MUMBAI, NOV 6: Terming Information Technology (IT) as India's tomorrow, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee today announced three new government schemes which will make computers affordable and accessible to poor students and families.In the city to inaugurate the eighth computer centre of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, the Prime Minister stated,``The three new schemes - Vidyarthi Computer Scheme, Shikshak Computer Scheme and School Computer Scheme - will help in bringing down the price of a multimedia PC (personal computer) to less than Rs 25,000. The schemes will also have other innovative financial packages.'' But he did not elaborate on the schemes.The Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan's computer centre will impart free training to 2,400 poor students annually. Stating that India can become an IT superpower if computer education is not just confined to those who know English or those who can afford it, Vajpayee said, ``IT is a major leveller in our society and will lead to the decongestion of the urban centres,when the whole world gets connected, people will do their work from wherever they are.''While confessing that he never used a PC all his life, Vajpayee added that in a short span of six months, the government has taken a number of initiatives to promote IT, the aim being, to achieve software exports worth $ 50 billion by the year 2008.The PM also informed that the second report of the state task force was aimed at making India a major hardware manufacturing centre. Talking of the new Internet policy, he said that private companies will be issued licences to become Internet Service Providers (ISP) from tomorrow itself. ``The Indian content, especially the educational content, should also increase on the Internet,'' he said.At the same function, Vajpayee also released three books related to the life of Mahatma Gandhi, by Bhavan's Gandhiana Publications. The three books are: Mahatma Gandhi's Letters to Americans (from 1917 to 47), The Mahatma and the Poetess (A selection of lettersexchanged between Gandhi and Sarojini Naidu) both compiled by Dr E S Reddy, and The Life of Mahatma Gandhi by Louis Fischer.The function was also attended by Governor Dr P C Alexander, Chief Minister Manohar Joshi, Deputy Chief Minister Gopinath Munde, and Local MP Murli Deora among other dignitaries.Murli Deora, who is also the vice-chairman of the Bhavan's `Gandhi Institute of Computer Education & Information Technology', said that the main aim of the institute is to have at least 50 free computer centres all over India, including Assam and other parts of North-East, by the end of 2000.The centre is sponsored by IBM, which has donated Rs 75 lakh for three years to the centre to meet the cost of training and maintenance. The total project cost is about Rs 1.4 crore.
