Connect 2001 gets underway in Chennai

CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu's first international exhibition and conference on

information technology, communication technology and bio-informatics, Connect

2001, is jointly organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the

Government of Tamil Nadu got underway at the ITPO Chennai trade center.

Inaugurating the expo, the Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalitha reiterated

the government's resolve to make Tamil Nadu the top IT destination in the

country. She delineated the policy initiatives her government has taken such as

the setting up of the Tamil Nadu IT council under her stewardship to formulate

separate policies for IT and biotechnology.

With the commissioning of the new satellite earth stations in Tiruchirapalli,

Madurai and Tirunelveli, she hoped that those regions would also emerge as

centers for excellence in IT like Chennai and Coimbatore. The connectivity

issues of Tamil Nadu were being addressed by the initiatives of private

entrepreneurs by laying optical fiber cable under the sea and land.

She also lauded the efforts of the MIT Media Lab of IIT Madras, which in

collaboration with Harvard University, was trying to make telephone and Internet

accessible to the rural masses using low cost wireless techniques.

For Biotechnology, she said the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation

(TIDCO) in association with Cornell University was in the process of setting up

a biotech incubator and park at an investment of Rs 62.5 crore. She hoped that

Connect would become an annual feature thus taking the private-public

partnership for the betterment of the industry in the state.

The exhibition would extend over four days with a two day conference and

round table discussions on IT for SMEs, IT for manufacturing and IT for

services.