    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [March 24, 2000]
    [Pages 527-531]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Business Community in Hyderabad
    March 24, 2000

        Thank you. Thank you very much. First of all, thank you all for
    coming out in such large numbers on this warm day to this wonderful
    facility. It may be that every day is a warm day, but for us, it's a new
    experience. [Laughter] And I rather like it.
        Mr. Raju, thank you very much.
    President Bajaj, President Batnagar, Mr. Hariharan, and Chief
    Minister Naidu, thank you all for
    welcoming us here. And I must say, when I was watching the Chief
    Minister give his speech, I wish I had brought some slides--[laughter]--
    because it was so very impressive. And you should know that he is
    becoming--[applause]--yes, he did a good job. If a picture is worth a
    thousand words, you will remember much more of what he said than what I
    am about to say. [Laughter] And he is
    becoming very well-known in the United States and very much admired for
    all of these remarkable achievements, and I thank him.
        I would like to thank your Ambassador to the United States,
    Ambassador Chandra, for coming back home to
    India and making this trip with me. And thank you very much, Mr.
    Ambassador, for what you do.

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        I would like to thank the large number of Americans who are here
    with me, including six Members of our Congress. And I would like to ask
    them to stand, because they come on these trips with me, I get to give
    the speeches, they have to sit and listen, and then when we go home,
    they have all the power over the money. [Laughter] So I would like to
    introduce Representative Gary Ackerman from
    New York, Representative Nita Lowey from New
    York, Representative Jim McDermott from
    Washington, Representative Ed Royce from
    California, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee from Texas, and Representative Jan
    Schakowsky from Chicago, Illinois.
    [Applause]
        Thank you very much. If that doesn't improve the aid program for
    India, I don't know what will--[laughter]--and make sure we have no
    burdens on E-commerce between ourselves.
        I want to thank Secretary Daley, the
    Secretary of Commerce, for being here; and Brady Anderson, the Administrator of our USAID program; and Dr. Neal
    Lane, my Science Adviser; and Dr.
    Ramamurthi; and of course, Ambassador Dick
    Celeste and Jacqueline, his wife.
        I'd also like to point out I have--I don't know how many, but I have
    at least four Indian-Americans with me working on this trip who are
    actually in the audience today, and two of them are from here in
    Hyderabad. So I'd like to acknowledge Rekha Chalasani from AID and Mona Mohib, who
    works with us in the White House. I thank them for being here.
        You should also know this was a very coveted trip, from Washington
    to India. My Chief of Staff is on this trip,
    my National Security Adviser. Everyone
    wanted to come. Those who did are happy; those who are still at home
    working are angry. [Laughter] But we know--we know a lot of our future
    depends upon whether we have the right kind of partnership with India.
        Once historians said of your nation, India is the world's most
    ancient civilization, yet one of its youngest nations. Today, in this
    ancient city, we see leadership to drive the world's newest economy.
        One of the greatest joys of being President of the United States,
    for me, has been to be involved with the people at home who are pushing
    the frontiers of science and technology. Many people believe that I
    asked Al Gore to be my Vice President
    because he knew roughly 5,000 times more about computer technology than
    I did. [Laughter] But I have learned every day now, for over 7 years.
        And I think it's very interesting for a man my age--I'm 53, which is
    way too old to make any money in information technology. [Laughter] But
    it's very interesting--the terms that are used today by young people and
    not-so-young people anymore had such different meanings for me when I
    was in my twenties. When I was a young man, chips were something you
    ate, windows were something you washed, disks were part of your spinal
    column, that when you got older often slipped out of place, and
    semiconductors were frustrated musicians who wished they were leading
    orchestras. [Laughter] The world is a very different place today.
        I want to speak briefly about how our nations already are working
    together to seize the possibilities of the information age and about
    what we can do to make sure no one is left behind. I particularly
    appreciated the Chief Minister's
    emphasis on this in his remarks, because, for me, the true test of the
    information revolution is not just the size of the feast it creates but
    the number of people who can sit at the table to enjoy it.
