NISTER OF PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SHRI PRAMOD MAHAJAN)
(a) and (b): The Information Technology Industry is the fastest growing sector of the Indian Industry. The software exports have recorded a compound annual growth rate of 60% for the last five years and was US $ 4 billion in the year 1999-2000. 13 Indian software exports (as against 20 in the world) acquired the highest quality certification level of SEI CMM Level 5. 145 Indian software companies have also acquired quality certification: ISO 9000 SEI and other quality marks. Majority of the multi-national companies operating in the area of Information Technology have either Software Development Centre or Research Development Centre. 30% of the E-Commerce starts up during the year 1999 in Silicon Valley, USA were initiated by Indians. Also 500 portals are being launched in India every month. The Ministry of Information Technology had set up a Working Group on Information Technology for Masses. The Working Group has recently submitted its report and have made a number of important recommendations. The Working Group set a ambitious target of at least 100 million Internet connections by the year 2008 and I million Internet enabled IT Kiosks/Cyber Cafes to be established covering the entire length and breath of the country. To increase the reach of IT to the Masses, the Government is setting up Community Information Centres at all the 487 blocks in the North East Region of the country including Sikkim. Such schemes will be set up in other remote areas of the country also. The Government have set up 15 Software Technology Park in the country to provide High Speed Data Communication facilities and incubation facilities to the software exporting units in different parts of the country. Few more Centres are being set up in the country. A National Venture Fund for Software and IT Industry (NFSIT) has been set up with the cost of Rs.100 crores to provide Venture Capital Finance to the IT Companies. A Task Force on Human Resource Development under the Chairmanship of Minister of Human Resource Development have been set up. The Task Force among other things will give its report in a month for doubling IITs/RECs from next academic year and tripling the intake in the next two years. The Government has also announced a number of incentives for the growth and promotion of Information Technology business abroad. The details of these incentives are at Annexure-I.
(c): Number of initiatives have been taken under the TDIL (Technology Development for Indian Languages) programme of the MIT. Resource centres for Indian Languages solutions at 13 Educational and R&D institutions to cover all the official languages under the constitution.
(d): The Governmental efforts and other initiatives in the private sector has resulted in the increasing availability of multilingual operating environment (for DOS, windows & Linux platforms) and applications like Word processing, spell checker, E-mail, databases, transliteration, translation support tools etc.
(e): Government`s thrust is to create policy ambience to attract major investments primarily from the private sector. Government will act as a proactive facilitator, promoter and motivator.
(f): Government is launching schemes like Public Tele-Info Centres, Community Information Centres (in North East) to increase the reach of IT to masses. Other initiatives include promotion of E-Learning, E-Governance and E-Commerce.
(g),(h) & (i): The Indian software professionals have already created their brand image in the global market. There is increasing demand of Indian IT professionals from countries like USA, Germany, Japan and Australia. Government policy is to encourage software development and hardware manfacturing in the country by creating the necessary environment. Various measures are being taken from time to time in this regard so that there is stimulation to creation of wealth and economic growth leading to better employment opportunities within the county. This may also discourage IT professionals from migrating abroad.
