[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 44 (Monday, April 10, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2463-S2464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE NEED TO SUPPORT THE U.S.T.T.I.

 Mr. INOUYE. Madam President, I rise today to call attention to 
a recent New York Times article, ``India's Unwired Villages Mired in 
the Distant Past.'' It is because of the struggles developing nations 
face, as illustrated in the article, that I support the United States 
Telecommunications Training Institute (USTTI) and their work to 
increase access to telecommunications.
  The USTTI is a nonprofit joint venture connecting the public and 
private sectors, providing tuition-free communications and broadcast 
training to professionals from around the world. USTTI is geared toward 
meeting the common training needs of the women and men who are bringing 
modern communications to the developing world.
  The development of the telecommunications industry may be seen as a 
solution to economic troubles in developing nations. The New York Times 
article I referred to earlier states, ``. . . the wonders of 
telecommunications technology--distance learning, telemedicine, the 
Internet--offer a way out of the `old India','' where illiteracy, 
disease, and poverty punctuate the countryside. This scenario is not 
isolated to India, but may be applied to many developing nations 
throughout the world. In each instance, a big part of the solution is 
the deployment of modern telecommunications technology.
  The USTTI has been working to bring modern telecommunication services 
to the developing world for 18 years. The USTTI has offered 935 
tuition-free courses and has graduated 5,574 men and women who are now 
helping to make modern telecommunications a reality in their 161 
respective countries. The program participants are government officials 
responsible for developing and implementing telecommunications policies 
in their countries.
  By allowing developing countries to capitalize fully on the increased 
educational opportunities provided through the USTTI, countries prosper 
economically and connect themselves to the modern world.
  Madam President, I ask that the full text of the New York Times 
article be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 19, 2000]

           India's Unwired Villages Mired in the Distant Past

                          (By Celia W. Dugger)

       Hyderabad, India, March 15.--Cyber Towers rises from the 
     campus of a software technology park here, a sleek Internet-
     connected symbol of the new India that is feverishly courting 
     foreign investment, selling its wares in the global 
     marketplace and creating wealth at an astonishing rate.
       But less than 50 miles away, in the poverty-stricken 
     village of Sheri Ram Reddy Guda, the old India is alive and 
     unwell. Illiteracy, sickness and hunger are the villagers' 
     constant companions. Women and children work in the fields 
     for less than 50 cents a day. The sole telephone--an antique 
     contraption of batteries and antennae--almost never works.
       Like most of the villagers, Muhammad Hussain, an unlettered 
     field hand in a ragged loin cloth, has never seen a computer, 
     but offered that he did once watch an office worker at a 
     typewriter. ``I saw the fingers moving, but I did not know 
     what was being written,'' he said.
       The chasm between India's educated elite and its 
     impoverished multitudes worries economists, politicians and 
     some software entrepreneurs.
       Because of the extraordinary success of Indian engineers in 
     Silicon Valley and the Indian software industry's sales to 
     American companies, India and the United States have forged 
     strong economic ties in high technology. President Clinton 
     will acknowledge those links next Friday with a visit to 
     Hitec City, where Microsoft, Oracle and Metamor are ensconced 
     in the air conditioned comfort of Cyber Towers.
       But during his five-day whirlwind tour of five Indian 
     cities, the president will spend little time in the villages, 
     where almost three-quarters of this country's billion people 
     still live and struggle for the basic necessities.
       At a time when India's software industry is creating a 
     glamorous digerati and driving a dizzying escalation in stock 
     values on the Bombay exchange, the boom has stirred a debate 
     about the country's social and economic priorities, as 
     well as the potential of high technology to transform the 
     lives of the poor.
       Some, like Chandrababu Naidu, the chief minister of the 
     southern state of Andhra Pradesh, whose capital is this 
     bustling city, have an almost messianic faith in technology. 
     Though fewer than one-half of 1 percent of Indian households 
     now have Internet access compared with more than a third in 
     America, the optimists believe that technology is coming that 
     will make connecting to the New cheap enough for a broader 
     spectrum of Indians to afford.
       ``If a television in a school is connected to the Internet, 
     you can hold literacy classes in the evenings,'' said Randeep 
     Sudan, who oversees information technology for Mr. Naidu. 
     ``You can deliver the best of content to the worst of 
     schools. Imagine the potential to revolutionize the 
     educational process.''
       But others worry that the boom may be distracting the 
     country from its chronic problems and fear that the last 
     decade's more rapid economic growth--spawned by India's 
     loosening of restrictions on trade and investment--is leaving 
     the poor, and the poorer states, further behind, even as the 
     size of India's middle class has doubled.
       This is still a country where half the women and a quarter 
     of the men cannot read or write; where more than half the 
     children 4 and under are stunted by malnutrition; where one-
     third of the population, or more than 300 million people, 
     live in absolute poverty, unable to afford enough to eat; 
     where more than 30 million children 6 to 10 are not in 
     school.
       K.R. Narayanan, India's first president from an untouchable 
     caste, sounded this alarm in a recent speech.
       ``We have one of the world's largest reservoirs of 
     technical personnel, but also the world's largest number of 
     illiterates,'' he said, ``the world's largest middle class, 
     but also the largest number of people below the poverty line, 
     and the largest number of children suffering from 
     malnutrition. Our giant factories rise from out of squalor. 
     Our satellites shoot up from the midst of hovels of the 
     poor.''
       Even those who believe that the importance of the $5 
     billion software industry is overblown acknowledge its 
     contributions. It has generated 280,000 jobs for the educated 
     and highly skilled. Those workers, in turn, are creating 
     demand for housing, refrigerators and other goods that help 
     the economy grow.
       And there is potential for greater growth. A study by 
     McKinsey & Company, the management consulting firm, forecasts 
     that India's software industry could earn $87 billion and 
     employ 2.2 million people before the decade is done.
       The success of the industry has also stirred optimism about 
     India's ability to compete in a global economy. It has 
     offered capitalist, free market models in a country where 
     government still plays a central role and has hastened the 
     tendency of the country's best and brightest young people to 
     choose careers in business rather than the civil service.
       ``Every country needs a major success story to lift the 
     psyche and to be seen as a powerhouse in something,'' said 
     Krishna G. Palepu, a Harvard Business School professor who is 
     bullish on the industry. ``This is India's chance. 
     Suddenly, there's a sense of self-confidence and 
     visibility internationally.''
       But there are also limitations on what high technology can 
     do to increase the productivity of the entire Indian economy, 
     at least for now. The industry itself still generates only 
     about 1 percent of India's gross domestic product and about 1 
     percent of worldwide software exports.
       The country desperately needs to attend to the 
     fundamentals, most economists say, and some state leaders 
     like Mr. Naidu concur. It must invest more in primary 
     education and

