INDIA'S ADVANCEMENTS IN THE IT SECTOR
The IT-Enabled Services
sector in India has emerged as a prime catalyst of growth for
the IT industry in the last five years. This segment is poised
to grow world-wide very rapidly over the next few years. The first
year of this millennium was a year of turbulence, tragedy, terrorism
and slow-down in the world economy. But the Indian IT software
and services industry weathered this storm well. It is indeed
creditable that the IT software and services industry in India
has continued its robust growth since 1998.
The software
industry has emerged as one of the fastest growing sectors in
the Indian economy with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) exceeding
50 per cent over the last five years and with a turnover of US$
10.25 billion (Rs. 48,134 crore) and exports of US$ 7.8 billion
(Rs. 36,599 crore) during 2001-02. Software exports jumped to
Rs. 36,500 crore during 2001-02 from Rs. 3,700 crore during 1996-97,
a compound annual growth rate of about 60 per cent.
The IT software
and services industry in India accounted for about 2 per cent
of the country’s GDP during 2001-02. Indian IT software and services
exports accounted for over 18 per cent of India’s total exports
during 2001-02. It is expected that by the year 2008, Indian IT
software and services industry will account for 7 per cent of
India’s GDP and 35 per cent of its total exports.
The Nasscom McKinsey
Report 2002, released in June last year, has reiterated that despite
the recent slowdown, the Indian IT services (ITS) and IT-enabled
services (ITES) industry is poised to meet its long-term exports
potential of US $ 57 billion, though the service line mix is likely
to be different. The IT-enabled services sector has witnessed
an exponential growth in the last two years. As a result the IT-enabled
services exports is likely to reach US $ 21-24 billion by 2008.
A large number
of Indian software companies have acquired international quality
certification. Out of the top 400 companies, more than 250 have
already acquired ISO 9000 certification. A majority of the multinational
companies operating in the area of information technology have
either software development centre or research development centre
in India. India’s expertise in emerging technologies actually
helped the country to get new customers. Companies in Europe and
Japan are increasing their outsourcing to India.
Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) today permeates almost every sphere
of human endeavour. In fact, many countries are benchmarking the
success of their e-governance initiatives in terms of the resultant
increase in the competitiveness of the country, apart from the
R&D and information infrastructure initiatives.
Initiatives
India enacted
the Information Technology (IT) Act in 2000 to provide a legal
framework to facilitate electronic commerce and transaction. It
recognizes electronic contracts, prevention of computer crimes,
electronic filing and documentation and digital signature. In
line with the global practices, the vital security needs of privacy,
authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation over the Internet
in India are being addressed by the Public Key Infrastructure.
The Department
of Information Technology has set up Community Information Centres
(CICs) at 487 block headquarters in the seven North Eastern States
and Sikkim as a part of the Prime Minister’s agenda for socio-economic
development of the region. These CICs can help in combating escalating
crises in health, energy, water, education and literacy as well
as poverty alleviation. The CICs will provide Internet connectivity,
e-mail facilities, interface between citizens and government,
distance learning programmes, information on national programmes,
disaster management system and public health awareness.
Media Lab Asia
As a new initiative
in the context of bridging the digital divide, the Government
of India has collaborated with Media Lab of MIT, USA to form Media
Lab Asia which is proposed to be a network of national as well
as overseas people, projects, and laboratories dedicated to bringing
the benefits of the most advanced information technologies to
the neediest people. The role of Media Lab Asia is to facilitate
the invention, refinement and deployment of innovations that benefit
the masses. The Media Lab Asia would work with industry, NGOs,
government and, most importantly, the ordinary people to bring
these innovations to every village in India. It is funded initially
by the Government of India and it is expected that the private
sector, multilateral and bilateral agencies as well as NGOs would
contribute to it.
Research laboratories
have been set up under the Media Lab Asia Programme at IITs Delhi,
Chennai, Mumbai, Kharagpur and Kanpur to carry out research work
and applications development. The Government of India regards
Media Lab Asia as a major initiative to bring IT to the masses
and bridge the digital divide.
Media Lab Asia
is on the list of the country’s fifteen important national initiatives
announced on the occasion of India’s 55th Independence Day anniversary
by the Prime Minister, Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Media Lab Asia
has been designated as an Asian Regional Hub of the United Nations
ICT Task Force for coordinating activities of academia and the
private sector in the area of IT for the masses.
Bioinformatics
It is widely
recognized that the 21st century belongs to information technology
and life sciences. Biotechnology is an ever-evolving field and
success in this industry means leveraging the global market place
to our advantage. A number of entrepreneurs are looking forward
to use India’s strength in information technology as leverage
for entering in the field of biotechnology. BioTech/DNA parks
are envisaged with a focus to provide the right infrastructure
and space for R&D purpose and to enhance the growth of the
biotechnology sector in India. BioTech or DNA parks are to be
developed to encourage entrepreneurship and to improve the competitiveness
of the biotech industry. There is a plan to set up bioinformatics
parks with common wet labs for genome data centres and super computing
support in the country.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
is an emerging technology of manipulating matter at the atomic
scale. It will make most products lighter, stronger, cleaner,
less expensive and more precise. Nanotechnology is expected to
usher in the next industrial revolution. The nanotechnology research
is being strongly supported by the governments in the USA, Europe,
Japan and China. The research in this area would vastly depend
upon the availability of trained manpower and resources. The IT
Ministry plans to develop this area in cooperation with leading
academic and R&D institutions in the country.
