New Delhi: Stating worry over the IT’s dim geographical spreading, Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of State for Commerce said that IT special economic zones (SEZs) were further growing the digital divide.

While addressing the Executive Board of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), Mr. Ramesh told, “SEZs appear to be increasing the digital divide. I have always felt that the true value of SEZs must be judged by the extent to which they help promote labour-intensive manufacturing.”

“But so far, of the 142 SEZs notified, 86 are for IT and IT-enabled services (ITeS) units alone. And of these 86, the usual suspects are most prominent — 26 in Andhra Pradesh, 14 in Tamil Nadu, 13 in Karnataka and 10 in Maharashtra, making a total of 80 per cent in these four States alone,” Mr. Ramesh added.

He demanded Nasscom to actively engage with State governments, which are presently not on the IT radar screen significantly and work with them in order to expand promising locations.

“If Nasscom and a couple of companies get serious, I believe infrastructure and connectivity issues will also begin to get addressed by the Centre in a more time-bound manner. It is a classic chicken and egg situation — IT majors are not present in the Northeast and therefore there is no pressure to improve infrastructure,” he said.

He also sounded out that Indian must now begin to aggressively make use of its IT industry to form up new economic partnerships in countries, which were more important to its interests.

“It is well-known that the development of our IT capability has had a profound impact on Indo-U.S. relations. As the author of Chindia I have absolutely no doubt that Chinese attitudes towards us underwent a fundamental shift when our IT export industry emerged in the U.S. in such a stunning manner,” he added.