Aims to create additional one-crore jobs in the sector
Communications and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal on Friday unveiled the draft National Policy on Information Technology 2011 that envisages taking the overall revenue from the sector from $89 billion as of today to $300 billion by 2020, besides creating additional one-crore jobs. He also hinted that once the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) was in place, the Centre might extend tax holiday under the Software Technology Park of India (SPTI) scheme, which expired in March this year, besides giving incentives to small and medium enterprises engaged in the IT sector.
Exploring new markets
Aimed at further consolidating the position of the Indian IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) sector in the global arena, the draft policy has set the target of achieving $200 billion exports target by 2020 against the current level of $59 billion. “Today, 80 per cent of the IT sector revenue comes from exports, mainly from North America and Europe. While we have seen IT sector exports growing at 30 per cent, this year it may be around 15 per cent due to global financial crisis…we need to diversify our exports by exploring new markets to sustain the growth momentum,” he pointed out.
The draft policy, which will be available for comments from public and various stakeholders for a month, also focuses on gaining a significant global market share in cloud-based technologies and services, and mobile-based value added services.
“The focus is on deployment of ICT in all sectors of the economy and providing IT solutions to the world. It also aims to strengthen and enhance India's position as the global IT hub and to use IT as an engine for rapid, inclusive and sustainable growth in the national economy,” he added.
The draft policy will also look into formulating fiscal and other incentives to attract investment in this sector in Tier II and Tier III cities, besides promoting innovation and research and design in cutting-edge technologies and in strategic sectors such as defence, space and atomic energy.
Referring to the launch of world's cheapest tablet PC ‘Aakash', Mr. Sibal said the aim was to integrate Internet and mobile-based delivery of services onto a common platform to enable seamless, ubiquitous, secure and personalised delivery of government and non-government services throughout the country.
PTI reports:
Further, the draft policy calls for setting up centres of excellence in institutions of higher learning so as to produce at least 3,000 PhDs in the information and communication technology sector in specialised areas by 2020.
Keywords: Kapil Sibal, National Policy on IT
I think it is very important to consolidate the development between the urban and rural areas. As Shawn said in the earlier comment, it is necessary to see how sustainable our urban infrastructure is and what can be effects of a policy, which focuses on a domain whose major field of operation lies in the urban areas at this point of time. And again, I feel technology can produce long term results, only if it is augmented by an equivalent ( or more ) investment in capacity building and education.
This could be India's "great leap forward". Although rumblings in the background by the Corporates are slowly surfacing,in what they always saw was their "domain",rather than of the State,this is essentially for the children of India, and, of the World, too. What needs to be asked of the Corporate lobby is what stopped them of thinking and innovating to reach the marginal sections,rather than pandering to the purchasing might of the elite few. After all,isn't the purpose of all technological advancement, the betterment and welfare of every section of the social strata? "Aakash" shall prove be the game-changer by the next decade,forcing the Big Money to cater to the aspiration of the marginalised weaker sections. GoI,IIT Rajasthan & Datawind Corp. deserve laurels for such an epoch-making approach. Kudos!
The Draft IT Policy 0f 2011 aims to create about 10 million jobs, and much of these jobs are to be in the existing IT hubs such as Pune, Mumbai, Bangalore, Gurgoan, Hyderabad, Chennai, Cochin ect. India has over 400 small towns. There is a need to disburse urban and town development to smaller cities rather than continue to focus on larger cities. Indian urban infrastructure is already crumbling. If all industrial development continues to focus on about 40-50 cities and larger towns, it is bound to increase the pace of migration of population from rural and semi-urban areas into these cities and straining the infrastructure further. IT companies can be located anywhere - technically speaking. Hence, there exists an opportunity to disburse the development across the smaller towns and cities, and even develop rural BPOs. Hence, the policy must emphasize the shift towards smaller towns and cities.
All in the world are looking at India. We came out with cheap Car before and cheap tablet computer now.
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