        It is incredible to think about how far science has come in just the
    7 years and a few months since I first became President. In that time we
    have explored a galaxy 12 billion light years away. We have seen the
    cloning of animals. We are just a few months away from completing the
    sequencing of the human genome, with all that promises for improving the
    life and the quality of life of people all around the world.
        When I was elected President, there were--listen to this--there were
    only 50 sites on the World Wide Web in January of 1993. Today, there are
    more than 50 million, and it is the fastest growing communications
    medium in history.
        Here in India, the number of Internet users is expected to grow more
    than 10 times in just 4 years. Ten years ago, India's high-tech
    industries generated software and computer-related services worth $150
    million. Last year, that number was $4 billion. Today, this industry
    employs more than 280,000 Indians in jobs that pay almost double the
    national average. Little wonder, as the Minister said, Hyderabad is
    being known now as ``Cyberabad.''
        Now, I realize to many of you this comes as no surprise, since the
    decimal system was discovered--invented in India. If it weren't for

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    India's contributions in math and science, you could argue that
    computers, satellites, and silicon chips would never have been possible
    in the first place, so you ought to have a leading role in the 21st
    century economy--companies with names like Infosys, Wipro, and of
    course, Satyam.
        Again, I want to say that I think Chief Minister Naidu deserves a lot of credit for giving you the right
    kind of governance. There are some people who believe--we were talking
    about this before we came out here--there are some people who believe
    that the 21st century world, because the Internet will make the globe
    more interconnected, and we will have all kinds of connections with
    people beyond our borders that we never had before, and therefore,
    Government will become completely irrelevant to most people's lives. If
    you look at the example of this State and this city, you see we need a
    different kind of government. It can be smaller. It can be far less
    bureaucratic. It should be far more market-oriented. It should be smart,
    as I learned from the Minister's chart. But it is a grave mistake to
    think that we can really go forward together without that kind of smart
    governance. And the Chief Minister's role in your success, I think, is
    evident to all of you by your response.
        I'm personally intrigued by the fact that you can get a driver's
    license on the Internet, and you don't have to go wait in line, as you
    do in America. I have my driver's license here--[laughter]--and in a few
    months I may come back, because it may be the only place I will have a
    license to drive. [Laughter] You may see me just tooling around on the
    streets here, causing traffic jams. [Laughter]
        I want to also acknowledge, if I might, just very briefly, something
    which has already been mentioned by previous speakers, and that is the
    remarkable success of Indian-Americans in this new economy, from Suhas
    Patil, the chairman emeritus of Cyrus Logic, to Vinod Khosla, who helped
    to build Sun Microsystems, to Vinod Dahm, who created the Pentium chip.
    The remarkable fact is--listen to this--Indian-Americans now run more
    than 750 companies in Silicon Valley alone, in one place in America.
    Now, as again I learned on the screen, we're moving from brain drain to
    brain gain in India, because many are coming home.
        The partnership of Americans and Indians proposes to raise a billion
    dollars for a global institute of science and technology here. I have no
    doubt they will succeed. After welcoming your engineers to our shores,
    today many of our leading companies, from Apple to Texas Instruments to
    Oracle, are coming in waves to your shores. I'm told that if a person
    calls Microsoft for help with software, there's a pretty good chance
    they'll find themselves talking to an expert in India rather than
    Seattle. India is fast becoming one of the world's software superpowers,
    proving that in a globalized world, developing nations not only can
    succeed, developing nations can lead.
        One of the reasons India is finding so much success, I believe, is
    because of your enduring values of nationhood. Fifty years ago, Prime
    Minister Nehru had the vision to invest in the Indian Institutes of
    Technology. I am very proud that the United States helped in its early
    development. Today, not only are ITT graduates leading the information
    revolution, India has the second largest pool of trained scientists in
    the entire world.
        As I said, we have to do more together. Two of our leading
    associations, the U.S.-India Business Council and your Federation of
    Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, will launch a dialog to take
    our infotech trade to new heights, to create more jobs and more
    opportunities in both our nations.
