New Delhi, July 12, 2005: India's
Finance Minister, Mr P Chidambaram, announced that the Government of
India would support the Mission 2007: Every Village a Knowledge Centre,
to the tune of Rs 65,000 million (roughly US $1,500 million).
He was speaking at the Second Annual Convention of the National
Alliance on Mission 2007 and the First Convocation of the Jamsetji Tata
National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity (NVA) held in New Delhi,
for ushering in ICT-led development in rural India. The National
Alliance led by Prof. M S Swaminathan, Chairman, M S Swaminathan
Research Foundation and One World South Asia announced the pan India
rollout plan for Mission 2007 for creating a network of information
kiosks in 600,000 villages in India by 15th August 2007.
Speaking at
the Convention Conceived by Prof. M S Swaminathan, the man
who brought in the Green Revolution to India, the Mission aims to usher
in a knowledge revolution in India by connecting all the more than
600,000 villages of India in a knowledge network by 15
August 2007,
the 60th anniversary of India's Independence. After a series of
meetings with a wide cross section of people from
government, academia, civil society organizations and corporations,
Prof. Swaminathan announced the Mission 2007 in mid 2004. As such a
huge programme cannot be undertaken by any single organization, Prof.
Swaminathan went on to build a National Alliance, perhaps the largest
multi-stakeholder partnership in the field of ICT-enabled development
in the world.
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There are more than 150 members in the Alliance including
Development Alternatives, OneWorld South Asia, NASSCOM Foundation, Self
Employed Womens Association, the University of California, Berkeley;
MIT, Cambridge and IDRC, Ottawa.
The first convention of the National Alliance was held in New Delhi on
July 9-10 2004. The second convention took place in New Delhi on 11 and
12 July 2005.
Among the people who spoke at the convention are the President of India
Dr A P J Abdul Kalam; Mr P Chidambaram, the Finance Minister; Mr Mani
Shankar Iyer, Minister for Panchayati Raj; Mr. Dayanidhi Maran,
Minister for Communication and Information Technology; Mr M V
Rajasekharan, Minister of State for Planning, and a number of senior
government officials.
Mr Dayanidhi Maran pledged his support by announcing that his
ministry will work with Mission 2007 to fulfill the objectives of
rolling out 100,000 village knowledge centres by 2007. That is one
sixth of the commitment - already on the table.
Dr Abdul Kalam was very happy to see more than 135 elected Fellows of
the National Virtual Academy for Rural Prosperity all of them
grassroots workers from rural India.
Mr. Mani Shankar Iyer suggested that the Village Knowledge Centres
Should preferably be established in collaboration with the Panchayati
Raj (Village level government) institutions and thus empower the
village level leaders and the communities.
