INFORMATION HIGHWAY
I disagree with CK Lal ('An appropriate time for technology, #430) because it sounds like he is saying everything else in the country has to take a backseat until political problems are solved, or that confiscated property can't be returned until the state is restructured.

For the country to utilise the benefits of technology, and specifically IT, you don't need intense expenditure, you don't need Microsoft or Google. Facilitate the engineers and managers available in the country and those who have come back to Nepal and are willing to work. Each can run his own company from home, employ people and earn money and eventually place Nepal on the global technology map. To make things easy, open up a few tech-parks, develop infrastructure (electricity, internet connectivity, roads, books, modern accessories) and let the investors come and do their work. IT is a pollution-free, fair and just way of developing society. To add icing to the cake, promote Free/Open Source Softwares from a national policy level, the result is the inculcation of values like freedom, civil liberties and democracy. We need to put science, technology, industry and economics at our top priority. Comparing one technology against another will not get us anywhere. It is not either-or.

Bibek Paudel,
email

* Instead of promising to produce 10,000MW power in 10 years to be able to export it to some uncertain and unknown or even non-existent market, why can't the government install 10 million solar home electricty systems, improved cooking stoves and help rid indoor air pollution that is killing hundreds of thousands of innocent villagers each year. Nepal needs solar and wind power in each house, 10,000MW hydros can wait.

Krishna Karki,
email

* Yes, a lot of simple things need to be done to improve the lives of the rural people but it does not mean that we should stop work on the information superhighway. In fact, the information highway should be the means to achieve the very goals that you have highlighted in a much more cost effective and efficient manner.

With IT we will not need to wait another 100 years to get to the point where the developed countries are now. We can have one model school but replicate the teaching in hundreds of schools, which are far apart and have no access to roads. We can provide quality health services to rural people through telemedicine.

Rajendra Khadga,
Lazimpat