BANGALORE: Immediately after taking charge of the office of ministry for IT and communication, Union Minister, Dayanidhi Maran has laid a 10-point agenda including focus on IT manufacturing and improving PC penetration in the country. Growth of broadband also gets priority, since the uses of Internet and broadband facility are still limited in the country.

"Manufacturing within India must be encouraged. Unfortunately, this has not taken place. There are perhaps reasons for this. We need to actively promote indigenous manufacturing. We can and need to go beyond the current tele -density levels of 7 in the country. In doing so, I would like to see that the Digital divide is minimised, if not removed. I believe that for the Communication and IT facilities to be truly relevant in India, they will have to touch the lives of villagers. There are still about 50,000 villages in India, which do not have telephone communication facility. I would like to see that they are all connected, preferably during the current year. Besides, the villagers, at least in the big villages, must also have access to Internet facilities, and to the benefits of Tele-agriculture, Tele -Health and Tele-education. The spread of Internet in India has not been commensurate with the growth of telecom," stated the 37-year first time minister.

Maran's 10-point agenda

1.To achieve convergence of Information, Communication and Media Technologies. Prioritize PC penetration for Cyber Connectivity to every citizen.

2. To bring about transparency in administration and make government functioning more citizen-centric. To stress more on e-governance and expeditious implementation of a national e-governance plan.

3. To provide broadband connectivity at the most reasonable prices gets top most priority.

4. Plan to leapfrog current generation of mobile telephony to 4G. India is currently using the technology of GSM (2.5 G) and CDMA for mobile telephony. The 3G standard has been evolved, but has not proved cost-effective. India has an opportunity with its large market and high technical skills to be a significant player in this field. We are going to set up a national center for excellence in this area.

5. Plan to connect all ISPs in India to a national internet exchange in order to achieve efficient internet traffic routing, cost reduction and improve quality of service for the Internet users in India.

Four Internet exchanges points to be fully operationalised. Small and big ISPs to route their traffic through this exchange to ensure the security of domestic traffic. Currently, 25 ISPs are connected.

To bring about significant improvement in Indian Internet domain name with a greater market focus to proliferate the web. Towards this, major multinational companies to be encouraged to host their mirror sites in India and also encourage Indian enterprise to host sites to promote business and trade in India.

6. Migration to new Internet Protocol IPv6 in India by 2006.

7. To concentrate on Cyber Infrastructure Protection and make effort to promote the use of Digital Signatures in the financial sector, judiciary and education.

8. To ensure that the program of Media Lab Asia of the Government focuses on the following areas of importance to the large Indian populace:

i. Providing seamless communication connectivity to rural areas and promoting value-added services and micro enterprises to double the village GDP in a couple of years.

ii. Extend quality healthcare services to remote areas using the technologies of telemedicine and internet access.

iii. Use Information and Communication Technology tools to improve literacy through distance education, inclusive processes and pedagogy.

iv. Promote development and availability of low-cost PCs and communication access devices to increase internet penetration 10-fold in a few years.

9. To accelerate dialogue with State Governments, linguists, R&D labs and Industry for increased deployment of language computing solutions in Government, industry and the society at large, particularly the disadvantaged sections.

10. To make India the world’s hub for outsourcing skilled manpower in the IT sector. National R&D institutions would be given encouragement to invest in R&D and bring about world-class technologies.

CIOL Bureau