Code Swaraj
Nobody talks about future. Our heritage is important. We are proud of our heritage, of our art, our culture, our music, and we are trying to computerize a lot of that.
About 15 years ago, we took one million manuscripts and digitized it. 15 years ago. 40 years ago, 37 years ago, we started at the Indira Gandhi Institute with Kapila Vatsyayan, storing all of our art on microfilm. All of this stuff is now coming to a point where it makes sense. Earlier we didn’t have the right tools. Now, storage is cheap.
Just to give an idea, I bought 16-bit RAM for $16. I hope that makes sense to some of you. I bought four-input NAND gates for $37 each. When first microprocessor was designed by Intel, I was there. All the Intel founders are friends of mine, Bob Noyce, Lester Hogan, Gordon Moore. The first four-bit processor, I used it for telephony.
And we thought that was a miracle. And we thought, “My God, what a powerful tool.”
And look at what you have today. You are sitting with gigabits and terabits and so much processing power just in your cell phone, and this is changing India. But it has to change in the way you want it to change, not in the way somebody sitting in US wants this to change. We need local content, local applications, local solutions, Indian version of development and not Western version of development.
It’s too bad that everybody wants to be like US. That model is not scalable, sustainable, designable, or maintainable. We need to create Indian model of development, and that’s where Gandhi leads.
So while I was talking to some young people here, I said, “Can you get me data set for every district?” What I want is for every district, everything should be available online. Court cases, police, teachers, schools, hospitals, doctors. I don’t care about Indian national databases. Of course it’s important. I’m not saying it’s not important. But I want work at district level. At district level if I have need for 500 teachers, I don’t need to go to Delhi to ask, “Where do I go hire?” I need to hire them right there.
We need to decentralize everything. Today, power in India is in two places. Prime minister, and chief minister.
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