Only a few countries have successfully integrated electronic technology into their economy. India is one such country in the developing world striving to bring about this integration. The electronic computer – a driving force in the electronics revolution – has undergone phenomenal changes since its inception. Computers closely reflect electronics technology; each advance in device technology (vacuum tubes, transistors, integrated circuits, and microprocessors) has more excellent performance and lower prices. This, in turn, has a significant effect on applications.

Now, computers have become a ubiquitous tool for development in every sphere of human activity. While supercomputing based on parallel processors is one goal for solving scientific and engineering problems, artificial intelligence is another goal for solving-knowledge information processing and symbolic processing problems. The impact of those developments is likely to be so penetrating and pervasive that all major industrial nations like Japan, the USA, Europe, and the USSR have initiated major national R&D programmes in new-generation computing.

The Indian computer industry has taken significant strides in the last few years. Wide-ranging indigenous capabilities exist today in the manufacturing of computers as well as software development. The manufacturing and application of personal computers are increasing. There are at least 20 major manufacturers of Personal Computers and over 100 companies involved in sales and value-added retailing. With the availability of Personal Computers at affordable prices and user-friendly software for non-programmer professionals, the usage has increased manifold. Indian companies have been manufacturing microcomputer systems, but the recent transfer of technology for manufacturing Super-Mini computer systems and mainframe systems has brought India to par with the International industry in this range of computer systems. Many activities have started in peripheral manufacturing, such as disc drives, floppy drives, and printers.

Significant efforts are going on parallel in the field of software development. A target of Rs.300 crores has been set for software exports in 1990. These development efforts by Indian Industry have been supported by tremendous growth in demand for computer systems. Another factor responsible for the rapid development of Computers is the enormous potential of the skilled workforce.

The Government has decided to develop a futuristic government in the country to keep pace with the developments. The Fifth Generation Parallel Computer System (FGPCS) programme has thus been launched as a significant electronics technology mission to make India one of the world leaders in advanced computer technology backed by the available technical capability. A Center for Advanced Computing Technology CDACT has also been launched by the Department of Electronics (DOE) as India’s strategic initiative in advanced computing technology. C-DACT will be a mission institution of the DOE, with several academic institutions, research centres, public and private sector units, and individual experts involved. Software development and software exports have been the focus of our computer program.

The Government introduced the software policy in December 1986; the aim of this policy was the integrated development of software for the export and domestic markets, as well as the simplifying procedures and the provision of necessary incentives. In 1986, our software export was of the order of Rs 49 crores. The target for 1989-90 is 300 crores.

While implementing this policy, some problems, bottlenecks, and difficulties have been brought to the GovernmenGovernment’sTo resolve these problems, a high-level committee examines in detail every issue and makes efforts to ensure that prompt corrective action is taken so that business opportunities opened up by the emerging software industry are fully exploited.

The Department of Electronics is tasked with formulating the right strategy for developing microelectronics, the driving force of computer technology today. DOE is setting up design centres with significant companies like PEL, ITI, ECIL, and KELTRON to design and manufacture bipolar ICs and Application ICs ( AS1C) – components increasingly being incorporated into electronic systems. Each facility’s production will be further enhanced, and new facilities will be created wherever necessary. All ASIC design centres will be maxed accessible to industries and universities. Another growing need is in the field of Information Technology for Indian languages. The question arises whether we should continue information acquisition, processing, and dissemination activity in English since most Indian languages are well-structured syntactically,

Practically and graphically, the task of evolving information technology for Indian languages is not that difficult. Much more complicated languages like the Chinese have already formed their way into computers.

The Government is holding to high priGovernmentiy in its policy. Several projects have already been funded in this area. One of these projects has resulted in a feasible Indian script terminal that can be connected to various computer systems. Moreover, the concept of Generation Computer has spurred interest in natural language processing. Plans to launch a significant thrust for R&D in Information technology for Indian languages have begun. The initial blueprint has been electronic Tools in the Indian Language ETIL).

The R&D thrust in Indian languages will cover intelligent text processing and publishing systems, interactive programming and query environments, special-purpose software tools, learning systems at various levels in different disciplines, creative writing systems, and practical machine translation systems.

Source: Press Release
PIB
PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU
GOVERNMENT OF INDIA
Date: August 21, 1988