Kalam’s call: Free up airwaves

‘‘To make this happen, bandwidth has to be free,’’ Kalam went on, keeping away from the text of his prepared speech. ‘‘Bandwidth is like a road. Just like anyone can use a road, everyone should be able to use bandwidth too,’’ he said.

The President’s views, though not political, will no doubt echo in sections of Indian government and industry, even if Kalam’s ultimate goal — to attain greater transparency through use of technology — may take some time.

‘‘Where do all our problems start,’’ asked Kalam rhetorically. ‘‘There is a need for transparency, which is why e-governance is such a great tool.’’ Kalam dispelled notions that e-governance — delivered through phone lines, computers and the Internet — is not taking off. He pointed out that the President’s own website has a ‘hit rate’ of 250,000 on an average day.

‘‘The number goes up to 1 million a day on special occasions like August 15 and January 26,’’ he said.

At this rate, the President is a very busy person. Despite having already met more than a million children under 17 years of age, Kalam gets more than a 100 e-mails a day from students, plus an additional 400 daily e-mails from Indians and foreigners. Rashtrapati Bhawan is also pounded with 500 snail mails on each day.

Despite the deluge of messages, each e-mail addressed to Kalam is answered within 24 hours by his office. This, thanks to an automated system that studies all the messages, analyses them and prioritises them. ‘‘Write to me,’’ he encouraged, ‘‘We have the systems to respond to all queries we get.’’

The rest of officialdom is falling in line too, Kalam assured. ‘‘At the Governor’s conference, I said that we will connect all government departments, and it will happen. The government-to-government and government -to-citizen interface will be electronic soon,’’ he said.

All India needs, after the technology, the bandwidth, and e-governance, is the ability to manage programmes. ‘‘Programmes need money, but also schedules and management structures. This culture of management has to come to the country. It will come — I will bring it to the country,’’ Kalam promised, perhaps at his inspiring best.