Let me start by thanking Prof NK Goyal, Chairman Emeritus of TEMA and President of CMAI Association of India, for this opportunity to welcome Dr Rajkumar Upadhyay, as the new Executive Director of C-DOT and address this august gathering. Nice to see so many good friends even if only virtually, especially my ITU-APT Foundation of India friends who contribute so much to ITU’s work as presented by my good friend Mr Bharat Bhatia.
Congratulations Dr Upadhyay and I look forward to meeting you in person hopefully next year when this terrible pandemic will hopefully be over and we can return to a more normal life. I say normal but it surely will not be the same as before, and one good thing that has come out of this crisis is the greater awareness of the benefits that our technology can bring to the world, and that it is only through this technology that the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals will be met.
This is clearly recognised in India with the Honourable Prime Minister’s Aatma Nirbhar Bharat program and focus on Make in India, and especially research and design in the telecom sector.
I am also happy to meet virtually Shri K Ram Chand, Member Technology, and Shri Sanjay Kumar Rakesh CEO, CSC.
I recall with pleasure my last visit to C-DOT just over a year ago when I had a very interesting tour of the many impressive innovative technologies and products being developed there, as just described by Dr Upadhyay, as well as the generous accommodation for the future ITU area office for South Asia. This will ensure excellent collaboration between ITU and C-DOT in the future.
Coming from a small village myself, I was particularly impressed with C-DOT’s contribution to connecting the villages and remote areas of India with high speed broadband and promoting Digital Literacy and Digital Empowerment. This will bring benefits for health and education to the remote areas and accelerate their socio-economic development. If people can benefit from these developments, it can boost entrepreneurship and encourage start-ups and other small industries in remote areas and reduce the trend to urbanisation which is creating so many problems.
I am pleased that C-DOT is playing a significant role in evolving the indigenous telecom standards to ensure telecom solutions satisfy the demands of the rural areas as well as urban areas, such as the platform based on ITU's Common Alerting Protocol as Dr Upadhyay mentioned.
India’s emphasis on improving the lives of its rural communities means its developments in this area offer a very successful transition to other developing countries facing the same problems, especially in South Asia and Africa.
I was pleased that one of C-DOT's innovations was nominated for an award of excellence by the World Summit on Information Society Forum for enabling illiterate populations, and especially persons with disabilities, to benefit from connection to the Internet and the delivery of the targeted information in a convenient and timely manner.
And in the ITU premises in Geneva we have implemented a C-DOT designed solution, which is helping visitors navigate their way to their respective destinations in an interactive and assistive way.
I have always advocated greater involvement of India in the work of ITU and I look forward to continuing my excellent relationship with C-DOT and its fruitful alliances with industry and academia to generate more ITU members from India especially to our SME and academia membership categories.
I wish Dr Upadhyay and C-DOT continued success with its very important work and I look forward to visiting you again soon, hopefully on the occasion of the opening of the new ITU area office next year.
Thank you and I wish you and your family stay safe and well.