Draft IT and ITES policy to propose to maintain India's leadership in the global IT market, promote sustenance and competitiveness of SMEs and support innovation in the industry

The IT industry on Tuesday got an opportunity to place their demands before the IT and Communications Minister Kapil Sibal in the first round table held with stakeholders for National Policy on Information Technology 2011.

The industry stakeholders made proposals on services that need to be taken to masses like banking, education, tele-medicine and host of other important services.

Rajesh Charia, President ISPAI proposed to make access to internet a fundamental right under the policy. "Access to internet should be made a fundamental right. Many countries have done this," Charia said.

Linked to the proposal for accessing internet, Chairman of HCL Infosystems proposed the government to make provision for low cost devices to be available in the country for allowing access to internet and services being offered on it.

Representative from Cyber Cafe Association of India proposed to relax norms in the guidelines for cyber cafe issued under Information Technology Act.

"While we owe the cyber cafes the much increased Internet penetration in the country, they are being made soft targets for security threat abuses and unlike PCO owners from where a similar abuse can happen on voice," the representative said.

The CCAOI representative also proposed to extend benefits given to common services centre to cyber cafe for delivering e-governance services.

Industry players proposed to create funds under the IT policy for supporting Indian companies in coming up innovative product and adding to Intellectual Property Rights in India.

"This (funding) is an issue that needs to be looked at. We need funds but we need to look at the way we should arrange it," Sibal said.
The issue of piracy and cyber security was also discussed at the conference.

The policy on e-governance is aimed to bring in transparency and accountability in government, leverage technology for various services like quality education, health services and others, along with creation of ubiquitous access to e-infrastructure.

The objective of IT and ITes policy is to come up with a framework that continues to maintain India's leadership in the global IT market, promote sustenance and competitiveness of SMEs after withdrawal of tax benefits for software technology park and support innovation in the industry.