[[Page S2464]]

     health care, build a working system of roads and power grids, 
     reduce subsidies for power and fertilizer that go mostly to 
     the better-off and generate higher rates of growth in 
     agriculture and industry, which employ 8 in 10 Indians.
       India has lagged behind China, for instance, in educating 
     its children and increasing its exports of textiles, shoes 
     and toys--industries that employ huge numbers of less 
     educated workers in China. By law, India has required those 
     industries to remain small, typically employing fewer than 
     100 people per workplace--putting them at a tremendous 
     disadvantage with China, where such factories employ 
     thousands.
       In the garment trade, India and China started out in 1980 
     with about the same level of exports, but by 1996, India was 
     selling $4.6 billion of its goods abroad, compared with 
     China's $25 billion.
       The Indian government is in dire need of revenues to tackle 
     its daunting ills, but so far the software industry is 
     contributing relatively little to the country's public 
     coffers.
       Income from software exports is generally exempted from the 
     38.5 percent corporate income tax. And unlike companies in 
     other industries, high technology companies do not have to 
     pay the 40 percent to 60 percent customs duties on computers 
     and other technology items they import to operate their 
     businesses.
       ``The software industry is making gobs and gobs of 
     profits,'' said Anil Garg, an Indian and a Silicon Valley 
     entrepreneur who is setting up an office for Aristasoft, the 
     new company he helped found, in Cyber Towers. ``And yet there 
     is this huge debate about whether it should pay taxes. I 
     don't understand. Having taxes is a good problem. The roads 
     here are broken, for God's sake. The schools are so bad. We 
     have been the privileged class for so long. It's time for us 
     to pay back.''
       The software technology park of Hitec City and the village 
     of Sheri Ram Reddy Guda are separated by only a short 
     distance, yet seem to come from different centuries, and to 
     stand at opposite poles, emblems of the new and the old 
     India.
       Hitec City is a temple to modernity, with a soaring atrium, 
     gargling fountains, an on-site A.T.M., basement car parking 
     and Internet connections for all. The government has created 
     an island where everything works. There are three separate 
     power systems, ensuring that the lights will never go out. 
     And the businesses do not need decent roads; they can deliver 
     their products via satellite links or fiber-optic cables.
       Sheri Ram Reddy Guda, population 400, seems ancient by 
     comparison. No one here owns a car or even a scooter. The ox 
     cart is still the primary means of transportation and word 
     of mouth the main grapevine. There is no health clinic, no 
     cable television. Raggedy children who should be in school 
     play in the dirt with toys made from twisted wire.
       The village is connected to the main blacktop highway by a 
     narrow, mile-and-a-half-long dirt road, deeply gouged with 
     ruts, that is nearly impassable in the rainy season.
       Most of the villages are from the formerly untouchable 
     castes now known as Dalits, and they are grateful to Mr. 
     Naidu's government for building 23 houses for them. But they 
     say they desperately need a better road, reliable electricity 
     and jobs.
       The village gets only about eight hours of power a day, and 
     that is often of such low voltage that it does not operate 
     the irrigation pumps. When rain is scare, as it is now, the 
     fields lie parched and work is scarce.
       ``Chandrababu has not given us the current,'' said an old 
     man, Baswapuram Yelleah, referring to the chief minister and 
     waving his handmade hatchet as he gestured angrily with his 
     hands. ``Our eyes are filled with tears when we see our 
     fields.''
       Yarrea Balamani is a widowed mother of five children, 7 to 
     18. She and her older children do farm work but lately there 
     have been no more than 10 days of work in a month. ``If there 
     was some industry around, we could get work every day,'' she 
     said. ``That would be better for us. It's a very difficult 
     life we are living.''

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