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 slow down, 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 services line mix is likely to be different. The IT-enabled services sector has witnessed and 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 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, distances 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 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 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 designed 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’s 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. Bio Tech / 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. Bio Tech 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 depended upon the availability of trained manpower and resources. The IT Minister 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, process 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 percent of the content on Internet is in English which is spoken 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, 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 font 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 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 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 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. The 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 Missions 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 I Grid 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 I grid – 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 catalyzing 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 business. 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.

The author is director, Department of Information Technology