West Bengal sets up eight working groups for IT sector

At the first meeting of the state core committee for information and communication technology (ICT), members headed by chairman Sam Pitroda, chief mentor Narayana Murthy and IT minister Partha Chatterjee, decided to form eight working groups, which will come up with suggestions for the development of the sector in Bengal.

The groups have been created on verticals like e-governance, e-health, e-education, e-agriculture, human resource development among others.

“The idea is to get the perspective from sector experts, in a way that the core committee members are not equipped to provide,” said Kalyan Kar, president, sector-V association and member of the state ICT core committee.

Infosys founder and now chairman emeritus, Murthy, attended the committee via video conferencing. According to members, who attended the meeting, Murthy was of the opinion that a plug-n-play model needs to be developed in the state.

“Infrastructure, by way of road development and power availability, are the biggest problems the IT sector is facing. Land is not really a problem because given the nature of IT, vertical space development can always be created by way of infrastructure,” Kar said.

The members of the working groups will be elected by the core committee over the next two weeks.

“We needed to set a benchmark so that we could measure the base and set growth targets accordingly. This will be achieved by the data that is provided by the working groups,” said telecom expert and core committee chairman, Sam Pitroda.