This speech was deliverd by Hasanul Haq Inu, MP, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications, Bangladesh Parliament on 17 th September, 2010 at the workshop no.197 of 5th Internet Government Forum meeting, held at Vilnius in Lithuania.

CHANAKYA Of South Asia: 2300 years back remarked; - Sandalwood even broken to pieces still has its fragrance. Sugarcane thrown into crushing machine do not give up sweetness. Great men even weak, never give up their greatness.

To this I add :- Technocrats, young or old never stops unto death; rolls the wheel of civilization .

Internet will always connect you to the world.

Internet is for everyone, Diversity is the key for global Internet. The UN general assembly resolution 60/252 on WSIS has acknowledged the need of use of Internet and other Information Communication Technologies for economic development and reduction of digital divide.



The UN Development Programme (UNDP) declared that the world is in the midst of ‘GENERAL PURPOSE TECHNOLOGY’ or GPT revolution.

ICT is GPT of our age an enabling technology ‘Tool to enable all sectors’.

It is unlearning the old and adapting to the new creative destruction.

There is no doubt that the biggest challenge for the developing nations and also Bangladesh is Poverty. The Challenge of the millennium is to find a successful solution to the problems of poverty, unemployment, empowerment of poor and women, low literacy rate, low Internet penetration, non transparent colonial administrative setup and the comply task of linking Bangladesh to the ‘World Highway of Dev.’

Everybody there are ponderings across the world how to master ICT? How to apply ICT? Where to apply ICT? Answer is simple: apply in such a way so that the maximum people may be benefited, the social divide is abolished and the excluded are empowered in all ways.

Mohammad Ali, the great legendary heavy weight boxer of the world said– ‘Wars are fought against nations to change maps. War against poverty- is fought to Map changes.’

I am one of 150 million; coming from Bangladesh, with a clear message from Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister, that Bangladesh has decided to take up the challenge to eradicate poverty- to map changes by applying ICT to digitize Bangladesh by 2021. How? By walking on 9 legs: e-education, e-agriculture, e-health, e-industry, e-commerce, e-governance, e-communication infrastructure, e-law structure, e-software and hardware. It’s like a dream, but achievable. Man is greater than their dreams. Person can do- goes beyond their dreams. We have a dream, which we want to share.



End users – the people need to have a familiar environment in order to use internet. For that we need to answer the following questions,

-How to generate presentation forms that are appropriate to each culture?

-How to increase levels of access for all populations?

-How to make content available in every languages?

-How to digitize the government machinery?

-How to promote digital literacy?

So we need to develop tools and software to help people with special needs;

-Promote the formulation and adoption of policies that make the internet accessible affordable to every one.

-Needs to develop universal standards regarding language issue in cyber space.

In todays world, information plays an important role in success in business and investment. This makes it all the more important to make the information available to all at affordable price.

This necessity has given rise for the requirement of local language content accessible to the society. The local language content may be tuned to meet the requirement of particular society or region.

Bangladesh has been taking steps to meet its own need through national activities as well as regional cooperation. The South Asia Sub regional Economic Cooperation (SASEC) Information Highway comprising Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, & Nepal have been formed and that aims to boost regional trade and commerce by sharing information through expansion of trade and commerce.

Bangladesh understands the needs to make available local contents and tools to make local content among the population. Microsoft Corporation has released Local Language Pack for Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 and Local Language Pack for the Windows 7 and Office 2010 is due soon. Open Source Network has also released Linux and Open Office in Bangla. This has helped rural people to use computer in local language: Bangla. Local Software industry and IT enable free lancing opportunities has created new employment opportunities.

Content issue encompasses two main aspects.

Content availability and content hosting Developing countries needs to include content development in their national strategies and build local applications and online govt. service in local languages there by building a demand based on content.

Stakeholders need to support: content industry wide range of content development, services, and application services and demonstrate the impact of such content on social & economic development.

Besides these, application of local language is necessary in top level domain, search engines, and to develop correct scripts and its standardization; correct scripts to keyboard.

We realize the facts that at present the per capita income of Bangladesh is low and affordability of PC at every household is not possible. So the government and NGOs has setup Community e-Centers, Community Information Centers and Telecenters across the country to provide community based ICT enable services to facilitate Bangladesh has rolled out mobile broadband, Wireless broadband. By 2011-40,000 telecenters, by 2012-8000 rural post offices will have e- centers, 2011-mobile banking. These centers are providing services in the areas of education, information dissemination, tele-health services, agri-info etc.This government -NGO effort has brought the brought the accessibility of information using ICT at grass roots in local language. After the success of Grameen telephone lady with cell phone numbering 270,000 the NGOs have now started creating services through Grameen Information Ladies. These ladies are providing basic health-care information to village women. By 2014-18000 community clinic will go digital by 2014-e-gov & 2012-e-commerce, 2013-4400 Local Government office will be connected to national backbone. Bandwidth will be upgraded to 164-64 bps from 44.6 GBPS. Now community radio has started functioning, by 2015 another 100 will start functioning.

The Digital Divide which has been widespread in the society is being reduced through digital inclusion of the challenged class in the society. These breakthroughs using community access model has also helped the society to be more tolerant and democratic through availability of information for educated decision making.

The ever expanding telecom and education network in Bangladesh Secondary Schools, ICT enable labs. We look forward to share our information to take new ideas with us for our country.

We have 59 million mobile, 1.7 million PSTN, 41.8% Com+ intern, Optical fiber -15000 k.m, Population below 30 yrs 60%-90 million, GDP= $643.

The key policy approach is to place & put people before poor, profit, politics. Let us avoid conflict and seek peace to rise with ICT as an enabling tool.- having a strategic decision to speed up local language content development, push up access transformation and include the excluded for digital inclusion.

I conclude by quoting again CHANAKYA “Never trust: Rivers; never trust animals with horns; never trust armed men; never trust ruling families”. But I add and say that we in present day world; yes, you can trust internet- it will always connect you. And for the common people with diverse cultures and with many languages, let us make internet accessible to all by local language content development. Bangladesh has started to do that, is bringing new opportunities to the people of this country through ICT. By 2014, 18,500 and they aims to eradicate the Digital Divide.

CJ WEB

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