In Baramati, looking for Gurcharan Das’s India (Unbound) or Friedman’s India

Before I came to India, I had finished reading Thomas Friedman’s World is Flat and was reading India Unbound by Gurucharan Das. Naturally, I was looking forward to see technological wonders in India. I didn’t see much of those in Pune (can’t blame - we didn’t have proper planning to see such places) and was eagerly waiting till the 8th Baramathi Initiative on ICT and Development began. The event was co-organized by VVIT and Intel and Intel sponsored our trip to India as well.

The conference was full of exciting papers, presentations, discussions on ICT initiatives which were immensely helpful to us. Often I noticed older participants resisting the new ideas brought by the presenters. Skepticism is nothing new specially when it comes from senior citizens who are not used to new technology. None of the presenters dared to ignore the remarks of the older people either.

VVIT has got extensive ICT facilities in the campus. What is important is that this facility is in a rural area, not in a main city. This eases providing hostels and other related facilities to the students. Sri Lanka also should follow this example. Rather than putting everything in Colombo, the authorities should start IT institutes outside Colombo.

I was yet to see Gurcharan Das’s India  or Friedman’s India though. Maybe I came to the wrong place. A future visit to Bangalore or Hyderabad will show me the high-tech India.