[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 12 (Monday, March 27, 2000)]
[Pages 619-623]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
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 to India and making this trip with 
me. And thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador, for what you do.
    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. 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 burden 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. Rama Murthi; 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

[[Page 620]]

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 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 
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

[[Page 621]]

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 Neru 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 multi-millionaires; it's a good 
thing that we're seeing the latest Indian start-ups 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 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

[[Page 622]]

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 
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 business people; 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 the 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

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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; and N. 
Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister, Andhra Pradesh; Naresh Chandra, 
Indian Ambassador to the United States; and Richard F. Celeste, U.S. 
Ambassador to India; Mona Mohib, Associate Director for 
Intergovernmental Affairs, Office of the First Lady; and Rekha 
Chalasani, press officer, Bureau of Legislative and Public Affairs, U.S. 
Agency for International Development. A tape was not available for 
verification of the content of these remarks.