BANGALORE, Nov 2: The National IT Task force constituted by the Prime Minister will submit its second report focussed on hardware on Tuesday. ``Hardware and software are two sides of a coin. We need to develop these two systems with the same interest,'' said M G K Menon, vice-chairman, National IT Task force in Bangalore on Monday. Hardware industry in the country will see more growth in the years to come. The duty of inputs should be less than the finished products to have a greater emphasis on grey market, he added.Inaugurating an international technical seminar on `the global village' organised as part of the IT.Com exposition, he said, the IT Task force report will lay emphasis on the importance of availability of infotech software in all major Indian languages.The Task force report will also include among other things the findings of the committee on several bottlenecks involved in the IT sector that posted an export revenue of Rs 7,000 crore during the last fiscal.``Basic cellular operationswill be stabilised. It is embarrassing that out of 21 circles opened up only one is operational as of now, though around six have been given the green signal. We need to open up the entire telecom segment for connectivity in the global village,'' he added.He said electronic governance in the state should be given priority focus. The biggest handicap is the attitudinal changes in the industry. A number of states are moving ahead in inducing the common man by substituting conventional trading into an age of paperless trading.The country is heading for a new century to compete with new emerging economies like Singapore and Korea. It is clear that in a variety of areas we have capabilities. For instance, space programme related complex satellite system and the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DoT) are our own brainchildren.``Individuals with capabilities that we develop are able to work with the people in the US and UK. We indeed say this is not a beginning, but we have been in the business for aquite some time,'' Menon added.``We need to recognise that we are in the Infotech age. The question here is that whether we will be able to sustain in the long-run,'' he pointed out.Addressing the gathering the Karnataka principal secretary for commerce and industry N Vishwanathan said the state has set a target of Rs 10,000 export revenue from software exports from Karnataka by 2002. The IT policy will focus on rationalisation and upgradation of computer education from school level.
