South Asian Business news and information

"Multi-stakeholder partnership for building information and knowledge system for the poor and marginalised"- this was the title of the seminar that took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh today as a part of Mission 2011. The seminar was organized by Bangladesh Telecenter Network (BTN). Finance adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam was present as the chief guest. Hua Du Country Director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Bangladesh Resident Mission was also present in the seminar.

The keynote paper was presented by Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman, Chairman, Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC). Advocate Sultana Kamal, Executive director, Ain-o-Salish Kendra presided over the seminar. There were 3 panel discussants.

In his speech as the chief guest, Dr. A. B. Mirza Md. Azizul Islam Adviser Ministry of Finance, Planning, Commerce and Posts & Telecommunications Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, called on all the stake holders to take the blessings of ICT to the common people. He felt that ICT was a very powerful medium and it could be used in various ways. According to Dr. A. B. Mirza Md. Azizul Islam, ICT is very useful in overcoming geographical limitations and he said that ICT had an important role in human development. ICT can also be sued to ensure the participation of ordinary people in the free market economy.

The adviser remembered the use of Information Technology to help people during the cyclone Sidr that ravaged Bangladesh a few weeks ago. He called for working to put an end to the ‘Digital Divide’ in Bangladesh. He also informed the audience about various steps that Bangladesh government had taken in the ICT sector. He praised the initiative of Mission 2011 and assured of providing full support from the government.

In his keynote paper, Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman discussed about the various aspects of taking ICT facilities to the poor people. He also answered the question why the issue of linking information and the poor people was important. He termed the initiative to publish all the laws in Internet as ‘huge’ but he felt that without the access to Internet by rural people, this initiative will not bring the desired result.

Dr. Rahman stated that telecenters could ensure access to information for the marginalized people of the society. For ensuring pro-poor growth, the poor people must have access to technology and information. He also stressed the need of developing technology in accordance with the Bangladeshi condition.

According to Dr. Hossain Zillur Rahman, telecenters will create some jobs in the rural economy and at the same time, telecenters will provide the opportunity to the rural people to have skill based works. Addressing the concern of the sustainability of telcenters, Dr. Rahman stated that the entrepreneurs of the telecenters will have to cut back on their costs and at the same time try to carry out some revenue based activies such as ICT training, digital photography, hardware repair, desktop publishing etc.    

T. I. M. Nurul Kabir, Director of BASIS, said that a vision has to be set for creating an e-Bangladesh. He stressed on having multi stake partnership. Mr. Nurul Kabir viewed that developing people and content was even more important than the technology itself. He also stated that if we wanted to achieve Millennium Development Goal then we had to give more emphasis on implementing ICT in our national life and telecenters could help us a lot in this regard.

Azhar H. Chowdhury of ISPAB talked about the present condition of Bangladesh and the problems that Internet Service Providers were facing here. He informed that there were nearly 1.2 million Internet users in Bangladesh at present. Moreover, nearly 3 million mobile phone subscribers can access to Internet with their mobile phones. He also discussed about the problems faced by the ISPs in Bangladesh. Azhar H. Chowdhury viewed that IP telephony could help telecenters to earn some revenue and this could help to address the issue of sustainability. He called for lowering bandwidth charge in rural areas. He also called for the reduction of tax on networking and Internet related devices so that ISPs can offer internet service to the ordinary people at a cheaper rate. He informed the audience that Google is offering search facilities in Bangla language by using Unicode and that is why, it is important in Bangladesh to have a common standard while developing content in Bangla language.

There was a very lively open discussion in the seminar. People of all parts of the country shared their experience about telecenters. They talked about their problems.

Dr. Ananya Raihan of D.Net addressed some of the concerns and he talked about the benefits of telecenters. He said that investment in the telecenters would help to change the life of millions of poor people. He also stressed the role of government in the success of this project.

Larry Maramis of UNDP said that ICT was helping the people in some other countries and he hoped that Bangladesh could get the best out of ICT too. He also stressed on the sustainability of the telecenters. By the way, Larry Maramis was present as a special guest in the seminar.

Hua Du Country Director of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Bangladesh Resident Mission stated that ADB was supporting ICT related projects in various countries in Asia. She gave the example of India and said that Bangladesh was not far behind when it comes to implementing ICT for the development of ordinary people. She called for exploring solar energy for running telecenters.

Professor Zafar Iqbal praised everyone involved with the telecenter movement in Bangladesh and he viewed that telecenter movement must walk hand in hand with Open Source movement in the country. According to him, we have to try to motivate the people of the rural areas to become more involved with ICT in a natural way.

In the end, Advocate Sultana Kamal viewed that without a vibrant democracy, we cannot expect good result for our society. She said that taking ICT to the marginalized people was very important for the country.  

 
A large number of persons engaged in different sectors were also present in the seminar as audience. I also went there and enjoyed the seminar from the beginning to the end.