Information processing holds the key: Dr T H Chowdary

["Irfan Khan" <KhanIA@super.net.pk>]

Information processing holds the key

An ubiquitous telecommunications infrastructure linking up all 
villages and towns with the rest of the world is essential for 
information flow, says Dr T H Chowdary


As India trades more and more with the world's countries and as our 
rate of growth of the GDP increases, and along with it Indian 
commerce, generation of information, its storage and extraction and 
processing by many and inexpensively become very crucial for 
efficient and economic performance of persons, enterprises and 
government.  

Invention of printing in the fifteenth century revolutionalised the 
storage, distribution and use of information with dramatically 
beneficial results like the ushering in of the industrial revolution 
with hundreds of inventions. In the last fifty years, spectacular 
developments have taken place in electronics, computers, 
telecommunications, broadcasting, communication satellites and under-
sea cables with optical fibres. All these together have brought in 
the second most significant revolution in creation of information, 
storage, distribution and use. 

An ubiquitous telecommunications infrastructure available all over 
the land, linking up of all villages and towns and cities and then 
the country with the rest of the world, is the essential 
infrastructure for information flow. 

To be on par and compatible with the global information 
infrastructure (GII), we have to develop a modern, broad-band, high-
speed digital telecommunications infrastructure on which all types of 
information can flow at the least cost. This information may be voice 
as in telephony; may be text, as in facsimile and e-mail; may be 
images as in video and data as between computers. 

As society advances from agriculture to industry and from industry to 
post-industrial information stage, vast quantities of information 
will be exchanged. Every method of transaction which we are currently 
doing like banking or learning or meeting or trading can be 
electronified and carried out on the telecommunications 
infrastructure with consequent savings in time, transport, energy and 
pollution. 

The electronification and digitisation of information and its flow on 
broad-band electronic / photonic highways facilitates the connection 
of all homes and offices to the national information infrastructure 
(NII) and the NII will get linked to the global information 
infrastructure
(GII). 

The same electronics/photonic infrastructure that passes by the homes 
and offices can be used by people in homes and offices for
transacting every business including learning, buying and selling, 
socialising and banking. It has now become clear that the 
transformation of the traditional telecommunication networks into an 
electronic / photonic information infrastructure and extending this 
to all over the country to pass by all homes and offices is a 
stupendous task involving first, a vision; second, technology; third, 
money; and fourthly, a proper public policy framework.

Governments, developing as well as developed are now convinced that 
this transformation and further development cannot be undertaken by a 
monopoly either of government or of private companies. Inventiveness, 
innovations, entrepreneurship and money will have to flow into the 
sector. 

It is clearly realised that multiplicity and competition under fair 
sectoral laws and regulation can quickly effect the transformation 
and development of the infrastructure in any country.


The author is Information Technology Advisor to Government of Andhra 
Pradesh and Chairman, Pragna Bharati, Hyderabad.

 
 
 
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