digital divide is no immutable gap. On the contrary, the technology gap between developed and developing countries, measured by levels of penetration by personal computers and information-technology and communications services, has narrowed markedly over the course of the past decade, with rapid growth in mobile phone and Internet use. The average level of internet and mobile-phone penetration in the rich world in 1997 – 4.1 internet users and 10.7 mobile phones per 100 inhabitants – was reached in developing countries only five years later.

By contrast, the average level of fixed-line telecommunication penetration in developing countries is nearly 50 years behind the levels of the West. Not surprisingly, it was in Africa – not Europe or America – where the cell phone first overtook the housebound handset. More Africans have become telecommunications users during the last four years than during the entire 20th century.

The Indian story is even more remarkable. When I left India in 1975 for graduate studies in the United States, the country had roughly 600 million residents and just 2 million land-line telephones. Today, India holds the world record for the number of cell phones sold in a month – 20 million – and for the most telephone connections made in a single month in any country in the history of telecommunications.

The growth in mobile-telephone technology demonstrates that the digital divide is shifting, and the focus of development efforts must change with it. India, for example, has 525 million mobile phone users and fewer than 150 million people with internet access, so using mobile-phone technology as a tool of e-governance has become vital. This calls for creative means of effecting information transfer and making and receiving official payments by telephone.

Security is a key area of concern today in e-governance – both physical security, in an age of terrorism, and cyber security. Using technology to deliver security will become even more important in areas such as information sharing, disaster management, and data-privacy standards. Information and communications technology is a powerful tool to address underdevelopment, isolation, poverty, and the lack of political accountability and political freedom. But people need access first and foremost.

High-speed broadband internet access can improve everything from transport management, environmental protection, and emergency services to health care, distance education, and agricultural productivity. Delivering these benefits to ever more people will require resources, international cooperation, and political will.

Shashi Tharoor is a former under secretary general of the United Nations and former minister of state for external affairs in the Indian government. An award-winning novelist, he is currently a member of the Lok Sabha, India’s Parliament. THE DAILY STAR publishes this commentary in collaboration with Project Syndicate © (www.project-syndicate.org).

Name of Source: Daily Star

We are talking, the critics say, to a civilian government that is either unable or unwilling to restrain the terrorist attacks upon us. Why waste time on a government hamstrung by its own weakness in the face of an implacable military — a military long accustomed to calling the shots in Pakistan? Such a government, the critics say, is hardly a valuable peace partner.

There is no doubt, of course, that a climate of peace can only be built on a foundation of trust, unimpeded by the use or the threat to use terror as a means to achieving narrow ends. British Prime Minister David Cameron recently reminded Pakistan that it could not win the respect of the world so long as it condoned the export of terror to India. To acknowledge that trust does not exist right now, however, is not to suggest that trust can never be built. The differences that bedevil our relations with Pakistan can be surmounted if we can arrive at mutually acceptable parameters that can define our relationship in the future. Terrorism is certainly not one of those parameters. The terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 were a great setback on the path of normalisation. It will take concerted and credible action by Pakistan on two fronts to set things right: action to bring the conspirators and perpetrators of this dastardly attack to justice, and action to begin dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism, the platform from which so many attacks have been launched against our country in the last two decades.

If these are done, India will respond; as our Prime Minister has said in Parliament, if Pakistan takes the first step, we will meet them more than half way. But only credible action by Islamabad will instil a modicum of confidence in the people of India that dialogue is worthwhile and that our neighbours are as determined as us to give peace a chance. If such action is taken — for instance, against individuals and organisations known to be fomenting violence against India — the basis for building trust again can be laid.

The UN Secretary-General’s spokesperson recently came in for some opprobrium in India for suggesting that the “composite dialogue” should be revived. It was following the commitment made by Pakistan in January 2004, that it would not permit territory under its control to be used to support terrorism against India in any manner, that a composite dialogue process was resumed at that time.

