PM to woo IT majors in U.S.

By Sandeep Dikshit

NEW DELHI, AUG. 25. The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee's two-week visit to the United States in early September will have a heavy information technology (IT) component. Mr. Vajpayee will spend four days in the Silicon Valley where he will meet representatives of prominent IT MNCs as well as Indian entrepreneurs who have excelled in this field.

The ground for his sojourn in the Silicon Valley is expected to be prepared by the Union IT Minister, Mr. Pramod Mahajan, who will be part of an advance party which will reach America on August 30. Mr. Mahajan will leave for the Silicon Valley on September 2 in an attempt to leverage the associations built up during his week-long visit to the U.S. in May this year when he met several IT entrepreneurs as well as called upon senior officials of world IT giants.

Official sources said the key objective behind Mr. Vajpayee's visit to the IT valley will be to focus on the `India Advantage' as far as software is concerned in order to encourage funding of software ventures in the country.

The Prime Minister will highlight the Government's role as a pro- active facilitator of unbridled liberalisation in the telecom and IT sectors. The Government had recently announced free entry into the national long-distance (STD) segment and allowed internet companies to purchase the hard-to-get bandwidth directly from international cable companies instead of routing their applications through the public sector Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited.

Sources in the Communications Ministry said the Government is actively considering several liberalisation initiatives which will promote the flow of investments and technology into India. These could be announced before the Prime Minister leaves for the U.S. in order to demonstrate sincerity towards promoting telecom and IT privatisation.

These steps will help neutralise criticism about governmental indifference to bottlenecks in telecom infrastructure. No less than the Intel CEO, Mr. Craig Barett, had recently made a withering comment about India's slow telecom lines. The Prime Minister will be keen to demonstrate that recent initiatives, including the Sankhya Vahini project (being built in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University), will soon get over the problem of congestion.

The Prime Minister is also expected to emphasise that India was keen to become a global supplier of trained software engineers. With Indian software experts in demand even in insular Japan, India will demonstrate its keenness not to let constraints check the supply. The high-level Task Force on Human Resource Development in Information Technology set up by the Prime Minister has prepared a blueprint to enhance capacity in various engineering colleges and technical institutions.

Mr. Vajpayee is expected to directly interact with entrepreneurs at two public engagements. The first will be at a joint meeting by a host of organisations on September 11. These include the U.S.-India Business Council, Council of Northern California, Commonwealth Club of California and the FICCI World Affairs. The next day he is scheduled to deliver an address at the prestigious Stanford University.

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