In steering India’s growth in the field of Information and Communication Technology, the newly-elected government at the Centre will focus on two major milestones: broadband connectivity across the length and breadth of rural India and electronics manufacturing.
In his maiden interaction with chief executive officers and decision-makers in the software industry, Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad asked why the Indian industry has been a laggard when it comes to manufacturing.
Electronics manufacturing, he said, was “a priority” for the government and he sought feedback on what can be done to incentivise Indian industry to get into manufacturing. “I understand there is a duty structure issue, and we are trying to address it, but that cannot be the only reason the sector did not grow,” he said.
He pointed out that products with simple elementary technologies, such as set-top boxes, were also being imported.
On the semiconductor fabrication, Mr. Prasad said that he has spoken to two people who are setting up two semiconductor wafer fabrication manufacturing facilities in the country.
“I have asked them to do it on a fast-track basis. I realise that once a fabrication facility is established, India is going to expand enormously in everything from chip design to manufacturing,” he said and added that the government was looking at creating STPI-like structure to further incentivise this sector.
Mr. Prasad was speaking at a NASSCOM-organised meet that he called an “IT Panchayat”, where he heard the who’s who of the IT industry speak on issues — regulatory, trade and others — being faced by the sector.
The participants included Wipro Ltd. Chairman Azim Premji, Microsoft India Chairman Bhaskar Pramanik and Mindtree Chief Executive Officer K.K. Natarajan.
Representatives from mid-size companies and the start-ups world addressed the Minister on issues ranging from tax structures and regulatory hurdles that are perceived as hindering business to the skills gap when it comes to new technologies.
Mr. Prasad said that the Prime Minister’s roadmap for expanding the broadband network came with strict deadlines. The Prime Minister, he said, wanted 50,000 villages connected by broadband by end of this year and had set a target of adding one lakh villages each every year until all of rural India was covered.
In addition, he wanted the Indian industry to focus on developing e-education and e-healthcare products, that will help spur a demand for broadband.
Expanding ITMr. Prasad said that the Prime Minister was keen on taking the IT story to yet untapped areas such as the east and Northeast. “The Northeast has a large English-speaking talent pool, why not promote BPOs there? We are looking at what we can do to take IT and BPOs beyond the Bangalore-Hyderabad-Mumbai-Pune circles, and to tier-II cities,” he said.
