India plans to provide all public serviceson mobile devices, make one person IT literate in every household and increase the size of India's IT industry to $300 billion by 2020 from $89 billion this fiscal, as per the draft of government's first policy on information technology, released on Friday.
The government wants the IT industry to flourish in tier II and III towns. It plans to increase software exports from $59 billion at present to $200 billion by 2020.
The plan include diversifying exports to other countries apart from US and Europe to mitigate the impact of recession on India's IT companies. Communications and IT minister Kapil Sibal said the government may also offer tax incentives to local tech companies after the Direct Tax Code comes into place.
The country's small and mid sized IT companies have been impacted with the 10-year tax holiday from theSoftware Technology Parks of India scheme coming to end in 2010. "We'll certainly try and do something," Sibal said on a possibility of sops for the small IT firms.
He added that he was hopeful of 'formalizing' the policy by end 2011. The IT policy is the second of the three policies that the ministry intends to deliver by December. Earlier this week, Sibal unveiled the draftnational electronics policy which aims to bring $100 billion worth of investment into the sector and create 28 million jobs over the next nine years.
Sibal, who also handles the portfolio of telecoms, will introduce draft of the much-awaited national telecoms policy on Monday.
The National IT policy aims at increasing its of skilled IT professionals four times to 10 million by 2020 while envisaging the extensive use of mobile phones and the recently launched world's cheapest tablet Aakash, at $35, as a platform for delivering public services to all Indians.
"Aakash will be the delivery system for all public services. Going forward, we will improve the product," Sibal said. Besides making use of social media to reach out to the masses, the government also plans to integrate Aadhar to offer public services to the masses and simplify their delivery.
It plans to increase affordability of accessibility through IT. The government also plans to promote innovation and R&D in cutting edge technologies and development of applications and solutions in areas like localization, location based services, mobile value added services, cloud computing, social media and utility models.
Sibal added that the government was keen on introducing the electronic delivery of services bill in the winter session of Parliament. The bill mandates states to provide all services electronically within five years.
The minister also emphasised on changing copyright laws in a bill pending in Parliament, at the same time not compromising nation's IT security.
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