Innovate to differentiate West Bengal from others: IT Minister

KOLKATA: Calling for more meaningful partnerships among the South East Asian states, Dr Debesh Das, Hon’ble Minister – in – charge, Department of Information Technology, Government of West Bengal said that infrastructure for IT “has grown meaningfully and adds significantly to the future potential of the IT industry.”

Dr Das was present as the Chief Guest for the two day Innovation Conclave – IT East 2006.

He emphasized that West Bengal “needs to innovate “ and the onus for this rests on the high end IT organisations. Also, many more organisations need to come to the state as also the state can have more indigenous IT industries that can innovate in terms of high tech designs. He added that the presence of leading educational institutions and consequently a large skilled talent pool will be able to take the state a long way in the innovation process. Innovation alone would differentiate West Bengal from the rest of the country and position it in a leadership role.

Outlining the vision of IT in West Bengal, the Hon’ble Minister said that there are many new areas like telecom, healthcare, legal, semi conductor industries and a host of other ones open to exploration for “partnering the IT and ITeS companies in West Bengal.

Data Security, according to Dr Das is much needed and West Bengal require more development and fine tuning in software development that will ensure better data security.

Welcoming the participants of IT East 2006, Sandipan Chakravortty, Chairman, Marketing sub committee, CII Eastern Region said that West Bengal boasts of the presence of 43,000 IT professionals and the growth rate of IT professionals in the state is 71% as against the national figures of 36%. The sate, said Mr Chakravortty wants to expand by 15% and Rupees 3200 crores is being generated only out of Kolkata from IT & ITeS.

J P Chowdhary, Past President CII in his address elaborated on the results of a study which linked investments made in IT with the economic growth and productivity. He spoke on how innovation can be the driving force of development in IT.

Ambarish Dasgupta, Chairman, IT & ITeS Panel CII Eastern Region spoke on why innovation was required in the industry.

The two day seminar saw sessions on e – governance, IT in manufacturing, the future of IT in West Bengal and Eastern India.

The conclave had eminent speakers from Tata Power, ITC, Chatterjee Group, PwC, GE Capital, Bose Corporation, Eicher, Titan, Oracle, Microsoft etc. Also Principal Secretaries and key government officials from Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Government of India took part in the deliberations along with the academe and Consul Generals.

© CIOL Bureau