The Hindu Business Line : `Indigenous tech vital for national security'

NATIONAL security would be given top priority in technology development, said the Union Minister for Disinvestment, IT and Telecommunications, Mr Arun Shourie, here today.

Speaking after launching the Terascale Supercomputing Facility at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC)'s Knowledge Park in Bangalore, Mr Shourie said wherever the security issues were involved, all the agencies concerned would be encouraged to use the indigenously developed hardware and software to prevent sabotage and espionage.

Recalling that supercomputer technology was denied to India years ago, Mr Shourie said PARAM Padma, India's most powerful supercomputer developed by C-DAC, was an "answer to the world."

Highlighting the new supercomputing system's importance from the perspective of security-related matters, Mr Shourie said technology denial should be taken as a blessing and challenge.

"What was denied few years ago will not be denied to us today as C-DAC has demonstrated to the world that we can develop on our own. As we develop the technology on our own, the threshold of transferring the technology will be raised by others," he said.

Other countries were developing these technologies for application in security-related matters, Mr Shourie said citing the example of China.

"We need to develop technologies on our own. We just can't get anything and everything from others and use it. The reason why sensitive organisations must use indigenous software and hardware is because they are more vulnerable to sabotage," he said.

"Unless we develop indigenously hardware and software for communication equipment of defence forces, we will be to that extent greatly vulnerable in this way,'' he said.

Mr Shourie also asked C-DAC to scale up its resources required for setting up of an Information Grid (I-Grid), a wide area network linking major research centres and institutions of higher learning in the country.

The network is estimated to cost Rs 141 crore and the C-DAC has sought a budgetary support of Rs 110 crore over the next five years for the project that would link high performance supercomputing machines in various centres including Hyderabad, Mumbai, Guwahati, Kanpur, Delhi, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai.

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`Indigenous tech vital for national security'