IT policy of Uttaranchal to be unveiled next month

There is no doubt that IT has caught the imagination of Indian politicians. Even before the nitty-gritty of administration are put into place, the newly-formed Uttaranchal and the Jharkhand Governments have asked NASSCOM to frame IT policies for the states.

While the Jharkhand policy will be announced by January, the Uttaranchal IT policy will be announced in the first week of December. Dewang Mehta, President, NASSCOM, however, declined to divulge details of the policy saying "it is the prerogative of the Chief Minister" and that it would be "announced soon".

In a recent press conference, Mehta had mentioned that its slogan for IT for the masses would revolve round the three sub projects of e-health, e-employment and e-education. The policy initiatives in Uttaranchal are expected to be in lines with the three "e". It is understood that some of the initiatives of the IT policy of Uttaranchal include developing Dehradun as an IT-enabled center, setting up of a IIIT in the state and to focus on tele-medicine to usher in development.

Dehradun is ideally suited to emerge as an hub of IT activities in the newly-formed state considering the existence of an earth station in the city, a large number of educational institutes and therefore a large pool of educated population. The state is expected to seriously look at tele-medicine to bring healthcare to the rural interiors especially in the remote areas of Tehri and Garhwal. The range of IT-enabled services could range from setting up Grameen Centers, which are simple data processing centers where existing data are converted to digital form, to complex activities as offshore call centers to support remote customers.

Speaking about the UP government's e-governance initiative, Mehta said, "The UP government has recently implemented some successful grameen projects whereby local employment was created by setting up data processing centers to digitize government documents." With the initiative, the government achieved two goals in one stroke--it created local employment as well as enabled e-governance.

NASSCOM has been playing a pioneering role in the development of policy initiatives in the country and has been spearheading the causes of the IT industry on various platforms. The latest issues that has been raised by association pertain to the lack of physical and telecom infrastructure in the country, the need to increase the quality and the quantity of software professionals in the country, and the need for investment in developing original technologies.

(CNS)