July 26, 2017
Saugata Roy speaks on The Indian Institutes of Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2017
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Sir, I rise to speak on the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2017. I would have been very happy to speak in support of the Bill if the House had been in order. Unfortunately the House is not in order since six members have been suspended. We have appealed for the withdrawal of their suspension; it has fallen on deaf ears. And today we saw another case of injustice: for the same offense that (Bhagwant) Mann was suspended for two sessions, one ruling party member has been let off with a warning. Sir, I have said that there should be justice whether in the case of the Mann or the case of ruling party members.
As far as the Bill is concerned, there is nothing to take exception to. A new Indian Institute of Information Technology is being set up at Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh. Actually it was there already and it was called Indian Institute of Technology, Manufacturing and Design. But now the name is being changed and it is being subsumed as the Indian Institute of Information Technology, in addition to the four Government funded IIITs that are already there. So, the Minister is coming up with a bigger Bill on this issue.
All I want to say is that IT education is in a bad shape in the country. New engineering colleges, claiming to impart IT education, are coming up. They have three or four computers and they say they have a course in IT. Students passing out from there have no idea of hardware. They learn a little bit of software.
So, a national course or curriculum for all information technology courses all over the country should be enunciated so that there is standardisation of information technology education in the country and students are not taken for a ride.
Information technology in our country consists of software. Software is mainly making programmes. But, hardly we are manufacturing any hardware in this country. The chips, the circuits, the large scale integrated circuits are not being manufactured. We must give emphasis to hardware manufacturing and hardware development in this country.
The other issue is about the information technology companies like Wipro, Infosys and TCS; they are normally doing body-shopping. They are taking fresh engineering graduates. They are sometimes paying them for third year. They do not take IT graduates; they are taking students from any engineering course, they are training them in their softwares and asking them to design programmes.
We want these companies to employ the properly educated IT students who have had experience in both softwares and hardwares. With that I say that we have no objection to IIIT at Kurnool; we are happy Andhra will have an IIIT. I hope there is an IIIT at Kalyani.
With that Sir, I again repeat my appeal; please withdraw the suspension of the six MPs and also met out equal justice to Mr Mann and the member of the ruling party who has violated the rules.
Thank you.
