Monday, May 27, 2002		Article

PIB site gets more popular
V.P. Prabhakar

THE Press Information Bureau (PIB) Website (http;//pib.nic.in.) has acquired a prominent place in the Government on India's information dissemination infrastructure. Its popularity is claimed to be increasing with about 50,000 hits a day.

The PIB, it may be added, is the nodal agency of Central Government to disseminate information to the print and electronic media on government policies, programmes, initiatives and achievements. The Website provides mediapersons and researchers with authentic text and visuals regarding government programmes and policies. Its photo gallery and archives is a useful record for reference. The PIB's Website is the only government Website to have a separate page for each of the Prime Minister's foreign visits. The site also hosted the India's launch of good urban governance campaign website (http;//pib.nic.in/ urban governance).

The PIB opened its offices at Dehradun and Raipur the last year. It also proposes to open its offices at Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, and Itanagar, the capital of Arunachal Pradesh, which are the only state capitals without a PIB office.

Pondicherry — UT with IT
S.C. Dhall

PONDICHERRY, which is one of the important tourist destinations, is doing well in the hardware sector and almost all leading hardware players have a unit here. There are almost 50 computer hardware units that are producing nearby 5 lakh computers, making a total turnover of Rs 2,850 crore.

It is believed that more than 50 per cent of the branded computers marketed in India are produced in Pondicherry and this union territory is understood to be the new hardware capital of India.

The city has already attracted significant investments from major IT players. To attract IT industries, the government of Pondicherry has set up an Information Technology park in Pondicherry Engineering College, Kalapet, at an estimated cost of Rs 17.50 crore. A special package of incentives and concessions like investment subsidy, connectivity subsidy, subsidy for installing generators are offered by the government besides number of other benefits.

Due to the ceaseless efforts and friendly operating approach of the government, a number of industrial, electronics units are in this town like ATM giant NCR Corporation, LG Electronic, HCL Info System and Wipro Peripherals being the leading IT players. An earth station to improve the data connectivity has also been set up here.