 We're here at ITU Telecom World 2015 in Budapest, Hungary and I've got the great pleasure of being joined by Dr Vijaya Lakshmi Gupta, who is the head of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Dr Gupta, thank you very much indeed being with us today. Thank you. I'd like to start off by talking about the theme of ITU Telecom World 2015 is accelerating innovation for social impact. How do you see ICT innovation directly impacting on socioeconomic development in India? See, ICT is a very critical infrastructure and without that you just cannot reach and reachability is what leads to development and as you are aware India is a very vast country, it's almost a subcontinent as we call it and we still have lots of pockets which are not really connected. If you see 70% of our population live in villages and if you see the tele-density of the country if it is something like 150% in the urban areas as far as the rural areas are concerned it is less than 50%. So there is a vast populace which is waiting to be connected there and that is what is going to lead to the socioeconomic development that will surely arrest people moving from the rural areas to the urban areas putting pressure on it will give them employment through innovation in the rural areas. It will set up taking into the theme of the ITU 2015 in which I was very glad to find lot many SME participation and we can have a lot of innovative SMEs set up in the rural areas which will give them employment and which will give them connectivity. And what measures can government and industry take to encourage entrepreneurship and to foster SMEs in the ICT sector and what is India doing in particular? See it is very important because nowadays setting up an industry, a large scale industry takes too much of infrastructure and capital and this is the age of innovation so you really need not set up a huge industry to come out with some kind of a production but with innovation which is there you could just make an app and make you know billions as we have seen coming up with Facebook or WhatsApp or so in an age of innovation it is a small SMEs or the medium enterprise sectors which will really lead to the economic development and we do not need the government intervention to such a large extent to set up a large industry because if you see the developing countries it was always the government which was setting up the large industries because private industries did not get the capital but to set up a small industry it is just essential that the government gives a very enabling atmosphere. It allows people to set up allows innovation and allows a small entrepreneur to set it up in a faster manner and all that the government has to do is give them a regulatory environment which will allow them to free you know business dealings and in India actually we have a ministry separate ministry which has been set up which is called Ministry of Small and Medium Enterprises and to encourage it we have a lot of governmental instructions like for example any procurement by the government of India departments 15% of that is to be sourced by the from the small and medium enterprises so there is a lot of enabling environment which we have created for the SMEs and I'm sure with the push which ITU has been giving like yesterday attended that workshop on the SMEs which was chaired and the Secretary General himself was present with a huge you know audience plus participants from the government's regulators and the SMEs and I think in the ICT SMEs have a very large role to play as a lot of talk about incubating incubation a warm safe environment and see to see these projects hatched but the see the advantage of an SMEs it doesn't require a lot of gestation period right so if you given proper incubating atmosphere then it can immediately start producing results which is what is so different about an SME in comparison to anything which inquires which requires large or capital formation or capital injection and to that extent to the return on capital takes time but an SME if you are so great that you just sit in front of make out you know an app and just pump it through the and then you have millions of people using that app and with the advertisement which they get you are already in the job so that's the advantage of an SME on a grander scale how important a collaboration and multi-stakeholder partnerships in accelerating ICT innovation see nothing can be done this is actually a period of globalization so no country can do something alone nor can you know it has to be a complete multi-stakeholder participation in the true universal sense of the term for ICT so I think under the umbrella of the ITU plus we have various regional cooperation agencies like you have the APT we have the SATRC and recently if you see the bricks the bricks the Ufa convention which declared which was which consists of you know economically interested and closer nations like Brazil Russia India in which China we were also there and if you see the Ufa convention results I mean one has to develop then you have the common wealth you have several of those which learn from each other and I think in that like in this particular ITU in Budapest itself if you see apart from the exhibits which have been put from all over the world and you also find participants from the industry you find participants from the academician you find participants like me from the regulators you find you find government participants so this has to be a complete synergy of all the stakeholders and across the world what's your main message here for participants and actually each other come well yes in fact I think you know after that millennium development goals we are having the first meeting of the ITU after the you know UN General Assembly meeting which has been adopted with the sustainable development so I think I like the you know word here smart sustainable development and it should be sooner faster in fact it should be earlier than later which is what is the thing and I think this is the time that we need to put in all that we had worked for earlier in the first millennium development but work faster now to ensure that there is an inclusive development in the ICT. Dr. Gupta thank you very much keeping this in the studio today. Thank you.