Minister of Communications & IT Dayanidhi Maran expressed his views on issues related to the Indian IT and telecom industry at the India leadership Forum, 2005 hosted by NASSCOM in Mumbai. Talking about the formulation of the national IT policy, he said that they have already asked to submit a recommendation regarding that. "The process is going on but it's too early to comment on the timeline for that. We would like it to be business viable and the policy formulation would be done in such a way that it should support both software and hardware industry," he said. Dayanidhi further added that the policy is imperative and would be done soon.

Another issue he commented on was the current status of BSNL-MTNL merger. He commented that they have asked BSNL, MTNL, ICICI and other bankers to submit their recommendations by March this year. "We would then look whether we should go for it or not. Since both the organizations operate in different parts of the country, the merger would definitely add value to their operational efficiencies," he said. 

Coming to the IT Act review committee, Brijesh Kumar heads the IT Act review committee and very soon the committee would submit its recommendations. After that, the IT Ministry would see what needs to be done and assured that nothing untowardly would happen to any IT company. He said that that the law should be placed properly to ensure that cases like Baazee would not happen again. 

With the budget being close on heels came the question of zero percent duty. "Since zero duty regime would come into effect from April this year, we want to make sure that Indian IT manufacturers are not at a disadvantage. The zero-duty regime would definitely invite more manufacturing set-ups and we see huge price drop in all hardware equipment," he explained. 

The IT Minister also commented on the broadband services.

The ministry already has around 1,20,000 bookings so far. He wishes to see broadband penetration happening at all levels that would make an impact on the Internet industry as a whole. "Interesting applications have to be developed to ride this broadband wave that would enable digital empowerment," said Dayanidhi.

On the steps taken for manpower development in the ITES/BPO sector, he commented that development of manpower has to be from the school level itself. He felt that this is a huge effort, as this initiative would have to work in close coordination with the state governments. 

RAHUL GUPTA 
MUMBAI

Page(s)   1