Sandesh Prabhudesai
23 February 1999
The government authorities should adopt a non-interfering approach rather than simply announcing concessions for the IT industry grow in a country like India, feels Harish Mehta, CMD of ONWARD Novell in India and former president of NASSOCOM.
He however also expects the central government to announced further sops for the IT industry in the coming budget, including duty-free hardware imports, 130 per cent depreciation on computerisation and uniform sales tax structure throughout the country.
During his visit to Goa to attend international conference on visual computing, Mehta criticised the central as well as state governments for not applying mind in seriously formulating the IT policy as well as to computerise the whole administration with latest technology.
"Treat IT like water and electricity, which is a necessity for human life today", he says, while expressing discontent over lack of proper mindset among the ones who run the administration, due to which even the development of the country is being hampered.
In terms of policy towards the IT industry, Mehta feels the government should have minimum or no control over it as bureaucratic hurdles and red tapism is affecting its speedy growth. "Let it grow without any interference", he opines.
Reasoning out why the authorities are not utilising the information technology in the administration, he sees no other reason than holding information from the people, whom the rulers trust the least and do not intend to make the administration transparent.
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