Rural masses should gain from web: Kalam

Former Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam urged the 20th International World Wide Web conference, being held for the first time in India, to initiate measures to enhance the benefits of the technology to the rural masses in the country in three years.

''The future of the web is going to shift from connecting the corporate to connecting the individual in rural societies,'' Kalam said while delivering the keynote address at the conference, held in Hyderabad and organised by IIIT, Bangalore. The theme for WWW 2011 is 'Web for all,' to promote the all-inclusive aspect of the internet.

Kalam called on the organisers of the conference to conduct ''an authentic survey'' of the WWW on the 600,000 villages of India and take effective measures to double its impact in about three years. ''Over time, the web will offer access without any barriers of language, caste, and creed or geographical barriers,'' he added.

According to the former president, farmers and villagers, who are less empowered need more bandwidth. ''This is an opportunity to link up demand for bandwidth coming from villagers and the supply coming from 3G and 4G technologists,'' he said. ''The web medium has to transform to meet such challenges.''

All money transactions and micro payments done through mobile phones have to be highly secured, and mobile devices must become personal authentication devices also, he noted.

India's first tech-savvy president (who was head of state between 2002 and 2007) is known widely as the 'missile man' for his work in ballistic missile and rocket technology. ''The world community will look for how a mobile device can provide integrated solutions of 3G or 4G applications in its mother tongue,'' he remarked.