The global ICT body, WITSA is going to arrange its WCIT 2021 Summit this year, starting from 11 to 14 November. Every year the ICT body organizes this mega event in a selected country. Long before it was discussed that they were supposed to organize the event in Bangladesh. We are happy that this year, at the time of celebrating the golden jubilee of our independence, the event is going to take place in Bangladesh, which will be the host country. In addition, celebrating the birth centenary of our Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is connected with this year. Therefore, we are celebrating both great events together; unfortunately, we Bengalis are sad that we could not be celebrating the two great events largely, as we dreamed of, due to the ongoing global pandemic restrictions. However, in the time of Covid-19, despite the social distancing and the travel risks we are going to host the event of WCIT.
Economic inequality, and social injustice. I am grateful to those who selected the topic for the summit. Especially for our country, such a summit with this great theme will help us to take more action to abolish social and economic inequality in every sphere of life. At the summit, our experts will get an opportunity to talk to experts from other countries. As I can remember 25 years before BCS became a member of WITSA, now it is going to be the biggest event after obtaining the WITSA membership. Even the summit could be termed as one of the prominent events in the history of BCS. It could be the greatest of the great summits if there were no covid-19. IT pioneers from every corner of the world could join the event and we could show how we made progress in the domain of the digital adoption process.
However, at the summit two million participants, 75 countries, 1500 delegates, and over a hundred speakers are expected to join. I am welcoming everyone on behalf of the people of my country. As co-organizer BASIS, ISPAB, BACCO, e-Cab, BIJF and TMGB will give the summit more significance. It seems the total ICT sector is joining the summit. I would like to thank and congratulate the leaders of BCS who created the bridge between BCS, WITSA and ASOCIO.
I am proud that I lead BCS for 14 years; 4 times I was elected as President and worked as President for 8 years. My successors of BCS added another feather to the crown of BCS. It should be noted that the IT development in the country is projected to the international level by BCS. BCS started its journey in 1987. It was first registered as the ICT trade association of Bangladesh in 1992 with 15 member companies. As a part of BCS, I realized every member of BCS is sincere, hard-working, and farsighted. BCS was built by many IT comrades; they are proud of the nation, proud of the IT industry, and proud of Digital Bangladesh. It is the platform to build the nation as Digital Bangladesh. Everybody knows that before 50 years, Bangladesh was listed as an underdeveloped country.
Two of the industrial revolutions out of three, we fully missed. We bought a mainframe computer in 1964 but the primary development in IT happened in Bangladesh in 1987 by using Bengali language-based computing application. Bangladesh logged on the third industrial revolution by our father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with his visionary leadership to become member of ITU and UPU.
He also emphasized on the development of technical education and development of human resources alonwith the inagauration of satellite earth station at Betbunia on 14th June 1975. He created the T&T board, after a long period we landed to the online internet world in 1996 by the click of our honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that was the participation in the 3rd industrial revolution for us. It is relevant to tell that the seed of the digital revolution was sowed by our father of the nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. While our Prime Minister held office in 1996 she boosted the IT endeavors. The great daughter of Bengal had taken all the initiatives to popularise ICTs before the year 2001. She introduced the speediest internet connection, spreading computer education, setting up IT villages, and focused on software export.
The great thing she did was waive taxes and VAT from computers and accessories. She also ignited the mobile telecom reevolution by breaking monopoly and giving licenses to 4 telicom companies. After 75-96 a great pause came to 2001 to 2008, it stopped all IT advancements. Our Honourable Prime Minister declared in her election manifesto about Digital Bangladesh on 12 December 2008. This declaration was the first in the world. Later Britain in 2009, India in August 2014, and Pakistan in 2019 December declared to convert their country as a digital nation. To digitize the country Indian Prime Minister expressed willingness to learn from Bangladesh how to make his country digitally developed. Later on, many countries, like the Maldives, took steps to digitalize their countries. Surely, our Prime Minister got the idea of Digital Bangladesh from her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, who is a highly qualified and internationally renowned IT expert. His continuous effort makes the dream of Digital Bangladesh come true. Under his leadership, the information technology, telecommunication, and postal departments are improving a lot, and ensuring people access to information, democratic right, transparency, accountability, reaching government services to the doorstep of the citizens, which are certainly contributing to the living standard of people.
The information and communication technology department identified 4 pillars of the successes: 1-- Digital Governance, 2-- Human Resource Development, 3-- IT Industry Promotion and 4-- Connecting People. Many people had given different opinions when our Prime Minister declared about Digital Bangladesh in 2008. In 2003 and 2006 at the WSIS summit IT leaders of the world thought about making a knowledge-based society before 2015. During the period, in 2011 CEBIT fair in Hanover, Germany discuused about the 4th industrial revolution; in 2016 the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland Klaus Shwab placed the concept of 4th industrial revolution. It was focused on the demands of industrial nations. Later Japan speaks of `Society 5.0’. For Bangladesh, it was an idea to transform the society from agricultural level to 4th industrial revolution and beyond. We targeted it for 2021, the year of celebrating the golden jubilee of Bangladesh Independence and we achieved the target as we Bengali won 1952, 1969, 1970, and 1971 in defeating oppressors.
This is the great success in the history of Bangladesh by overcoming all kinds of hurdles. We are lucky and proud that our country is the dream nation of Bangabandhu, his brilliant daughter inherited all the talents from him to make our country Digital Bangladesh, she applied his wisdom, farsightedness, knowledge, experience, and savvy in 1996 to 2001 and 2009 till today. Now Bangladesh is not a so-called bottomless basket, rather a great model of development, followed by many countries. When the people are discussing about making society equal by ICTs, in the time we must think about the next step of Bangladesh and where we want to take our country now. I congratulate to BCS for hosting the prestigious international event WCIT 2021 & ASOCIO Digital summit 2021 in Bangladesh. The writer served Bangladesh Computer Samity four times as President.
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