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Kerala IT meet: God's Own Cyber Country

George Iype in Trivandrum

The Kerala government will kick-start its first ever sincere effort to convert 'God's Own Country' into 'God's Own Cyber Country' the IT Kerala 2000 meet at the Technopark campus in Trivandrum on Thursday.

An answer to the mega IT events that Bangalore, Madras and Hyderabad occasionally host, the IT Kerala 2000 will showcase the state as the perfect IT destination because of a host of unique advantages that Kerala offers.

In the last few years when the neighbouring Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh leapfrogged with various IT initiatives, Kerala's ruling and opposition politicians showed no vision to transform the state into a hi-tech destination. But now realization seems to have set in the ruling Left Democratic Front government that it is better late than never.

So the late entrant in the race to the information technology will for the first time project the state as the ideal location for IT companies to set up shops because of a host of reasons. They include: the state has a 100 per cent literate and knowledge society; the state is already the most dense cluster of science and technology personnel in India; the state has the highest physical quality of life index with least population growth; it also has the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality.

But according to Aruna Sunderarajan, the Information Technology Secretary of the Kerala government and the brain behind the IT Kerala 2000, it is not just literacy and other high quality of life indices alone that makes Kerala the country's most technology-savvy state.

Sunderarajan throws up a challenge with a fact-file which few other states in the country can claim. According to the figures, Kerala has the highest growth rate in PC penetration. The telephone, cellular phone and cable television penetration in Kerala vis-à-vis the population of other states is the highest. Kerala has 210,000 cellular phone subscribers and 150,000 Internet users. The state has a telephone density of 4.5, the highest in the country. It has 300,000 cable TV connections.

"Kerala offers the lowest operational costs for the IT industry. This makes the state a preferred destination for IT companies across the world to outsource services from here," Sunderarajan points out.

But Sunderajan claims where Kerala will beat the other states in the near future is in providing high international connectivity and instant data transfer facilities. Because Kochi, the state's commercial capital, is the only landing points in India for the three international submarine cable networks from FLAG (Fibre optic Loop Around the Globe), SEA-ME-WE3 (the undersea link: South East Asia, Middle East and Western Europe) and SAFE (South Africa to Far East).

Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) will receive the bandwidth from FLAG and SEA-ME-WE3 at Kochi. The Kerala government hopes that once this broadband fibre optic pipes are ready at Kochi, the state will begin to enjoy a surplus of telecom bandwidth. "This international submarine gateway at Kochi will make the city an important IT destination. Therefore, we are currently building a hi-tech park at Kochi on 200 acres of land," the IT Secretary added.

State government officials claim it is unfair to suggest that Kerala has taken no serious IT initiatives in the past few years. "In fact, e-governance is being successfully implemented only in Kerala. What is happening in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka is too much hype and little implementation of computer networking in villages and panchayats," says a senior official in charge of the IT Kerala 2000.

For instance, he says, the state has set up an Information Kerala Mission to link 1,214 local bodies including panchayats, with the district and state planning boards. According to the Mission, all the offices-agricultural offices, panchayats, veterinary and primary health centres, village offices and even primary schools-will be connected to the government departments.

"We are crafting an information society. We concede that more IT companies should be lured to setting up their software centres in Kerala. We are going to achieve that soon after this IT Kerala 2000 event," the official added.

Already Technopark, the self-contained IT and electronics industry park in Trivandrum, offers one of the lowest work-in-and-operate rates in the country for software companies.

The state government hopes that the upcoming Technoparks in Kochi and Kozhikode will attract more companies especially because of the increased international bandwidth that Kerala will offer from next year onwards.

So for IT industrialists looking for a high bandwidth destination, there couldn't be a more attractive place than Kerala, the IT Kerala 2000 managers say.

Along with the mega IT event, the organisers have planned an international convention on the theme "Crafting a Knowledge Society in the 21st Century".

Part of the IT Kerala 2000 will be an Investors' Meet on November 24. The Meet will provide a forum for companies and entrepreneurs to get together and firm up business plans with decision-makers of finance-support and infrastructure-support agencies in the state. Several NRIs especially from the USA, Middle East, Singapore and Europe and representatives of prominent IT companies in the country are expected to attend the Investors' Meet.

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