The Next Ten Years

1982 was a big year. IBM's new PC replaced Time's Man of the Year. Insat 1A left Cape Canaveral, to herald satellite TV and telecom for India…and to beam Asiad 1982, live, and in color.

And India's first computer magazine was born into a tiny industry of a dozen pioneers-TCS, HCL, CMC, CMS, Wipro, Infosys, NIIT…. (The first PC-from Minicomp-was yet to come.) 

We've come a long way, mostly in the last decade. We have to move faster over the next one.

As we've seen, the government has a role. One, to step aside, where it's in the way. Two, that of facilitator. For the cynics…the 1998 PM's IT task force was a turning point, and some two-thirds of its 108 'steps' turned into reality.

What can a 2003 PM's IT task force do, to help India really step on the gas? Quite a bit.

First, lay off what's working well: The next time a Kelkar committee comes up and eyes this golden goose, send it back to read the fable. Choking India's most successful industry, and scaring investors off, can hardly a worthy objective.

Infrastructure: Telecom's taken off, but physical infrastructure hasn't. The 1998 plans to put in place super-highways and world-class airports have moved slowly. Our airports are an embarrassment. Get it moving. 

Promote public access: With poor PC penetration, community access (cybercafes, phone booths) are where Net access will happen from. Step in with promotion and subsidies to help them spread. Yes, the 1998 plan said the same thing.

Drop the barriers faster. Bring in convergence (drop the artificial voice-data barrier, stop trying to control bandwidth use) to lower costs, and it won't hurt BSNL revenues. Really. And small issues like opening up the spectrum fully for 802.11b are easy to do, and can help kill this 1885-and-license-raj image.

Work on a "citizen database" that will, with safeguards, be shared between the Election Commission, the Census Bureau, the Home Ministry, the ITO, Customs, and Food and Civil Supplies, instead of each spending crores on its own, incompatible data.

Create a repository for knowledge sharing among states. Consultants can help draw up e-gov project plans, and identify best practices and successful projects to deploy in other states, instead of every state reinventing the wheel with pilot projects or yet another new ITeS policy. 

Promote hardware parks, with a single-minded focus on building "clusters" where manufacturers and suppliers congregate. Provide infrastructure, and incentives to make manufacturing more attractive than imports-even after the WTO deadlines and zero import tariffs regime kicks in.

This will be the decade of domestic IT use. And the government can, and must, be part of it.