Pune could become a model megacity for national information infrastructure (NII) testbed if a project of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) envisaging networking of all the city institutions, varsities, banks, corporates and civic bodies sails through.
C-DAC has proposed an NII testbed that will enable the residents of Pune operate bank accounts, pay bills, access libraries, get reservations and get medical reports through computers while staying home.
The NII project will create virtual classrooms, make distance education possible and provide multilingual network access devices (only 4 per cent of Indias population understands English).
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The NII project will provide the public access to government data-base, health care, telemedicine, electronic commerce and trade, education and culture, digital libraries and electronic publishing, government management, and national calamity and disaster management.
The project cost has already received in-principle approval of the department of electronics (DoE) and the Planning Commission. The Expenditure & Finance Committee is yet to give its sanction. C-DAC has earmarked Rs 60 crore for this project for the ninth plan.
NII is our next mission. It is needed to ensure progress. NII is on the national agenda of the US, Singapore, South Korea and other countries and we too have proposed to make it Indias priority, said C-DAC executive director Vijay Bhatkar, the man who led the countrys initiative in parallel supercomputing. It will be a catalytic factor for economic prosperity, competitiveness and security of India.
The project will be formally unveiled on April 8 by C-DAC to mark the completion of a decade by the organisation and showcase its future projects.
In terms of infrastructure cost, Bhatkar said, the project will give higher returns than any other investment, as the savings would be high, both in terms of time and money.
Fibre optics are being installed in the city. Broadcast and satellite communication will be used for the implementation of the NII project.
Punes megacity model of networking will be extended to other cities in a phased manner, making the countrys NII an integrated network frame of all emerging government and private networks. It will also provide connectivity to the global information infrastructure.