Concerted national program to boost PC penetration

There is a need to adopt a concerted national program for increasing the

penetration of PC. This is one of the suggestions of the PC Penetration

Committee on improving PC penetration, Internet and domestic software. The

committee also recommended that the Income Tax Act be amended to include

deduction of home PC purchase price, under the recently created section 80c,

till 2010. The body has delineated a vision for India, which encompasses

increasing the pace of IT penetration and achieving the levels prevailing in

China in the next three to four years.

According to the report, India, by 2008, should achieve a PC penetration of

65 per 1,000 from the existing 14 per 1,000; Internet penetration of 40 per

1,000 from existing five per 1,000 (number of subscribers); the domestic

software industry, including the local language applications and content

industry, to grow seven-fold from existing about $4 billion (Rs 1,900 crore) to

$28 billion (Rs 13,300 crore).

The report envisages all villages to be made online for agricultural,

healthcare and education services. Stressing on the need to create a proper

ecosystem, the report stated that IT should contribute significantly to the

growth of the national GDP.

The report also stresses on the urgent need to implement the set of

recommendations and the mission mode projects, as they are critical not only for

national development, but also essential to reach the target levels of IT

penetration in the country. Also, the recommendations are interlinked and the

desired multiplier affect can be had only once these are implemented in totality

and in a synchronized fashion.

Dropping handset rates have taken place without government subsidy, thus it can be so in the PC segment also DAYANIDHI MARAN

The report further stated that e-panchayati raj and e-governance efforts must

be aligned. Emphasizing on the need to reduce cost of PC, the report stated that

100% depreciation on IT investments should be done.

IT manufacturing in India needs to be incentivised to attract manufacturing

in critical components such as HDD, CD/DVD-ROM drives. According to the report,

the government should develop a package to attract investment in key anchor

industries, which will be able to pull in investments in other associated parts

of the value chain.

Stressing on the need of increasing PC penetration to make broadband

available for every citizen, Minister for Communication and IT, Dayanidhi Maran

said that PC penetration has to be taken up as a national subject. "It has

to be a national agenda and needs to be directly monitored by the Prime

Minister," he said.

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