Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam President of India, May 28, 2003     


Indian President calls for greater use of open source software
"In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people''


The President of India has called for the extensive of open-source software to replace costly proprietary information technology programmes.

In a speech at the country's International Institute of Information Technology, President Abdul Kalam, expressed his concern that so many sectors, including government and education, were still dependent on costly proprietary software packages, calling it a "most unfortunate thing."

"In India, open sourcecode software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people," he added.

The Indian President also reminded the IT industry of the importance of Indian language computing solutions: "We must have (Indian) search engines, word processing tools, optical character recognisers, speech recognisers and machine translators."

The Indian President speaks from experience. He is South Asia's first "techie" national leader, with an impressive scientific background. As Chairman, Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council (TIFAC), President Kalam generated the Technology Vision 2020 documents – a road map for transforming India from Developing India to Developed India. He provided overall guidance to a number of Homegrown Technology Projects and major technology missions. He served as the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, in the rank of Cabinet Minister, from November 1999 to November 2001. He was primarily responsible for evolving policies, strategies and missions for generation of innovations and support systems for multiple applications.

Conversation with Bill Gates

The Indian President is openly critical of proprietary software. During his address to the International Institute of Technology in Pune, he recounted a conversation earlier this year with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates: " I would like to narrate an event that took place in Rashtrapati Bhavan a few months back when I met Bill Gates, the CEO of Microsoft. While walking in the Mughal garden, we were discussing the future challenges in Information Technology including the issues related to software security. I made a point that we look for open source codes so that we can easily introduce the users built security algorithms. Our discussions became difficult since our views were different."

Commenting on this discussion, the President of India said: "The most unfortunate thing is that India still seems to believe in proprietary solutions. Further spread of IT which is influencing the daily life of individuals would have a devastating effect on the lives of society due to any small shift in the business practice involving these proprietory solutions.

"It is precisely for these reasons open source software need to be built which would be cost effective for the entire society. In India, open source code software will have to come and stay in a big way for the benefit of our billion people.

"We have seen that growth of IT and telecommunication in India has established that the data transformed into information has a business proposition which has given a competitive advantage. I am sure by the end of this decade, entire India will have IT enabled services in the fields of human resource, customer interaction, finance and accounting, data search and integration, e-education, tele-medicine and e-governance.

"Our core competencies that can be exploited in addition to what has been planned in 1998 include Information Security, Scientific Software development, e-governance that can spearhead a strong Domestic market, Entertainment, Education, Hardware and chip design and Wireless. If we explore these areas of our core competency we can create Indian MNCs and could aim at a target of 150 billion dollars by the year 2010.

Knowledge society

The Indian Presient envisaged Rural Models to share and augment service capabilities to cater to the IT enabled service demands from local in addition to foreign sources. Such models should aim to provide opportunity for rural economic development and prosperity: "Youth in the rural localities could be easily trained to cater to requirement of IT enabled service industries. We can get place and manpower at very cheaper rates when compared to urban localities. This will also aid in stopping movement of families towards urban localities.

"Knowledge powered rural development is an essential need for transforming India into a knowledge power and high bandwidth rural connectivity is the minimum requirement to take education, health care and economic dynamism to the rural areas.

"Knowledge society leading to knowledge super power can prosper and survive only in the environment of economic security and internal security. "

Technology for disabled

Turning his attention to the role of information technology in helping disabled people, the President said: "I was recently in Kolkata interacting with 9000 children at the Netaji Indoor Stadium. One boy suffering from visual impairment asked me, “Sir, what kind of education facilities are provided in the Knowledge Society, for visually handicapped children like me?” There are many like him. Let me share one thought with you. I had met many physically and mentally challenged children at Rashtrapati Bhavan and also during my visits to various States. My belief all along was reconfirmed that these children like all others have an equal urge to pursue their studies and work. We have to provide solutions to their problems with the aid of Information Technology, by developing audio books, talking websites, voice assistive interfaces and other devices. "

Commenting on the IT industry in India, The President said: "The IT industry, which employs 500,000 people and earns $10 billion is less than one percent of the world market. From another perspective, a typical international software company with 50,000 employees earns $20 billion through its world wide operations.

"Our software industry has to move up the value chain and come up with innovative products that will sweep the world. I am confident that the Indian Industry would soon come up with such mega initiatives. "

"Today, our IT Industry is proud that 260 out of the Fortune 500 companies are its clients. I would like the IT Industry to lead the march by proclaiming that 260 of the Fortune 500 companies are Indian MNCs. This is my dream," the Indian President concluded.

For full text of the speech, go to The website of the President of India The website of the President of India