Gandhian values online in Indian state

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

Gandhian values online in Indian state 

NEW DELHI, July 19 (Reuters) - The chief minister of India's largest 
state has something to boast about -- he has the vital statistics of 
every village in his state stored on hard disc. 

Digvijay Singh has worked hard to ensure that the central state of 
Madhya Pradesh is one of a handful of states to have Internet access 
in each of its districts, with details about each village stored in 
computers. 

The charismatic, 52-year-old son of a pre-independence nobleman has 
deftly balanced Gandhian philosophy of giving power to villages with 
a modernisation drive based on information technology. 

"We have always felt that Mahatma Gandhi's 'Gram Swaraj' (village 
self-rule) is the key to India's success. We have given more and more 
powers to the people," Singh told Reuters in an interview. "Let them 
do it rather than we doing it for them." 

"Technology has to be given to them rather than we doing it for 
them," Singh says. "We provide the funds, the technology back-up, we 
train them and ask them to implement and supervise." 

Singh is often compared to Chandrababu Naidu, the computer-savvy 
chief minister and "chief executive officer" of neighbouring Andhra 
Pradesh, who has earned his state's capital, Hyderabad, the nickname 
"Cyberabad." 

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http://asia.internet.com/Reuters/1999/07/2001-news.html