Union minister for communications & IT and HRD, Kapil Sibal, here today stated that India is moving towards a new divide wherein the country despite having witnessed the telecom revolution it has been deprived of the information technology revolution. Sibal was speaking while inaugurating the electronics & information technology exposition (Elitex) 2011 conference, organized by department of information technology in New Delhi.

The theme of the conference this year is ,“e-Governance: Public Services closer home”.  Minister of state for communications & IT Sachin Pilott, secretary (IT & telecom) R Chandrashekar, additional secretary (e-governance) Shankar Agarwal and NIC director general B K Gairola were the other key speakers during the inaugural event.

Pilot during his address said that India has become an IT superpower when just seven per cent of India is internet enabled. He highlighted the potential India holds when more than 50 per cent of India is internet ready. Chandrashekar mentioned that even though we have progressed on the software front but we are still lagging behind in area of IT hardware. Gairola spoke on various technology concerns like cloud computing, mobile computing, unified application platform and more.

Sibal also unveiled various products developed by various agencies of department of information technology (DIT). The key products that was unveiled during the event which included Malware Resist, USB Pratirod, u-Sikshak, EduBoss 2.0 and Punarjjani

Sibal also inaugurated an exhibition which showcases the technologies and products developed under DIT. The key exhibitors included national informatics centre (NIC), media lab asia (MLA), society for applied microwave electronics engineering & research (SAMEER), education and research network (ERNET), centre for development of advanced computing (CDAC) and software technology park of India (STPI).