Vision for IT Sector in India –

the next step

By
PANKAJ AGRAWALA
Joint Secretary
Govt. of India
Department of Information
Technology
Min. of Communications and IT
 Vision
• India has the potential to become a
significant player in Global knowledge
economy.
• Let us work to enhance Indian share in
global markets from about 1% to 10% in the
long-term.
• Key to success lies in long term research
 Focus
• Identify specific steps and areas for action
• The next step is to give the right impetus to R&D in IT
• Telecom is another key areas for growth of knowledge economy
• The stake holders could be DIT / DOT / MTNL / BSNL/C-DOT / ITI/Other related Academic/ research
agencies

The next step

• Cyberspace is a New World

• Exponential growth means constant radical change
• This new world needs explorers, pioneers, and settlers
• Pioneering research pays off in the long-term
 The next step

• Cyberspace is a New World

• Exponential growth means constant radical
change
• This new world needs explorers, pioneers,
and settlers
• Pioneering research pays off in the long-
term
 The next step……..Contd.

• Long-term research is a public good

• The funding agencies to shift the focus to
long-term research.
• By making larger and longer-term grants,
we hope that university researchers will be
able to attack larger and more ambitious
problems
 Long Range Research Goals
• What makes a good long range research goal?
-understandable
-challenging
-useful
-Testable
-Incremental
-scalability
 Turing’s Vision of Machine
Intelligence
Alan Turing had predicted in 1950, that computers
would be intelligent in 50 years with capacities of
the order of 10 to the power 9 as against human
memory of the order of 10 to the power 12-15.
• This has happened and continues…………..

• Three more predictions

- prosthetic hearing,
- speech,
- and vision
 Bush’s Memex
• Personal Memex : Record everything a
person sees and hears, and quickly retrieve
any item on request
• World Memex : Build a system that given a
text corpus, can answer questions about the
text and summarize the text as precisely and
quickly as a human expert in that field. Do
the same for music, images, art, and cinema
 Telepresence
• Telepresence : Simulate being some other place
retrospectively as an observer
-(Tele Observer): hear and see as well as actually
being there, and as well as a participant, and
simulate being some other place as a participant
-(Tele Present): interacting with others and with the
environment as though you are actually there.
 Future systems
• Trouble free systems : Build a system used by
millions of people each day and yet administered and
managed by a single part-time person
• Dependable Systems
• Secure System : Assure that the trouble free system
services authorized users and information cannot be
stolen (and prove it.)
• Always Up: Assure that the system is unavailable for
less than one second per hundred years i.e.99.999999
% or eight 9’s of availability (and prove it.)
 Future systems(contd.)
• Automatic Programmer: Device a
specification language or user interface that:
(a) makes it easy for people to express
designs (1,000x easier)
(b) computer can compile, and
(c) can describe all applications (design is
complete)
 The Indian R&D Landscape
• Research in National Laboratories (NPL, C-
DAC, CEERI, IISc., TIFR, ECIL, C-DoT,
ISRO
• Research in Academia (IITs, BITs, RECs,
IISc)
• Research in Private Sector (IBM, SUN,
Microsoft, HP, Motorola, HFCL, HCL,
SCL etc.
 Objectives of R&D

• Timely development of replacement of products

being phased out
• Reduction of production cost to increase yield
• Reduction in environmental effect
• Reduction in energy consumption
• Innovation to open up new markets
• Innovation to increase market share
• R&D to increase production flexibility
• R&D to improve cycle time
 Importance of R&D
• Most developed/ developing countries put 5-20%
of profit margin in R&D. Their Govt. Spending in
R&D is also about 5% of GDP
• Most MNCs grow with focus on research. Cisco is
the leader in research with R&D spending at 14 %
of Revenues
• Indian companies and govt. deptts. should follow
suit.
 Factors limiting R&D in India
• Lack of government support
• Inadequate support services and proper
infrastructure in place such as roads,
railways, airports etc.
• Perceived risks too high
• Political instability
Strengths and Primary Drivers
of R&D in India
• Large pool of intellectual capital
• Cheap availability of manpower
• Global recognition of Indian brains and skills
• Rapid approach to globalization
• English as a medium of education
• Fast growing middle class group
• Quality at low cost
 Opportunity Areas in IT
• Grid computing
• Broadband proliferation
• Converged/networked devices
• Miniaturization and personalization
• Offshore sourcing – India as R&D hub
• RFID Tags for tracking and identification i.e. smart
cards
• Biometric devices to carry money or for
identification
• 3 dimensional image processing and holographic
images
• Develop affordable PCs and telephony
THANK YOU