NR Narayana Murthy gave his nod to become Chief Mentor of West Bengal's IT panels. Confirming the development, State Information Technology Minister Partha Chattopadhyay said, "Murthy's advice would help the state IT industry to achieve coveted goals and attract more investment to the sector. I had requested NRM to become chief mentor of the IT panels over phone. On July 20, he sent us a consent letter saying he had accepted the proposal to become chief mentor of the IT panels. We will expect that under his mentorship, best practices of the industry available in the country and abroad will be incorporated in the state."
The state government had again written to Murthy on July 14 seeking his consent as the IT bellwether head was travelling. Murthy wrote back saying, "I accept it (the proposal) with pleasure and look forward to add value to these initiatives of the state."
The two IT panels - one for hardware and another for software - are being formed by the state government to draw a roadmap for the development of the industries and attract more investment. Globally acclaimed technocrat Sam Pitroda is the chairman of both panels. The minister added that the other members of the panels would be industry players like S Radhakrishnan, managing director of Descon, Acclaris (India) MD Kalyan Kar, Joydeep Dutta Gupta, executive director of Deloitte, Ambarish Dasgupta and executive director of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
The IT industry players in Bengal are keenly looking forward to the formation of IT expert committees which, they feel, would lay down guidelines for the growth of the industry in the state. So far, the state had only one IT Policy since 2003.
