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INTERVIEW
www.dewangmehta.com
An
interview by INDIA TODAY's Ninad D Sheth.
Dewang
Mehta, the chubby 36 year old is the public face of the $4 billion software
and dot com industry. As President of the National Association of Software
and Service Companies (NASSCOM) he represents industry opinion on IT policy.
He spoke
with India Today's Ninad D Sheth recently after returning from
a roadshow in the US (he accomapanied IT minister Pramod Mahajan), on
IT policy, prospects in Germany and more.
IT:
What was the response to the IT minister's visit to the USA?
Mehta: There was tremendous interest from three principal audiences.
First we targeted the braintrust by taking the minister to Kellogg's,
Stanford and Harvard (B-schools). Here he was received with great interest.
He also met with the leaders of Silicon Valley -- both those who had invested
in India and those who had not. As a result firms such as Scott McNealy's
Sun Microsystems have already decided to bring in more funds to their
Indian operations and Jerry Yang's yahoo! and others have decided
to set up shop in India. The minister also met with the Federal Bureau
of Investigation (FBI) and discussed the specter of cyber crime.
IT:
There is some controversy about figures of software exports from India.
When will it get sorted out?
Mehta: Well there is no controversy, we at NASSCOM like to be sure
of our sums. We compile a list of performers company wise and this is
a time consuming process we expect that our figures will be out latest
by July 2000.
IT:
Is the end of the Y2K gravy train likely to hamper software exports?
Mehta: This is unlikely to happen. Y2k was about 20 percent of
software exports but with ASP, E-commerce solutions, the Euro business
and IT enabled services coming to the fore, I see an increase in the export
growth rate.
IT:
NASSCOM was a vigorous advocate of protecting privacy and dropping the
clauses that threatened it from the IT bill. What have been the positive
and negative outcomes of the IT bill?
Mehta: Well there are many positives. For the first time in the
country E-commerce now has a legal stamp. There is now a legit structure
for E-commerce. You can file your income tax returns on the net, you can
give property tax as well. What is more you can now have valid electronic
signature. Second, there is also a move for computerization of land records
and the e-mail is now a legal document. Earlier the 1872 Act did not recognize
computer printouts as legally presentable in the court of law. Lastly
it has also defined cyber crime. This is critical if the new system is
to be governed properly.
IT:
What of the negative areas?
Mehta: Yes, there are some gray areas. Cyber squatting, where you
may register a famous domain name and than sell it for a fortune has not
been tackled. We also need to frame proper rules around the infamous Section
80 of the act which states that an officer of DSP rank (deputy superintendent
of police) or above can arrest you without a warrant for a cyber crime.
Incidentally I discovered that the FBI has the same rule is the USA but
what is critical is that the circumstances of its usage need to be governed
so as not to make this a tool for harassment.
IT:
What is your outlook for the IT industry?
Mehta: Take any aspect and you see growth. US needs 300,000 skilled
Indians, now Japan with 15,000 and Germany with 20,000 have joined the
bandwagon and so have Korea with 10,000 and the UK with 60,000. If we
get our telecom infrastructure in shape and increase the bandwidth from
the current 1.2 GB to 100 GB by 2008 I see the industry growing to $87
Billion by that time. Look, what oil is to Saudi Arabia IT could be to
India -- and there is no threat of environment damage through an oil spill!
More
about Dewang Mehta.
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