Make bandwidth available to all, says Kalam

In the small but packed hall of a New Delhi hotel that hosted Steve Ballmer's,
CEO, Microsoft, Narayana Murthy, Infosys' and others, President Dr APJ Abdul
Kalam gave the event's opening keynote address on “Bridging the two Indias”.President
Kalam said it was critical to make bandwidth available for inclusion, because
“..the less educated you are, the more bandwidth you need to communicate!

The most educated can manage with asynchronous means like e-mail...the less
educated need voice-or video..”.  He also spoke of the critical need
for education to make the millions of young people more employable for global
needs, for which it wasn't just connectivity but content that was urgently
needed, and of course teachers.

Dr APJ Abdul Kalam President, India

He encouraged corporates to come together to create a separate rural
development fund, with some contributions from their quarterly profit, run by an
independent board, which could help manage bandwidth and other technology
deploy­ment for rural and small town areas which are being left behind by the
rapid growth of corporate India and the cities.

He said the “core competence of India” was that it was a billion-people
democracy with multiple, and very different, cultures and languages. “If you
don't agree with me, write to me at www.presidentofindia.gov.in
and I'll reply in 24 hours!” he said.

Steve Ballmer spoke of the next ten years, which will pack more action and
promise than even the last ten.

NDTV's Prannoy Roy moderated a discussion between Steve Ballmer, NR
Narayana Murthy, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, and Manvinder Singh of Ranbaxy. He started
off by asking Ballmer about the contrasting personalities of the top two at
Microsoft­small, shy and geeky versus flamboyant and six feet six, and got the
reply that opposites make for the best partnerships; and about whether it was
good practice to drop out of college if you wanted to become a top
entrepreneur!To a question on whether Google was making Microsoft change tracks,
and if we were going to get free software from Microsoft soon, Ballmer said the
future held a mix of business models that would coexist, and thrive, spurred by
innovation.

Ravi Venkatesan kicked off the event, speaking spoke of the contrasts in
India: the millionaires and the malnouri­shed children; the successful e-gov
projects and the “graveyard of pilot projects”.

Ballmer may be a less known face in India, but Bill Gates has been a regular
visitor. While Gates handles the product roadmap and technological vision, Steve
Ballmer runs the company's operations and finances. Ballmer was Bill Gates'
dorm mate at Harvard, and became the 24th employee of Microsoft in June 1980.
That makes him the longest-serving employee of Microsoft, and its first business
manager, hired by Bill Gates for a $50,000 salary and a small stake in the
company, which grew to 8% by the next year, when Microsoft became a corporation
(he sold nearly a tenth of his shareholding in 2003, leaving him with 4 percent
stake). Ballmer became president in 1998, and CEO in 2000.

PRASANTO K ROY