The dialogue covered eight subjects: peace and security, including confidence-building measures; Jammu and Kashmir; terrorism and drug trafficking; friendly exchanges; economic and commercial cooperation; the Wullar Barrage/Tulbul Navigation Project; Sir Creek; and Siachen. That six-year-old commitment by Pakistan is in shreds, given the overwhelming evidence of the involvement of elements in Pakistan in executing the Mumbai terror attacks, and in the conspiracy that planned, funded and launched it. Besides, an increase in ceasefire violations, continued infiltration across the Line of Control and the attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008 and October 2009, as well as the murderous assault this year on a residence housing Indian aid workers, have also placed immense strain on India-Pakistan relations in general and on the dialogue process in particular. Pakistan’s evasive responses and denials in response to our requests for cooperation in exposing the conspiracy behind the Mumbai terror attacks and bringing all its perpetrators to justice have led to a sadly evident deterioration in bilateral relations. That is why there has been a pause in the composite dialogue process.

In recent months there have been high-level statements from Pakistan seeking the resumption of the dialogue process and about Pakistan itself also being a victim of terrorism. Our position, first articulated by our Prime Minister in Parliament a year ago, is that we can have a meaningful dialogue with Pakistan only if they fulfil their commitment, in letter and spirit, not to allow their territory to be used in any manner for terrorist activities against India. The inability or unwillingness of the Pakistani government to prevent its soil from being used to mount attacks on another state seriously undermines its own sovereignty, not just its credibility.

As good neighbours, Indians should be saddened by the continuing incidents of terrorist violence in Pakistan; we must wish Islamabad well in its efforts to repel militancy and fanaticism within its own borders. We would welcome indications that Islamabad shares our view that the forces of terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil are indivisible and that those plotting attacks on India from Pakistani territory are as much the enemies of Pakistan as they are of India.

From such a diagnosis, the only possible prescription is that of co-operation, to build peace and security together. We hope that those who rule that country will make that diagnosis, and share the same prescription.

It is frankly preposterous to hear Pakistanis arguing that their actions are impelled by an “Indian threat”. To put it bluntly, there is no Indian threat. Pakistan has nothing that we want to wrest by force. India does not covet any Pakistani territory. Because we wish to focus on our own people’s development and prosperity in conditions of security, we remain committed to long-term peace with Pakistan.

If the civilian government in Islamabad sees that the need is for concerted action against terrorists wherever they operate, whether in Pakistan, in India or in Afghanistan, we can find common ground. Our willingness to talk will best be vindicated by their willingness to act. Trust can be earned, which is why peace must be pursued. But we must pursue peace with our eyes wide open.

Name of Source: Deccan Chronicle

“The interplay of the perspective of two travellers dealing with the years of the rule of Dara Shikoh and the rise of Aurangzeb makes for good reading,” said Tharoor who was making his appearance in the national capital after a break. The book set in the 17the century India is a narrative by two travellers Niccolao Manucci and Grancois Bernier who arrive in India and find their way into the innermost circles of the Emperor.

The narrative is about how the country braces itself for the brutal succession to the Peacock throne. “The book is about the rivalry between Aurangazeb and Dara Shikoh and Aurangazeb.

It is about rising Europe and declining India or in terms of adjectives it can be said as about the rising Euro and declining India,” said author Kakar, a psycho-analyst and novelist.

The author who wrote about the love of Dara Shikoh for his subjects asked Tharoor in the discussion following the release why there were no roads named after him in the capital even though there was one named after Aurangzeb. “Yes, there is a road named after him,” replied Tharoor

Name of Source: Yahoo

In his historic speech about India’s “tryst with destiny”, Nehru, speaking of his country’s dreams, said: “Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this one world that can no longer be split into isolated fragments”.
It was typical of that great nationalist that a time when the fires of Partition were blazing across the land, he thought not only of India, but of the world. In those six decades, the world has become even more closely knit together than Nehru foresaw.

