This was said at the four-day Saarc conference, "Extending the use of Multi-lingual and Multi-media Information Technology'(EMMIT')," inaugurated here on Tuesday.

The use of information technology will help the countries in the region overcome the problem of resource shortage in spreading primary education, department of science & technology (DST) secretary VS Ramamurthy said. He stressed the need to develop technology that will allow the user to access it in his own language. This will involve some localisation of software, making it specific to the needs of the region, he said.

While the government has given several concessions to the IT field, the department of electronics secretary and member of the prime minister's IT Task ForceR Gupta pointed to the issues of affordability, for which it has provided tax waivers, and the technical issue. The latter will involve developing local content, to give people international connectivity without using English.

A new satellite with new transponders has been put into orbit from Singapore recently which has 20 channels dedicated to education. Educatiuoin to Home (ETH) Labs chief executive officer Vijay Bhatkar declared that of these, six will be handed over to the six Saarc countries for school-level education.