Page:Code Swaraj - Carl Malamud - Sam Pitroda.djvu/74

Code Swaraj That is the beauty of India. India has so much to celebrate, but I worry at times when I look at the India today.

When people try to guard information, when people spread lies on social media, attack freedom, it matters. And that’s where you all come in. You have to really preserve this trust, at least in the cyberspace, for development for everybody. No untouchability, no differences, doesn’t matter if the program is a region or Brahman or Hindu or Muslim, we don’t care.

We are inclusive in every way possible. Information is for everybody. Today the kind of discussion that goes on in India is so very petty. We really need to raise the level of conversation in India.

I am doing a book right now, I did a book on my life a few years ago, and I did that for my granddaughter, because my granddaughter who is now six and lives in San Francisco, someday is going to grow up and ask, “Who was this old man who came to America 100 years ago, 75 years ago?”

And whatever her father, who is born and raised in US, tells her is going to be very different, because her father has no idea of the kind of poverty I came from. He cannot even comprehend that I was born in a small little tribal village in India where my mother delivered eight kids all at home. No doctor, no nurse, no hospital, no pharmacy, nothing. No schools. And even if I tell them this, they’ll think Daddy’s making it up.

This cannot be reality. It is that India we have to change. If we don’t use technology to lift 400 million below poverty line to something respectable, we haven’t done our job.

We don’t want to build an India where there are more billionaires. If there are, more power to them. I have nothing against them. But I want to use technology to transform everything in India, and that can only come from knowledge.

That can only come from people like you. That can only come from openness. To me, information brings about openness, access, accountability, network, democratization, decentralization. All of these things are Gandhian.

If Gandhi was to arrive today, he would be so happy to meet you. I’m giving a talk the day after tomorrow at Ahmedabad. This is, in fact Carl and I spent last year, October 2, at Sabarmati Ashram, and we tried to really focus on spreading