Govt. tapping IT potential to the maximum, says CM

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, JAN. 10. Emphasising the role of Information Technology and the developmental opportunities that it offered, the Chief Minister, Mr.N. Chandrababu Naidu observed, ``Nations will rise or fall depending upon whether they succeed or fail in adapting new technology''.

He was addressing delegates at the first plenary session on the second day of the Partnership Summit, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) with Andhra Pradesh as the partner state, here on Wednesday.

The focus of the session on ``The Big Picture:India and the IT Revolution'', gradually zeroed in on the scope offered by IT Enabled Services (ITES), with both Mr.Naidu, and Mr.B. Ramalinga Raju, Chairman of Satyam Computer Services stating that ``The next decade will belong to the Information Technology Enabled Services, just as the last decade belonged to the IT services''.

Mr. Naidu said there was great future for ITES and as much as $1 trillion addition could be made to India's Gross National Product through tapping the global potential. In addition about 50 million jobs could be created, he felt. Realising this potential, the State Government was promoting infrastructure development- optic fibre backbone-in a big way. It wants to promote e- governance, e-commerce, tele-medicine and distant education, among others.

The State Government proposed to host the unified portal for citizens to access Government information and services by March 31. It was also proposed to put up 7,500 electronic kiosks in a year's time, he said.

Once again he made out a case for putting an end to the monopoly of VSNL on Internet telephony, and pointed out that even China was allowing this. Referring to the pace at which China was developing infrastructure and services, he pointed out that the number of telephone lines had gone up from 10 million in 1990 to over 125 million, and every month two million more were added.

The mobile phones had gone up from five million to 70 million in five years. Internet users went up from 2.1 million in 1999 to 20 million. India had 3.5 million Internet users.

On the question of brain drain, he cited the inflow of funds from Non-Resident Indians, to say, ``Brain drain is not bad for the economy.'' In 1999-2000, export of services from India was $3.2 billions. The net remittances by Indians working abroad was $12.26 billions, he said.

Mr. Ramalinga Raju raised three issues which he said were crucial and needed introspection. These were: In a knowledge and service centric world, can our Governmental and financial policies be manufacturing centric? Can we afford to have communication costs and bandwidths come in the way of millions of jobs? Would be capitalize on the trillion dollar opportunity (by 2020) or wait for China to show us?

Stressing the importance of IT Enabled Services, he said healthcare and financial services were among those offering immense opportunities. But India faces competition and threat from countries like China and Russia in providing ITES, he said.

Mr. Ramesh Vangal, Chairman, AtIndia LLC, Singapore, said it was not possible to make the Internet a success without lifting the quality of life in India. Also simplicity in technology was needed to enable people to readily accept it. He advised Indian companies against `under pricing' and said they should instead aim at ``embedding'' themselves in global players. The challenge for India was how to leapfrog-jump 2 or 3 growth periods which developed economies had to go through, he said.

Mr. Arjun Malhotra, Chairman, Techspan, USA, emphasised on ``collaborative commerce'' to provide benefits of lower costs and increase productivity. The world was going wireless and e- commerce will become m-commerce (mobile commerce), The Internet was changing the rules of the game and the lives of the people.

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