Let me begin by telling you how delighted I am at your invitation. Your President has been a bit of a dictator, but she has been a mild dictator. She dictated four topics that I might choose from, but gave me the choice. Two of these suggested topics dealt with globalisation. The third suggested topic was about India becoming an economic superpower. I chose the fourth, "India in the Knowledge Millennium". I do indeed believe that India will become an economic superpower. I also believe that knowledge will be the driving force towards this goal. Globalisation is itself a difficult term to pin down. Different people mean different things when they use this word. In various contexts, globalisation implies free cross-border flows of goods, services, labour, capital, technology and information. Of these four flows, cross-border flows of goods, services, labour and even capital have been going on for a long time. What distinguishes our era from earlier ones is flows of technology and information, and that is what the knowledge economy is all about. That is infact what the knowledge millennium is all about.

As far as I can see, two distinct but inter-related strands have contributed to the notion of knowledge millennium. The first is the global emphasis on intellectual property, while the second is the role of computers and the Internet in breaking down barriers. On a slightly personal note, both of these are trends that Rajiv Gandhi had anticipated. Many of you will remember that he articulated this vision of India as far back as 1985 and that he worked tirelessly to prepare India to become a powerhouse in the 21st century.

This does not mean that knowledge had no role in earlier centuries. From perhaps twenty thousand years ago, knowledge has been a key element in human evolution. Use of fire, evolution of language, the Industrial Revolution, all these phenomena were about knowledge and its use. The 20th century is itself an example. Cast our mind back to the year 1900. Radios, vacuum cleaners, aeroplanes, washing machines, televisions, electron microscopes, computers, transistors, fax machines and compact discs had not been invented. Nor were there windscreen wipers, stainless steel, ball-point pens, neon lights and bakelite. None of us present in this room was alive then. But I am sure that if a time machine took us back to the year 1900, we would find a world difficult to recognize. It would be a world difficult to live in.

What distinguishes the 21st century from earlier centuries is the speed of change, the speed at which advances in knowledge are transforming our lives. Consequently, there will also be ethical dilemmas we have never confronted before. Yes indeed, there was nuclear knowledge in the 20th century. Humankind learnt to create death. But in the new millennium, humankind will learn to create life, the Human Genome project is merely an early indicator of what will be possible. The possibilities are awesome. The possibilities can uplift human development to frontiers undreamt of today. But, I must confess, I also find these possibilities fraught with dangers we have, as yet, no conception of.

How does India fit into this new millennium? Consider India's strengths in human resources. Consider India's strengths in science and technology. With its shortage of capital, India may have found it difficult to cope when the thrust of world economic growth was capital-intensive industrialization. But with knowledge-based development, India is potentially capable of taking on the world. Ours is a country where the roots of knowledge go back thousands of years.

The word "Veda" itself means knowledge. This is a country that is the acknowledged inventor of number zero. This is a country where the game of chess was invented. This is a country whose citizens have made us proud in distant Silicon Valley, exploiting the power of knowledge. We know that there are problems. The hardware problem is the most obvious. Let me take China as a cliched contrast.

We have 22 telephone lines per thousand people, China has 70. We have 3 personal computers per thousand people, China has 272. These figures are two years old. We have later figures for India, but not for China. In the last two years, the Indian figures have gone up, but so have the Chinese. The point is the difference, the gap. How can we expect to exploit knowledge with these kinds of penetration ratios? I said the hardware problem is the most obvious. It is also the easiest to solve. There are more cable television connections in India now than telephone lines. Soon, the Internet will be accessible through television sets, thus bringing down costs. The technology already exists. Software will be available in Indian languages. Voice recognition software will develop and make the Internet accessible to those who can't read or write. The government itself can subsidize hardware introduction. So can non-government organisations (NGOs). Many NGOs, including the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, have successfully experimented with setting up cyber-kiosks or cyber-dhabas in remote areas. I am not discounting the importance of hardware, but I think this is a problem that can be tackled. I am more concerned about the software and when I use this expression, I am not using the word software in a computer sense. Here by software, I mean www. Words are interpreted according to the context. When I said www, you most probably took it to mean the world-wide web. But I don't mean the web. By www, I mean why, whom and women.

That is what I mean by software. Let me explain. The Indian educational system is something we can justifiably be proud of. After all, it is the IITs that have blazed the Silicon Trail. But let us look at the Indian educational system in its entirety and just islands of excellence here and there. From primary school to college to university, the educational system thrives on the basis of learning by rote. This is reflected in the syllabus, in textbooks and in the examination system. Cram and learn by heart and you will do well. Students need to learn what is taught and reproduce it as perfectly as possible. "Their's not to reason why." From kindergarten, the student is taught to conform, to accept and not to ask WHY. This kills creativity, it kills innovation, it kills the thirst for knowledge. This educational system may have had a role to play when the British needed to produce clerks to serve their own ends. But surely in an Independent India, we need to do better. We need to concentrate on the first W of WHY and completely revolutionise the education system. This also has something to do with taking risks. Because of the pressures of conformity, students are not encouraged to take risks.

But the knowledge economy is about taking risks. Without encouraging risk taking and failure, how do you encourage success? For every five successes, there must have been at least ninety-five failures. The failures are just as important as the successes, perhaps even more so. We need to encourage failure and we will then find that the flower of innovation, which has been somewhat muted in modern India, will flourish again. An additional problem connected with innovation is the role of the market and commercialization. It is not that Indians do not innovate. But often, they do not realize that the innovation or invention has commercial The number of women Internet subscribers in the US outnumbers the figures for men and I hope for an India where this will also become possible. value in the market place. After all, the idea of a price for knowledge is somewhat alien to the Indian mindset. But this mindset will change. And once the commercial value of an innovation is appreciated, venture capital will also step in to make commercialization possible. From the first W, let me move on to the second, the question of WHOM.

For who is this knowledge based economy and the knowledge based millennium meant? Whom does it benefit? The richer income groups who can benefit from their shares getting listed on NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange? Or is there something in it for the average Indian as well? And for the poor Indian, who tills his land from morning to evening and whose life has been untouched by the innovations of the 20th century? If we must talk about the knowledge millennium, let us bear in mind Gandhiji's talisman. If the knowledge millennium cannot wipe a tear from the eyes of the poor Indian, I fear that it is not of much use at all. Do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting for a minute that information technology and knowledge cannot be used to uplift the lot of the poor.

But this will not happen automatically as long as the underprivileged Indian is illiterate, lives below the poverty line and has no access to safe drinking water, health services, sanitation and education. This section of our people accounts for a large chunk of our country, we cannot afford to pass them by. Parts of India cannot march forward to the 21st century, while the remaining part is left mired in the 18th century. Active intervention will be needed, by the State and by NGOs, by civil society in general. This is something all of us here, individually and collectively, owe to society and to posterity. Finally, the third W, WOMEN. Alas, all too often, that poor and deprived Indian happens to be a woman. The gender bias in India has been sufficiently well documented. This hype about information, communications and entertainment to my mind is somewhat misplaced when figures tell us that the females literacy rate in some Indian districts is less than 5 percent and that women have to walk 10 kilometres for some firewood or some water. It amazes me that the number of women Internet subscribers in the United States outnumbers the figures for men and I hope for an India where this will also become possible. The innate strengths and abilities of our women have been proven. It is for all of us to join hands with State and private agencies to enable them to break the shackles of poverty and backwardness. Ladies, I believe India has the potential to thrive and prosper in the knowledge millennium. I have merely indicated some steps that are necessary for the potential energy to become a kinetic one and for the prosperity that is India's destiny to become prosperity for all of India's people.