The Indian President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, speaking in Singapore yesterday, urged people to email him and gave out his web site address, reported The Straits Times. It didn’t give the address, but looking for Abdul Kalam in Answers.com took me to the President of India web site. It does indeed have an email address. An aeronautical engineer who also helped develop India’s first satellite launch vehicle and the Agni and Prithvi missiles and oversaw the 1998 Pokhran – II nuclear tests, Dr Kalam is clearly in his element in information technology. He is all for open-source technology and sharing of online resources, which he advocated here in Singapore too. He called for a "World Knowledge Platform" that would link researchers in India and Singapore and the other two countries he would be visiting next — South Korea and the Philippines.
That might seem just another diplomatic initiative with an IT twist, but Singapore and India are certainly getting closer. The Indian Government has finally approved the Indian Institute of Management’s (Bangalore) plan to set up a campus in Singapore. The National University of Singapore will be setting up a college in Bangalore for its post-graduate students, who will also take part-time courses at the Indian Institute of Science and work as interns at IT companies in Bangalore. Dr Kalam witnessed a memorandum of understanding signed to this effect by the two universities. Singapore’s Channel NewsAsia web site said: "MOU between Singapore-India gives NUS students headstart in IT."
Wow! As an Indian, I feel proud that India is being treated with new respect these days. President George W Bush in his State of the Union address spoke of the competition America faces from India and China. But let us not get carried away. Most of India is still poor and backward. The IT sector, which is India’s pride, depends on collaboration with American companies. It is good that India is getting closer to Singapore and wants similar ties with South Korea and the Philippines, but for India, as for all these countries, the biggest single partner for growth has to be America.
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