Internet is needed to ensure 5 basic rights: Palak

Food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care are fundamental rights of a citizen. And the Internet is needed to ensure all these fundamental rights. State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said so at the closing ceremony of 'Datbird Launchpad 2021' held at ICT Tower on October 7. The state minister said, “The first condition for building our internet ecosystem is access to the internet. Access to the Internet is now called the 6th fundamental right. In other words, the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has recognized 5 basic needs in our constitution as fundamental rights of citizens; Food, clothing, shelter, education and medical care. Access to the Internet is now the 6th requirement to ensure these five fundamental rights. ” At the event, the state minister for ICT urged them to be entrepreneurs instead of running after jobs and assured them of cooperation from the ICT department. He said, “Startups should come forward with courage. We are historically a brave nation and we like to take risks. And our young generation too  has the courage to take risks. To be an entrepreneur you need to take risks with courage. I think, Hon'ble Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has built all the components needed to build an ecosystem, a startup culture in Bangladesh, step by step in the last 12 years.” Kashef Rahman, co-founder and CEO of Databird, said at the event that Databird is going to come up with a messaging app after Sharetrip, Rhythmic Keyboard. He said, “Bengali is a difficult language among the world languages. Our success is due to the fact that the Bengali language is easily typed. Beyond that, if we think about it, we are trying to build our own ecosystem with Rhythmic's other assets. We will launch Messenger in the future. We are still running the beta version. Laura will launch this messenger later this year. ” Khorshed Alam, Executive Director of Bangladesh Bank and Prof. Dr. Sajjad Hossain took part in the panel discussion. It was informed at the event that more than 350 innovative ideas have come up in this year's event. More than one thousand entrepreneurs took part, out of which 23 were women entrepreneurs. Out of 350 innovative ideas, 5 were selected from the student track and 5 from the professional track.