[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.