Indeed, today it is fair to say that even those countries that once felt insulated from external dangers — by wealth or strength or distance — now fully realise that the safety of people everywhere depends not only on local security forces, but also on guarding against terrorism; warding off the global spread of pollution, of diseases, of illegal drugs and of weapons of mass destruction; and on promoting democracy and development.
Jobs everywhere, too, depend not only on local firms and factories, but on faraway markets for products and services, on licences and access from foreign governments, on an international environment that allows the free movement of goods and persons, and on international institutions that ensure stability — in short, on the international system that sustains our globalised world.
Today, whether you are a resident of Delhi or Dili, Bengaluru or Bangor — whether you are from Chennai or China! — it is simply not realistic to think only in terms of your own country. Global forces press in from every conceivable direction. People, goods and ideas cross borders and cover vast distances with ever greater frequency, speed and ease. We are increasingly connected through travel, trade, the Internet; what we watch, what we eat and even the games we play.

These benign forces are matched by more malign ones that are equally global. In my time at the UN, I learned that the world is full of “problems without passports” — problems that cross all frontiers uninvited, problems of terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, of the degradation of our common environment, of contagious disease and chronic starvation, of human rights and human wrongs, of mass illiteracy and massive displacement. Such problems also require solutions that cross all frontiers, since no one country or group of countries can solve them alone.

Let us not forget that 9/11 made clear the old cliché about our global village — for it showed that a fire that starts in a remote thatched hut or dusty tent in one corner of that village can melt the steel girders of the tallest skyscrapers at the other end of our global village.
In such a world, issues that once seemed very far away are very much in your backyard. What happens in North America or South Africa — from protectionist politics to deforestation and desertification to the fight against AIDS — can affect your lives wherever you live, in north or south India.
And your choices here — what you buy, how you vote — can resound far away. As someone once said about water pollution, we all live downstream. We are all interconnected, and we can no longer afford the luxury of not thinking about the rest of the planet in anything we do.

To my younger readers, let me say that you are likely to spend a lot of your adult lives interacting with people who don’t look, sound, dress or eat like you; that you might work for an internationally-oriented company with clients, colleagues or investors from around the globe; and that you are likely to take your holidays in far-flung destinations.

The world into which you will grow will be full of such opportunities. But along with such opportunities, you may also find yourself vulnerable to threats from beyond our borders: terrorism, of course, but also transnational crime syndicates, counterfeiters of currency, drug smugglers, child traffickers, Internet spammers, credit-card crooks and even imported illnesses like swine flu.
Wouldn’t you want your government to devise policies to deal with such challenges that would affect your, and one day your children’s lives? Should such policies, in an ever more interdependent world, even be called foreign? One of the reasons that foreign policy matters today is that foreign policy is no longer foreign: it affects you right here where you live. You want your government to seize the opportunities that the 21st century world provides, while managing the risks and protecting you from the threats that this world has also opened you up to.

Indians, therefore, have a growing stake in international developments. To put it another way, the food we grow and eat, the air we breathe, and our health, security, prosperity and quality of life are increasingly affected by what happens beyond our borders. And that means we can simply no longer afford to be indifferent about our neighbours, however distant they may appear. Ignorance is not a shield; it is not even, any longer, an excuse. This is the spirit in which I hope to approach this column in the fortnights to come.

* Shashi Tharoor is a member of Parliament from Kerela’s Thiruvananthapuram constituency

Name of Source: Deccan Chronicle

Tharoor, who visited the construction site on Thursday, told reporters that he would take up the matter with the Centre.

Air India officials told Tharoor that the delay in completing the works of the taxi way connecting the engineering base with the runway of the airport was one major constraint before the commissioning of the engineering base.

Tharoor said that the project assumed significance as it would boost the development of the State capital. Not only Air India, but foreign airlines would also make use of the engineering-base.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had laid the foundation stone for both the new international terminal of the Thiruvananthapuram airport and the engineering base on November 1, 2006. While the terminal building is ready for commissioning, only 75 percent works of the engineering base have been completed. The engineering base project is much small compared to the airport terminal project. Air India station manager M Jyothi Prakash briefed Tharoor about the project.

Name of Source: Indian Express