Full-fledged Kannada portal launched

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, NOV. 25. The computer should not become a preserve of the rich and every effort should be made by the Government and others to take the benefits of the "wonder machine" to the rural people, observed Ms.Sudha Narayana Murthy, Trustee of Infosys Foundation, here.

She was inaugurating "jaikannada.com," a full-fledged Kannada portal, started by the Oriental Kannada News Service, here on Wednesday.

Ms.Murthy said that the Government could move closer to the rural masses only when they were made to use computers. That would highlight and solve their problems.

The Major Irrigation Minister, Mr. H.K.Patil, said that all-round development of the country was possible only when computer scientists took up the cause of suffering millions, especially those living in villages.

Mr. M.C.Nanaiah, Janata Dal MLC and former Law and Information Minister, felt that the print media was too powerful to be overthrown by the electronic media, whose impact was ephemeral. Both the rich and the poor accorded importance to newspapers. He wondered whether IT could come to the rescue of the rural poor as the literary rate in the country was hardly 50 per cent. IT could increase its reach only when everyone had access to basic education, Mr.Nanaiah said. It was not the intelligentsia but the illiterate masses which had preserved the cultural heritage of the country.

Mr.G.S.Krishna Murthy, Editor of the news service, said that theirs was the first full-fledged portal in Kannada.

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