Advisory Panel Set Up To Promote India As It Hotspot

Close on the heels of the merger of the information technology and the communications ministries, the government has constituted a combined national advisory committee for charting our a strategy for making India a preferred destination for investment in communications and IT.

The National Advisory Committee on Communications and IT (NACCIT), headed by communications and IT minister Pramod Mahajan, includes secretary, department of IT, secretary department of telecom besides industry leaders such as Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, and N R Narayanamurthy, among others, official sources said here.

The committee would look at identifying thrust areas in emerging technologies for utilisation of national resources through research and development. Other terms of reference of the committee are, "devising policy measures and action plans for building a knowledge-based information society through rapid development and spread of information and communication technology applications in the areas of e-governance, e-commerce and distance education."

The committee would suggest measures for improving teledensity in rural areas and make recommendations about delivering end-to-end bandwidth in the country with special emphasis on rural and disadvantaged areas.

The panel would also suggest measures for spreading internet and broadband connectivity to the last mile, according to a notification. NACCIT would suggest measures to induct the latest technologies in telecom with the special aim of bringing down prices, improving quality of services and making available quality and affordable telecommunications services to the common man.

"With this, the advisory committee on IT set up through a notification dated January 2001, stands repealed hereby consequent to its advisory role and function having devolved on the national advisory committee on communications and it which hereafter would carry out the objectives laid out as an apex national advisory committee to the government," the notification added. The advisory committee would meet once in two months, it added.