Sunday, June 3, 2012

NKN - National Knowledge Network

Last Friday I held an e-governance meeting at UD Department. NIC, WEBEL, IT Department and Hidco were there. I have been trying to set up a HD Video Conference Facility connecting UD Department (at Nagarayan, Salt Lake), Writers' Buildings, 9 Development Authorities (KMDA, ADDA, HDA, SJDA, SSDA, DSDA, JDA, BDA & MKDA), HIT, KIT, Kalyani Estate Office, HIDCO & NKDA. At our request, NIC had prepared a cost-estimate for the hardware but Finance Department had certain observations. The question was: who would provide the link / carrier?

It is in this context that Ms Anna Majumdar of NIC talked about NKN or National Knowledge Netwok. The NKN is a national initiative connecting educational institutes at Gigabyte speeds. It seems, the State IT Department's WEBSWAN network would be given few nodes in June that will increase its speed from the present 2 MBPS to 1GBPS+. So, at her suggestion, we decided that the entire Video-Conference system for UD Department would be developed and installed by WEBEL/ State IT Department.
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Here is a clipping from today's Times of India on the planning for Raghunathpur (I held the meeting there on 30th May)
Incidentally, after coming back from Raghunathpur, I talked to DM Purulia and advised him to also make provision of a direct road link to Durgapur, instead of via Asansol.

7 comments:

  1. It's a very very welcome move.

    More such clusters are now need of the hour. The opportunity now exists for huge growth potential as West Bengal is now taking center stage as gateway for the Look-East policy.

    Also in the area of alternative energy and sustainable energy our state can achieve a leading position by giving necessary thrust and incentives.

    -SB

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  2. Excellent initiative! Years ago in my Master's dissertation I had tried tried to explore why Purulia is backward even though it is roughly located in the middle of a triangle with three major industrial centres at three corners - Asansol-Durgapur, Ranchi and Tata. It identified connectivity as one of the factors that could stimulate the growth of north-eastern Purulia. Its so good to see things coming alive!

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  3. Fantastic move actually to use the NKN network by WEBSWAN. 1 GBPS+ would be a very decent speed. :-)

    Also for a pretty long time, Sir, we did not hear anything about the cable landing station in Digha? Are we going ahead with it? This will be a gamechanger for the IT Landscape in the state.

    Road via Durgapur is actually a much better idea. I think distance from Kolkata will also be reduced in that case. Also can we plan similar industrial corridors between Kolaghat-Kharagpur-Jhargram?

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  4. It's good idea to come with a town at Raghunathpur. With the aerotropolis becoming functional next year, more business activity is needed to sustain the airport. For converting to 4 lane from 2 lane, land needs to be acquired, is the land in possession of the govt. already?

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  5. The Road connecting Raghunathpur with both Durgapur and Asansol has huge opportunity of becoming a industrial corridor altogether. But the Corridor is passing through the Coal mines of ECL and many subsidence prone areas which had already marked by CMPDI. A detailed feasibility check can be done to find out the net developable zone as Industry.

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  6. Yes, Anumita, that has to be taken care of...I hope some alignment will survive

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  7. Niladri: We are just in the Planning Stage

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