• But you always talk about the young. I have heard you in Davos and elsewhere. You always talk about the generation that types with its thumbs.

Yes, yes.

• And you say you may have a tough time persuading a middle-aged man or woman to buy new technology but you never have trouble with this generation that types with its thumbs. Is that what you are building on when you are investing in education?

I think it is different from that. Obviously, the younger generation likes new technology; they never tire of it. But the younger generation is also the future, and if your country, or any other country, wants to be successful and go forward, you have to have a younger generation with a good education, and that is the message that we give. Spend time with the younger generation, get the best-educated work-force you can, and the rest takes care of itself.

• Sir, technology is now being used by the young all over the world. I think you said somewhere that the largest concentration of cyber cafes on a street is in Amman, Jordan. So even the Middle East is not immune.

No one is immune from technology. One country tried to outlaw the Internet for a while, Afghanistan under the Taliban, and that did not work particularly well. Everyone else has adapted to it, the Chinese have adapted to it.

• And the Chinese play with it a little bit.

... contd.