President charts course for 10% growth

All those below poverty line can be provided better living conditions and pulled above BPL only if India's GDP grows at the rate of at least 10 per cent for the next 10 years at a stretch.

"Only then would we be able to say that the country is a developed one," said the President of India, A P J Abdul Kalam, while addressing an interactive session organised by the Confederation of India Industry in the city today.

This 10 per cent can be achieved if the country provides enough stress on technology and information, agro-food processing, education and health care, infrastructure development, and information and knowledge base.

The President also said that self reliance in technology was necessary to achieve the 10 per cent targeted growth rate.

Providing examples of implementation of information technology he said telemedicine could be one of the models that needs to be adopted on a large scale.

"This will allow expertise present in cities to be transferred to rural areas. Tele-education was another model that could be adopted," he explained.

"Connectivity was another aspect that the country should focus," he added.

Besides spreading the reach of formal education, the use of ICT would also help establishing an "innovation system" in the country, vital for the competitiveness of manufacturing and service sectors, he said.

"Such a system would involve creation of clusters, which are networks. This network can include inter-dependent firms, knowledge producing institutions, universities, research institutes, technology providing firms, bridging institutions and customers linked in a value addition creating production chain," he said.

"All this will help India reach a reasonable level of development by 2020 and pull the population above poverty line," the President said.

While answering to different queries by school children at the session, Abdul Kalam also expressed concern at poor implementation of the existing law for the physically challenged and assured that he would take up the issue with the centre.

After hearing the problems faced by physically challenged students, a visibly moved Kalam said "I will put forward your concern to the ministry of social justice and empowerment."

The president said both the centre and the states would have to see that the benefit of three per cent employment provision as provided in the law was given to the physically challenged.

A student of Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, who was present at the session, lamented that although a law existed for the handicapped, it was not followed properly.

He said access to public places was a problem and they were not allowed to join the mainstream even though they had the potential.

Kalam said an order had been recently passed by which all government buildings would have to facilitate entry of the physically challenged, while public transport should also aid their travel.