        But as I said at the beginning, in the midst of all this celebration
    of tomorrow and in the midst of all of our satisfaction at our own good
    fortune, there is something we cannot forget. It's a good thing that
    we're creating a lot of 25-year-old multimillionaires; it's a good thing
    that we're seeing the latest Indian startups shoot up the NASDAQ; but
    this whole enterprise cannot just be about higher profits. There must
    also be a higher purpose.
        In India today, as in America, there is much to do. Millions of
    Indians are connected to the Internet, but millions more aren't yet
    connected to fresh water. India accounts for 30 percent of the world's
    software engineers but 25 percent of the world's malnourished. And there
    are other statistics, which, given the wealth of the United States, I
    could cite you about our country which are just as troubling and
    challenging.
        So our challenge is to turn the newest discoveries into the best
    weapons humanity has ever had to fight poverty. In all the years of
    recorded human history, we have never had this many

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    opportunities to fight poverty. And it is good economics to do so.
        There is so much we can do, for example, to help the poor have
    better health care. This morning I was at a clinic in Mahavir, and I
    helped to immunize a child against polio. Together we have nearly
    eradicated this disease, but tuberculosis is still a major problem.
    Malaria is on the rise. HIV and AIDS are big problems for you, as they
    have been for years for the United States. These are global problems. We
    must find a science to solve them and the technology to disseminate
    those solutions to all people, without regard to their income.
        There is much to do to protect our planet and those who share it
    with us. In Agra, I saw some efforts that local citizens are making to
    clean the air and preserve the Taj Mahal. I talked to an
    engineer who is doing his best to clean
    up the Ganges River that he worships as an important part of his faith
    and his country's history.
        Yesterday I was in the national park in Rajasthan to see the
    magnificent tigers. And I learned, much to my dismay, that--from a man
    who has spent a great deal of his life and risked a lot of his life to
    save those tigers--that last year still 20 of them were poached, and you
    are still in danger of losing them. They, too, are an important part of
    your heritage and your future.
        We must find a way to help people make enough money and have a
    decent enough income that they wish to preserve the environment and the
    biological species with which we share this planet. This is very, very
    important, and technology has a big role to play in all of this.
        This week, you are establishing a green business center here in
    Hyderabad, with some assistance from USAID, to bring the private sector
    and local government together to promote clean energy development and
    environmental technology. This is a profoundly important issue, and I
    hope that this city will lead your nation and help to lead the world
    toward a serious reassessment of our common obligation to reverse the
    tide of global warming and climate change, because in the new economy
    you do not have to pollute the atmosphere and warm the planet to grow
    the economy. In the new economy, you can create more jobs by promoting
    energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy than by polluting
    the environment.
        The economic wave of the future is in environmental preservation,
    not in environmental destruction. That is a lesson this city can teach
    the rest of your nation, people in my nation, and people throughout the
    world, and I hope you will do it.
        There is still much we can do in science and technology to feed the
    world's people. American and Indian scientists are working in the
    biotechnology industry to pioneer new crops more resistant to pests,
    diseases, more nutritious, with higher yields per acre.
        There is much we can do to protect the rich cultural diversity of
    our planet. I know that some worry that globalization will produce a
    world where the unique gifts nations and peoples bring to the world are
    washed away. I do not believe that. If we do the right things, the
    Internet can have precisely the opposite effect. Look at India, with 17
    officially recognized languages and some 22,000 dialects. You can get on
    the Internet today and find dozens of sites that bring together people
    who speak Telugu from every part of the world. You can download fonts in
    Gujarati, Marathi, Assamese, and Bengali. You can order handicrafts made
    by people from every part of India--I saw one of the sites just before
    coming in here. And you know the proceeds are going to the people in
    need.
        The new technology can reinforce our cultural distinctions while
    reaffirming the even more important fact of our common humanity. And
    India can also help us lead the way in doing that.
