nCa Commentary
Ashgabat, 29 June 2011 (nCa) — Political perceptions aside, Israeli economic model offers several features worth studying for Central Asia. One of them is the use of Internet for financial advantage.
A recent AFP report shows that Israeli start-ups in the IT sector are second only to the Silicon Valley.
Compared to the general population, a proportionally large pool of engineers and specialists has made it possible for Israel to harness the power of Internet. The net-related activities accounted for US $ 12.6 billion revenues in 2009. This is 6.5% of GDP, more than the construction sector (5.4%) and slightly less than healthcare (6.8%).
The web based companies and entrepreneurs created 120000 jobs, more than 4% of the total workforce.
There are three main ways Israel is using Internet and web potential: 1. Hosting industry giants such as Intel, Microsoft, Google, IBM etc; 2. Boosting efficiency and productivity through net-based solutions; and, 3. Making the best use of borderless realm of Internet to expand the client base to all corners of the world.
IT is almost a virgin field in Central Asia. Compared to more than 500 start-ups spring up every year in Israel with a population of just 7.7 million, there is hardly anything to show in Central Asia.
A major obstacle for Central Asia in the way of making full use of Internet is the countries like USA and organizations like SOROS that are unremittingly using Internet to create instability in the region. This has caused great disservice to the people in Central Asia and made the regional governments very cautious.
Another problem is the educational system and what can be done with the degree obtained at the end of education.
In order to attain world class excellence, the Central Asian education systems must take the students, and the teachers, on merit only. Even if best students are introduced in the educational system, hardly anything can be expected if their teachers are not suitably qualified and gifted to polish the students. As they say in some eastern languages, only a diamond-cutter should be allowed to cut the diamonds.
Yet another problem is the access to Internet. In Central Asia, by and large, Internet is expensive, slow and heavily filtered.
The challenge for the sitting governments is to find a balance between allowing universal access to high speed Internet and preventing disruptive elements from making corrosive inroads into the society.
This is actually not as big a challenge as it may seem at first.
Again, the example can be taken from Israel where the government is making full use of Internet to shape the public opinion.
If the governments in Central Asia can encourage private individuals and groups to expose and highlight the despicable designs of USA and other hegemonic countries and detestable organizations like SOROS, the serpent will die in its egg. It can be done through social media.
Here are some steps that can be taken for starters to convert the potential of Internet into direct benefit for the populations:
- Create a network to connect the educational and research establishments of the entire Central Asian region. This will help exchange latest findings and based on those findings, joint projects can be conceived to save cost and spread benefit across the region.
- Every student should have a laptop/notebook. It is not a big investment compared to some of the questionable projects in the region but the benefits would be enormous.
- With Google+ debuting already, every Internet session would potentially be a social media session now. Instead of hiding from it – and, there is no way to hide from it except through total shutdown of net – the wisest thing is to make best use of it; take the populations into confidence and show them the real face of evil, the USA and SOROS just the two manifestations of this evil. It is the matter of us/them branding: put indelible brand on the ugly face of the USA and SOROS and their likes. Use satire and humour to make it click. This will save replication of Libya and Syria scenarios where the west has intruded shamelessly. Even if he Libyan and Syrian regimes survive, the damage caused to the economy will take years to recover. Central Asia cannot afford this kind of self destruction, aided generously by indiscriminate bombing by NATO.
- The rural communities should be given full benefits of the connectivity in the fields of medicine, agriculture, hygiene, and self help projects.
- Regional links for customs and immigration services should be established quickly to facilitate cross-border trade and legitimate human movement.
These are just some basic steps. The important thing to remember is that Internet, like most other things, is a multipurpose, versatile tool. A tool cannot be thrown away simply because some evil minds use it for a destructive purpose.