First and foremost, a further increase in our budget outlay for education in general as some long-standing and yet unresolved problems still persist. There is also a case for improving the quality of education imparted in the case of government-run schools and colleges. Reform is required at the level of curriculum-development. Also, one needs to ensure that the students actually graduate with at least a minimum level of computer skills that helps them compete in the job market.
 
For computer education in schools and colleges, the government should help them acquire infrastructure. It could include computer hardware, necessary software, faculty, bandwidth, etc. The government should emphasize and encourage the schools to adopt software that can help the students learn in their own language.
 
To enable software industry help the education sector, there should be further cut in the excise duty from 12 percent to 8 percent. The double taxation, which is prevailing on the packaged software including both excise duty or countervailing duty (CVD) and service tax, should be removed and be only one tax levied on packaged software, preferably excise duty. The abolition of dual taxation system will facilitate the cheaper availability of the software.  
 
There's confusion on the taxation in the software industry. The packaged software attracts excise duty/CVD; however, no excise duty/CVD is charged on customized software on media or on license of customized software or even on license of packaged software. When software is downloaded from the Internet, it is subjected to service tax. The state governments also levy a VAT on software. Due to various modes of delivery of software, licenses and various kinds of software, there is no clarity on the exact taxes to be levied. There needs to be clarity whether software would attract excise duty or service tax, as the same item cannot attract both excise duty/CVD as well as service tax.

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