Information technology is the future and Andhra Pradesh will be leading the way. And as a part of the IT initiative, the AP Fiber Grid project will connect about two lakh households in the State with high-speed bandwidth by the end of this month, according to Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. He was delivering the inaugural address at three-day international education-tech conference --‘Transforming Education Conference for Humanity’ (TECH) -- being held in Visakhapatnam.
“I have invited the President to inaugurate the project any my target is to connect 14 lakh households. This will enable me to conduct video conferencing with all of them,” said Mr. Naidu.
He pointed out that the households would get internet connectivity of 15 MBPS, with 600 television channels and Wi-Fi for just ₹200. “I have leveraged on the existing electricity lines to facilitate the laying of the optic fibre internet cables and the cost has come down from thousands of crores to just ₹320 crore,” he informed the gathering comprising over 800 delegates.
About education, the Chief Minister said he was working on the setting up of at least 5000 e-classrooms in colleges and schools.
“We will acquire content from all over the world by leveraging technology such as Big Data, Cloud and IoT,” he said.
He also spoke about realtime management and said that realtime verification of people’s problem would soon be introduced.
“Technology will improve accountability and transparency and work is on to establish ‘Bhoodan’, wherein every piece of land will have a unique identification number. This will bring down the manipulation of land records,” he said.
Education system
The Minister of State for Human Resource Development and Higher Education Satyapal Singh said that modern education was not serving its purpose.
Going with the theme of the conference, technology should be used to change the education system so that human values can be inculcated, he said.
According to him, India will have the largest young and educated population at least for the next two decades and the gaps in the demographic dividend should be filled by imparting quality education.
“In India there are about 90 million children in the age group of 0-8 years, who do not have access to good education. This gap can be reduced by using technology and pedagogical tools,” he said.
Ali Al Karni from Arab Bureau of Education, B. Uday Lakshmi, Commissioner, Intermediate Education, Ananatha K. Duraiappah, Director of UNESCO MGIEP, J. Krishna Kishore, CEO, Economic Development Board, Government of Andhra Pradesh, and former President of Kyrgyzstan Roza Otunbayeva also spoke.
State Minister for HRD Ganta Srinivasa Rao, Visakhapatnam MP K. Haribabu and Anakapalle MP M. Srinivasa Rao and others were present.
