Perhaps her advisers had not briefed her enough, but I am sure lots of people
must be hiding their smiles when Sonia Gandhi, UPA chairperson and president of
Indian National Congress claimed at the Infosys campus inauguration that the
union government has played an important role in creating the platform for the
development of IT in the country.
While a politician will always be a politician and never lose an opportunity
to take credit for good things, if you speak to industry veterans and experts,
they will attribute the growth of Indian IT to one big factor-no meddling by the
government. N Vittal, former DoE secretary and a big supporter of the private
sector in IT, would always crack this joke, at all private and public functions.
“What is the biggest contribution of the Government of India to the Indian IT
industry? The government never interfered in the industry and that is why the
industry blossomed?”
In fact, I find that the track record of her IT and Communications minister
in the first 100 days of UPA is nothing home to write about. Mr Raja is more of
a telecom minister, and one has hardly seen any big initiative being taken up by
him for the IT industry. While some other ministries like Education & HRD, Law,
Administrative Reforms are announcing new plans and initiatives and making some
progress, IT seems to be just not there on the radar, and things are stuck in
telecom. The UPA government in its first term had made so much noise about a
converged ICT policy. Where is it? Nobody knows. There is a lot of distance that
the UPA has to travel, especially in IT. And looks like their journey has not
even started. Having said this, I must also admit that all these years the IT
industry benefited because the government was just a bystander. But as IT begins
to touch the lives of ordinary people, the government has a huge role to play.
And if it fails to play that role, the whole nation will have to pay a price.
Sonia Gandhi is perhaps new to the Indian IT industry, but fortunately her
government has people like Rahul Gandhi, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot,
Omar Abdullah, and many more who know the power of IT. Therefore, while it is
sad that UPA has really not done anything great for Indian IT so far, I believe
that this government is perhaps the best one could have to get things moving.
The good news is that e-governance, which seems to be the only agenda of the
government at the moment, has the potential to bring about multi dimensional
changes. And actually help the government achieve many of its IT goals listed
above. So if this government can actually deliver on its e-governance promises,
the cascading effect will benefit everybody down the line, including industry
and citizens.
Ibrahim ahmad
ibrahima@cybermedia.co.in