        Now, finally let me say, we cannot work to lift what has been called
    the ``Silk Curtain,'' which has divided the United States and India for
    too long now, only to have a digital divide arise in both our countries
    between the haves and have-nots. In America, we have worked very hard to
    wire all our schools to the Internet, and we've made great progress. We
    are now going to provide some $5 million through AID to help bring the
    Internet to schools and businesses in underserved areas in rural India.
    This State is doing a remarkable job in providing the Internet to people
    all over the State, in the smallest, poorest villages.
        We have to bring government services with printers to every village,
    so people can see in basic ways what it is they need to do to improve
    the health care of their children. We need printers with computers on
    the Internet with all the educational software available. If we could do

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    that for every village in South Asia, in Africa, in Latin America, in
    the Middle East, then overnight the poorest places in the world could
    have access to the same learning materials that only the richest schools
    offer their students today. We can do that if we do it together.
        And it isn't just good public values; it would be good economics. It
    would mean, among other things, that the world's most populous nation
    would have the world's largest number of educated people and, therefore,
    in no time would have the world's largest economy. Doing the right thing
    is good economics in the Information Age, and we have to do this
    together.
        Finally, let me say that we just want to be a good partner with you
    in all these endeavors. Two days ago in Delhi I signed an agreement to
    create a U.S.-Indo Science and Technology Forum to bring scientists from
    our nations together to discuss future cooperation. Today the top
    science minds in our two Governments are sitting down together to begin
    a dialog on how we can conduct new research across a whole range of
    scientific frontiers. There is a lot we can do.
        But, you know, as I said before I came out here, I visited a lot of
    the booths; I met a lot of the businesspeople; and I also was treated by
    the Chief Minister to a video
    conference with people in all 23 districts of this State who are working
    on empowerment projects, who had access to microcredit. I learned
    something I didn't know before I got here, which is that 20 percent of
    the people in the world in poor villages who have access to microcredit
    are in this State in India. And that's something my wife and I and our
    administration have worked very hard on. We financed through AID about 2
    million microcredit loans all across the world every year.
        So I saw all this. And I would say there's one thing that I hope my
    country will learn from the values expressed in the Chief
    Minister's speech, in the local
    government councils I have visited here, in the local women's communes I
    have visited here, working on all kinds of economic and educational
    issues, and that is that the two most important things that we can
    promote in the new world are empowerment of individuals and a sense of
    community. And if you do one without the other, you will not succeed.
        Very often, people who are very interested in empowerment don't have
    much interest in community. When they're talking about empowerment, they
    mean their own empowerment. [Laughter] And very often, a lot of people
    who have always cared deeply about community are almost a little
    suspicious of empowerment. But the lesson that you are teaching us is
    that we must do both together.
        We are here to talk about the future of cyberspace. ``Cyber'' comes
    from the Greek word ``kybernautis''. It means helmsman, one who steers
    the ship. So I am here to say I admire what you are doing to steer the
    ship of this State into the future. I want to steer with you. But we
    cannot forget the simple message that, no matter how much new technology
    there is, the two things we must remain committed to are empowerment and
    community. Everyone counts. Everyone should have a chance. Everyone has
    a role to play. And we all do better when we help each other.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:05 p.m. in the atrium at the Hi-Tech
    Center. In his remarks, he referred to B. Ramalinga Raju, chair, Satyam
    Computer Services, Ltd.; Rahul Bajaj, president, Confederation of Indian
    Industry; Sanjay Batnagar, president, American Chamber of Commerce in
    India; E.S. Hariharan, deputy general manager, Hi-Tech Center; N.
    Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh; Secretary of Science
    and Technology Valangiman Ramamurthi of India; Naresh Chandra, Indian
    Ambassador to the United States; Richard F. Celeste, U.S. Ambassador to
    India; Rekha Chalasani, press officer, Bureau of Legislative and Public
    Affairs, U.S. Agency for International Development; Mona Mohib,
    Associate Director for Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of the First
    Lady; and Hindu priest Veer Bhadra Mishra, civil engineering department
    head, Banaras Hindu University, and founder, Sankat Mochan Foundation.