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Marketing a weak link in TN wooing big names
CHENNAI Nov. 12. Tamil
Nadu does not "talk much'' of its achievements in Information Technology
or its unique features as an investment destination. That is why some of
the big names are missing here, consultants and officials told an
international IT conference.
A couple of other States were on top of the "recall''
list with the world's IT community mainly because of their marketing
strategies; not because they were better than Tamil Nadu.
Hard selling the State at the two-day seminar organised
here by the OCED (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development)
Development Centre, the Central and State Governments, they said every
fourth engineer in India graduated from an institute in Tamil Nadu. Social
cohesion was a fact of life here, power abundant and the number of mandays
lost in agitations among the least. Added to these, the State was ranked
the third best in terms of Human Development Index.
The Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, herself set the stage
for promoting the State, detailing its achievements in various fields and
the fact that it had taken the lead in many IT initiatives.
Both the `hard' and `soft' indices were comparable with
the best in the country and the State had as many as 10 identified
`clusters' of economic and industrial activity. Even Maharastra - despite
its larger industrial base - had only six such clusters, said a Ma Foi
representative (a management consultancy firm), quoting a London School of
Economics study.
The conference discussed the fact that the IT revolution
and attendant prosperity should not be confined to islands in the country;
there was need for spreading the benefits among all sections. While
academics led by Ted Tschang from the Singapore Management University said
that unless the technology proved economically sustainable, there would be
no way of its benefits reaching out to the poor and to those in villages.
A few other academics, including Nirvikar Singh from the
University of California, U.S., said what mattered was an ``enabling
environment.''
The Government had to make available infrastructure and
the rest should be left to the local entrepreneur.
The Tamil Nadu IT Secretary, Vivek Harinarain, said the
model in the State had proved sustainable.
The only facility being provided to the entrepreneur was
a loan from a local bank. No other sops were being given. Despite this,
there was a good response to the idea of setting up of computer kiosks and
Internet booths.
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