Convergence
The 21st century
has begun the convergence of technologies and the consequent process
of globalisation. Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
has been instrumental in speeding up the process of economic growth.
Future societies will be knowledge-based. ICT will revolutionize
products, processes and services. In order to reap the benefits
of ICT, it is essential that people should be able to absorb technology
and enhance their knowledge generation capabilities.
Today, 80 per
cent of the content on Internet is in English which is spoken
by only 8 per cent of the world population. India is a multilingual
country. It is felt that information processing and exchange software
should be developed in local languages and made available at low
cost. The use of free multilingual software needs to be promoted
so that ICT paves the way for digital unity and knowledge for
all rather than the sprawling digital divide. In this context,
a number of initiatives have been taken towards developing the
Indian language processing tools, human machine interface and
translation support systems, lexical resources and standardization
softwares like UNICODE, XML and lexware format and fonts representing
Indian languages.
Internet
Internet is now
emerging as the principal medium of communication for every country.
The dichotomy of the open system with the desire to share information
and the secure systems that prevent prowlers from taking away
the digital assets would continue to be the challenge in the future
information infrastructures that are critical to the existence
of every nation. It is essential to create a confidence level
in our own public so that they can begin to use the network with
absolute faith for commerce, communication, entertainment, software
development and governance and ensure safety of the government
network to enable it transact business electronically and by sharing
valuable and sensitive data in tune with the world developments
over the Internet without having to be inhibited by its perennial
worry about the network’s security.
The Indian Computer
Emergency Response Team (CERT) is being set up to ensure that
India’s information assets in every sphere are provided the necessary
protection.
There has been
a considerable shift in the learning paradigm due to the introduction
of technology and newer methods of imparting education. New technologies
are being gradually integrated into the learning environment.
Networking and Internet are being used as cost-effective tools
for improving learning opportunities for students, faculty development,
supporting professional development, increasing productivity of
members of the learning community and improving the efficiency
of schools and district and State administrations.
To integrate
technology into the learning environment, the Department of Information
Technology has formulated two specific programmes, namely, ‘Vidya
Vahini’ and ‘Gyan Vahini’ to provide connectivity to schools across
the country and IT infrastructure at all the institutions of higher
learning in the country, respectively. A pilot project has been
taken up to connect about 200 senior secondary schools in the
seven identified districts in the country. These schools will
be provided one networking lab consisting of 10 personal computers,
servers, printers, digital content on the NCERT curriculum and
Internet connectivity of 128 Kbps. Similarly, a pilot project
has been taken up to set up a campus-wide network at the Delhi
University. This campus-wide network will connect all its Departments
in the North and South Campuses and affiliated colleges in the
North Campus. Use of campus-wide technology is proposed to deliver
video and data at higher speed.
Computing
High Performance
Computing (HPC) developments today continue to be driven by the
demanding engineering and scientific applications. These have
emerged as a domain leading to new scientific innovations. As
one of the major deliverable of High Performance Computing and
Communications (HPCC) technologies and applications Mission of
C-DAC, one Teraflop computing system PARAM TF was commissioned
on December 16, 2002.
A large number
of scientific and engineering researchers and institutions countrywide
still require high-end computational resources. The grid-enabled
computing infrastructure is thus an ideal candidate. The development
of a nationwide IGrid is proposed by C-DAC as a technology development
and infrastructure creation initiative. One of its objectives
will be to develop an application software with the establishment
of Igrid – Strategic Users Group (I-SUG) that will drive the usage
of the grid by multiple users across the country.
The Department
of Information Technology has aimed at catalysing a modest increase
in India’s share of the world market for VLSI design from about
US $ 10 million to about US $ 200 million in about 5-7 years.
A report prepared by TCS and IIT, Mumbai has projected a need
of 4000 to 5000 microelectronics professionals per year at the
level of M. Tech (Microelectronics). The Department aims to train
special manpower in this area at B.E./B.Tech., M.E./M.Tech and
Ph.D levels.
E-Governance
E-governance
enables the use of information technology and communication technologies
to improve efficiency, convenience, accessibility and transparency
in government. The major emphasis today both at Central and State
levels is to focus on these objectives from the perspective of
the citizen and businesses. Various IT activities such as development
of software applications packages, creation of e-governance infrastructure,
national ID, citizen databases, smart card and digital educational
content in E-Governance domain are being taken up on pilot scale
basis.
The National
Informatics Centre (NIC) has been instrumental in steering information
and communication technology applications in Government departments
at the Central, State and district levels, facilitating improvement
in Government services, wider transparency in Government’s functions
and improvement in decentralized planning and management.
Inputs:
Courtesy Shri Rajiv Rastogi, Director, Department of Information
Technology
