The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Saturday, January 6, 2001,
Chandigarh, India

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46,000 seats added to IT courses
From Girja Shankar Kaura
Tribune News Service

NEW DELHI, Jan 5—The shortage of software professionals in India and abroad has prompted the government to increase the number of seats in the information technology and related areas in educational institutions around the country.

The Prime Minister’s announcement to set up a National Mission for Technology Mission notwithstanding, educational institutions this year will offer 46,000 additional seats to students wanting to pursue courses in software technology .

The initiative taken by the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry will go a long way in making India the hub for sourcing IT professionals for companies in India and abroad. The initiative comes at a time when countries all over the world, including the USA, Germany and Japan, have opened their doors to IT experts from India.

The Centre has already given its consent for increasing the number of seats in IT and related areas in educational institutions and accordingly, the states have gone about creating additional seats in colleges and technical institutions.

Of the additional seats that would be available, more than 35,000 would be at the degree and Master of Computer Application (MCA) level. The rest 11,000 seats would be available at the diploma level.

The increase in seats follows the HRD Ministry’s advice to the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), which is the UGC’s counterpart in technical education. The Ministry had advised the AICTE to immediately increase the intake of students and sanction additional courses in the IT and related subjects.

Sources in the HRD Ministry said that the AICTE then invited applications from institutions around the country, seeking their advice on how many seats they could increase and accordingly providing them the requisite sanction. The step was taken in view of the growing demand of IT professionals in the country, the sources said.

As per available reports, as many as 189 educational institutions in Tamil Nadu have been given sanction to increase the number of seats in the IT and related areas. Some of the other states where the institutions have been given a green signal to increase the number of seats include Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab.

Incidentally, to consider this issue of ensuring availability of requisite number of qualified IT professionals in the country a special task force under the chairmanship of the HRD Minister, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, and consisting of the Information Technology Minister, Mr Pramod Mahajan, had also been set up. The task force has prepared an interim report and would be preparing its final report soon.

As per the interim report, the task force has made 47 specific recommendations to respond to the IT manpower challenge. These recommendations specifically relate to IT faculty development, IT curriculum and course development, strengthening of computing and networking facilities, digitisation and modernisation of libraries, use of IT for administrative support services and promoting interface with industry.

The recommendations when implemented would help in increasing the availability of quality IT manpower in the country. It will also help the Indian software services sector to increase its productivity and move up the value chain, enabling the country to capture a larger share of global markets of IT software and services.

According to the report, though the Government has not set any separate fund at the national level to provide information technology education at the school level, but the 11th Finance Commission has recommended an amount of Rs 245.53 crore for computer training of schoolchildren. In addition, the Government has earmarked an amount of Rs 100 crore for 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 for revival of Computer Literacy and Studies in Schools (CLASS) Project.

This project seeks to provide computer education to students of secondary and senior secondary classes in the Government and Government-aided schools throughout the country. Identification of schools under both initiatives will be done at the implementation stage.The Central Government has also decided to provide IT education in Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodaya Vidyalayas in the country.

The steps taken by the HRD Ministry are in line with the thoughts expressed by the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee at his recent address while inaugurating the 88th session of the Indian Science Congress. The Prime Minister said to bridge the gap between demand and supply, the Government was seriously considering setting up a National Mission for Technology Education. It would aim to ramp up, on a crash basis, the facilities at IITs, RECs and other premier science and engineering colleges, the Prime Minister said.