Big leap as Mahajan opens software park in Guwahati

GUWAHATI, AUG 13: India is fast emerging as an IT giant in the world and its software exports will cross the US $ 50 billion mark within t...

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GUWAHATI, AUG 13: India is fast emerging as an IT giant in the world and its software exports will cross the US $ 50 billion mark within the next 10 years, Union Minister for Information Technology Pramod Mahajan said here today.

Inaugurating a software technology park, Mahajan said it was a miracle, and added that the Government believed in performing miracles of such sort. Software exports from the country had already grown from Rs 10.94 crore in 1998-99 to Rs 17,000 crore in 1999-2000, with the software technology parks established by the Government accounting for about 69 per cent of it, Mahajan said.

Dismissing the myth that the country was suffering due to a massive brain drain, the minister said that was no longer a major problem. “There was a time when we used to call the young talent leaving the country traitors. But now they have become role models for the new generation,” he said. Mahajan asserted that the IT revolution and the nuclear explosion at Pokharan had enhanced the international prestige of the country and given it a status “which we never had in our living memory”.

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Terming the Guwahati Software Technology Park a major step towards developing the north-eastern region, Mahajan also made a fervent appeal to the insurgents groups to shun the path of armed revolution and take to IT revolution.

He announced that the Government was going to link all developmental blocks of the country through the internet in the next two years; the intake capacity of all engineering colleges in India too would be doubled in another year and tripled in 2002.

As many as 25 companies have approved of export operations from the Guwahati Software Technology Park, set up at a cost of Rs five crore.