Skill. Speed. Scale.

This was the first opportunity for Narendra Modi to interact with the top brass of India's most vibrant industry, the ICT industry comprising the $108 bn IT industry and $88 bn telecom industry, which is nearly 10% of nominal GDP.

Modi seemed to be a man of action. He said that it was great to listen to ideas and recommendations but it is more important to start moving on those. He invited Kiran Karnik and entrusted him with the responsibility of aggregating the recommendations and making a formal representation of the group with him. It was a rare moment of action to see a potential PM candidate show deep interest in a segment of the industry and the people who represent it.

Modi said that he was convinced about the urgency of the recommendations and appreciated the tone and tenor of the discussion. He saw it as a collection of genuine concerns faced by the industry and not a litany of complaints and demands. Excerpts from Modi's response:

"Gujarat is the only state with an innovation commission and the rest of the country can learn from this. Innovation is the only way to sustain life. Good change comes from innovation. But innovation has to spread through all aspects of life, be it industry or society or politics. Otherwise, it will be like a train with a new engine but the bogies are old and withered.

The other thing is that many things can succeed if we try enough. It is about seeking opportunities out of the challenges, taking the right initiative and acting on it. For example, in Gujarat, we have few rivers and less rain, but some years we also have five floods in a year. This made us become really advanced in disaster management. Some of the technologies are really simple, but innovatively used-SMS-based warnings for evacuation, for example.

For a country like India, multiplicity of languages is a barrier. My suggestion is that communication technology has to be developed based on signages that anyone can understand; this is the way to break the language and literacy barrier. The other idea is about using audio instructions. These will help achieve scale. These are examples ofinnovation. We need to bring such innovations to the fore.

In Gujarat, we have an incubation center called iCreate < www.icreate.org.in>. Any person with an idea can get help to take the idea forward. It is headed by Narayana Murthy. We have deliberately kept the government out of it. That's also innovation (laughs).

My observation is that established firms don't promote innovation as much as they should; because the initial returns are not good. This has to change. We need to institutionalize innovation. It will only help, always. For example, we had to build a greenery belt. Planting the saplings was the easy part, watering it is not only costly but also difficult in a drought-prone state. The innovation here is that we collected unused pots from homes, filled it with water, and kept it next to the sapling. This way we had to fill the water only once a month.

In the end, I would say that three things are important to make an impact: skill, scale, and speed. This is true for the ICT industry also. So, let's move on this. For India, technology is not a suvidha; it is aavashyakta."