Gujarat might miss the IT bus, says expert

While Bangalore, Hyderabad have made remarkable progress in the information technology industry, Gujarat is still to make any significant progress, the state may miss the IT bus, said Shreyas Pandya, president Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) while speaking at the 'Buyer - Seller Relationship Meet' at GCCI premises on Thursday in Ahmedabad.

He added that even Maharashtra was forging ahead, with Pune embedding its name in the software and other smaller towns of Maharashtra catching up.

"Gujarat as IT savvy state should be mapped out in view of the fact that the demand for Indian information technology and information technology enabled services (ITES), which is $9.5 billion at present, is expected to rise to $17 billion by the year 2008. As the technology parks spring up in the secondary towns like Nasik, Kolhapur and Nagpur, nothing can block the growth of these satellite centres." said Pandya.

There are areas where government intervention is needed like IT Policy, legislation, use of IT in judicial system, providing net usage in government, educational institutes, providing IT connectivity to bridge the digital divide and facilitate the growth of the private sector, which requires high quality infrastructure like broadband digital connectivity, single window clearance procedure, corporatisation, establishment of industry forums, building of exhibition infrastructure and set up of promotional incentives to attract investments.

The state should ensure better and effective interface in the information technology and thus give rise to large scale employment opportunities, Pandya added.

IT being one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, it is one area where India has an edge over other competitors. The IT sector needs good infrastructure, not only policies as policies are only founding statements. It is sound infrastructure, which India lacks for propelling growth of the industry.

Lack of indigenous material, high interest rates, high customs duty and local taxes all have significantly affected the profitability of the companies operating in the country.

Hardware units have unviable economic capacities and coupled with the present time consuming and complex procedures, find it difficult to operate, which needs to be redressed to achieve the vision of a thriving hardware industry in India.

Although India has a sound edge in software but have a long way to go in the hardware sector, which needs to re-engineer itself to operate at the level of the global volumes, optimise customer satisfaction, adopt benchmarking and best practices for performance improvement and improve after sales service.

Application of lean manufacturing principles will improve the slack in the system, thereby reducing cost, which will also improve the delivery performances and flexibility.

India has a PC population of just about nine per thousand people as compared to the global average of over 30 per 1,000 persons.Other eminent panelist included B H Jajoo, faculty of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, IIM-A, Naishadh Diwanji, chairman GCCI IT Committee, B M Shah, vice president-Finance, Arvind Mills Limited.