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Despite having over 60 engineering colleges and a 6-year old IT policy, the state that pioneered e-Governance in India-Stockholm Challenge award winning Gyandoot project-Madhya Pradesh today, clearly lags behind on the IT and e-Gov front compared to other states. Nevertheless, the state has the courage to officially accept that it failed to attract IT investment leading to inadequate growth in employment opportunities and revenue from the business in this sector. However, the State IT Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya is determined to change it all. Talking to Shubhendu Parth of Dataquest, in a long discussion interspersed with several 'off the record' comments, he outlined his IT dream for the state. Excerpts: 

Six years after Madhya Pradesh first got its IT policy, the State has come out with a fresh policy framework. How much of this is aimed towards getting more IT investments in the state and creating IT infrastructure for development?
The Madhya Pradesh IT policy would be a three-part framework. The first part would include framework for attracting investment in the State. This would also address the issue of employment. Secondly, it also aims at improving the function of government departments by strengthening the IT infrastructure. The third focus area for us, is the IT education. This is to make sure that the IT education being imparted in Madhya Pradesh keeps pace with the fast changing IT dynamics. We are looking at the IT policy to bring education closer to information technologies. One needs to accept that the standard of education is not at par with other states in the country, particularly the southern region states. Our effort would be to strengthen the system through ICT intervention. We are also looking at providing the basic IT education to everybody from class five onwards.

What kind of companies are you looking at for investing in the State?
Well, when we talk about improving the education system in the State and an investor friendly policy, we are also talking about generating more jobs for our unemployed youth. Hence, we are looking at investments from all kinds of companies-from software services and development companies to BPOs and call centers. The government alone cannot set up the infrastructure today, specially the IT infrastructure. Hence, we are also looking forward to investments from companies interested in creating infrastructure for the state. The new IT policy aims at creating a favorable environment for such investments under the public-private partnership (PPP) model.

No doubt PPP has proved to be a great model for IT implementation in the country. Nevertheless, it's ultimately the State's responsibility to create the infrastructure. While the Planning Commission has been recommending that the states spend at least 3% of their allocated budget on IT, how much has Madhya Pradesh been spending so far?
We are more or less in sync with the Planning Commission recommendation. In principle, we have decided that each department would be spending 3% of their allocated budget for e-Governance. A provision for this has already been made in the state budget. However, we are now working towards providing better facilities for those willing to invest in Madhya Pradesh. The idea is not to reduce government spending on IT, but to attract additional investments to jointly improve the IT infrastructure.

You are talking about attracting IT and BPO companies to set up shop so that more jobs are created in the State. However, you have also accepted that the standard of education is not at par with many other states. How wide is this gap and how soon can the state bridge it?
I don't think it should take too long. If you look at the statistics, there has been a lot of brain drain from the state. We have several engineering and management schools and colleges producing hundreds of quality manpower that usually moves out of the state because of lack of opportunity. Availability of opportunity will not only ensure that the state retains its talents, it would also ensure that the state is able to attract new talents to fill up many positions. We do have the education infrastructure. What needs to be done is to bring it at par with the best in the country and then excel.

How much of this investment is aimed at acquiring hardware and services, and at government process re-engineering?
I think there is a need for some major changes on this front as the overall social culture in Madhya Pradesh is not very IT friendly. Hence, it's not just about a hardware or software or solution piece, but the issue is also about whether the citizens are actually ready to use it. No matter what the state invests in or the infrastructure it creates, if the society at large is not aware of it and is unable to use it, the purpose is defeated. Hence, we also need to create awareness amongst key people in the society who can showcase the benefits of e-Governance. A good idea would be to train a few people at the village panchayat level, including teachers in the village who can help deliver the benefits of e-Governance to fellow villagers. This might take three-four years to achieve.

Any particular reason why the state has been lagging behind in adopting IT at large?
Well, there are a couple of reasons that can influence development in a society. First, those at the helms of affair in a state need to understand the issues. Then there is a need for a political willingness and vision to bring about the change. It's also important that this political vision is translated into a societal vision before it can actually get adopted. Over the last several years, there has been a complete lack of political understanding and vision on this front. Even our government, which came into power two years back, has not been able to do much on this front so far. However, we do understand the importance of IT and e-Governance, there is a political will and vision and we are committed towards bringing about this change. What is now required is the social will to adopt these changes, which would happen only if we are able to create better infrastructure.

So what is the state doing on the e-Gov front on the projects that are being funded by the central government under the National e-Governance Action Plan (NEGP)?
While we expect the MPSWAN to be operational by June 2006, the state government is also working on a GIS-based Natural Resource Management System (NRMS), which is a state of the art GIS lab for departments that use maps for managing natural resources. The Web-enabled facility is being funded by the department of IT. The Madhya Pradesh government is also actively evaluating the possibility of hosting all departmental IT infrastructures at a central professionally managed data center, which is likely to be setup in Bhopal. We are also looking at setting up a disaster recovery site in Gwalior. Besides, we are also setting up a center for e-Governance in Bhopal that would allow engineering graduates from the IT field to work on live projects. The center will be based on a spectrum of technologies that would include proprietary as well as open source. The department of IT is expected to submit a detailed project report (DPR) on this within six months. 

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