Saturday, February 12 2005 16:32 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Mysore: To make India a natural choice for knowledge base in the world, the Government has decided to set up a "Knowledge Commission" in about a few weeks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced in Mysore today (Feb 12, 2005).

The proposed Knowledge Commission would be headed by a dynamic individual and staffed by committed youngsters to exploit the "blatant potential" of the country's knowledge network, Singh said while addressing a gathering after inaugurating the IT major Infosys training campus in Mysore.

"India must have ambition to become a large space for R&D all over the world. We should be able to attract global investment in the R&D activity at home" Singh said while stressing the need for luring foreign investnment in this sector.

"We are going to make India a natural choice for all knowledge base activities, a role the country has been known to play for centuries in the world," the Prime Minister said.

Singh said the endeavour of the Government was to make the country a major player in IT and IT enabled services and called for giving a major thrust on development of hardware.

"Apart from being leaders in software, we must also invest in hardware," he said and announced that the Government has decided to give major thrust to convergence of technology, broadband connectivity, next generation communications and give enabling support at all levels.

Laying emphasis on ensuring the growth of service sector, Prime Minsiter underlined the need to shift the employment profile of the nation away from agriculture to service sector.

"The service sector has been a most dynamic sector of the country's economy. Not only it has been growing much faster than other sectors, but it is a important contributor for the growth of our trade," he said.

The service sector has received far less attention than the manufacturing sector, the Prime Minsiter said assuring that the Government was committed to create a conducive environment to facilitate rapid growth of service sector.

For achieving this objective, the country requires creation of adequate human resource capabilities, appropriate certification and standard setting institutions, besides removing infrastructure bottlenecks and creation of global awareness of India, he suggested.

Turning to the strides made by Infosys, he said, "We need scores of such centres of excellence across the country," and assured that the Government will help in creating a conducive environment at home to enable all talented Indians to create many more enterprises which will dominate the global stage.

Referring to the fruits of globalistion achieved by the country since 1991, as economic reforms were unfolded when he was the Finance Minister, Singh announced that the Government has decided to invest in creation of capabilities to enable people to make full use of emerging opportunities.

The Prime Minister said, when the Government then launched the process of reforms there were septicisms about its success, but the nation has came out of the gloom. The brain drain was from India into outside earlier, the trend has been reversed now with India becoming most sought destination from the students of west.

The Prime Minsiter said it was equally important to protect those people who may not be equipped to deal with challenges of globalisation, remarking "Globalisation has to be positive sum and not a zero sum".

He said Government will make all out efforts to provide infrastructure facilities, which was vital for attracting foreign investments.

Commending the achievements of Infosys, he described the IT major as a "model to others" and hoped the leadership institute it has built will be able to help other enterprises to follow the path set by it.

Singh asked institutions like Infosys to create human capabilities required for the country to face the challenges of globalisation and it was possible to achieve this as the nation had a vast pool of qualified English speaking, scientific and technological manpower.

Karnataka Governor T N Chaturvedi, Chief Minister N Dharam Singh and Deputy Chief Minister Siddaramaiah participated in the function.

Earlier Singh after inaugurating the Infosys Global Education Center, built to train 15,000 persons annually, planted a sapling to mark his visit to the campus.