The measures to be taken by the industry and the Government to survive the slowdown will be on top of the agenda at the meeting. Sources at the Ministry of Information Technology say that the Government intends to present an aggressive stand and insist that it has done its job by promoting Indian IT competence in different countries, but that industry has failed to capitalise on the initiative and remains dependent on the US market only.

"The Government has been promoting Indian software industry in countries of Europe, Asia and Latin America to get a balanced geographical spread of the business. The ministry of information technology has also signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with countries like UK, Germany and Brazil to facilitate business and to ensure that visa norms are relaxed in these countries. But the industry has not translated that into business opportunities," argues a highly placed official in the Ministry of Information Technology.

On the flip side, the issue of the recent tax burden on software imposed by the Karnataka State Government is also expected to be raise by the industry. "Taxing software services is a negative signal to the industry. The Government will have to keep software out of the tax net for retaining the cost advantage factor for India to survive the slowdown," said a industry source.

Though the committee was originally scheduled to meet to discuss pending issues of the last meeting such as private participation in national initiatives of IT manpower development and IT for masses, the impact of slowdown has taken the precedence over all other matters, said the ministry official.

"We expect the industry to come out and suggest initiatives which should be taken to arrest the adverse impact of slowdown of Indian IT industry. India will have to act swiftly to deal with the situation to achieve the software export targets by 2008," said the ministry official.

``The Government is still ready to do whatever it can to support the industry to deal with the situation but industry has to take the plunge first,'' according to the official line being touted in preparation of the April 14 meeting. It is believed that the Ministry is of the view that the Indian software industry has not seriously pursued the market in the rest of the world, primarily as language was a barrier and the gestation period of projects was more in these countries as compared to the US.

The meeting of the committee will be chaired by the Minister of Information Technology, Mr Pramod Mahajan. The members of the panel include the representatives of other concerned ministries such as Ministry of Telecommunication, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Commerce.

The industry representatives on the panel include Mr N Narayana Murthy, chairman of Infosys, Mr Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, Mr B Ramalingaraju, chairman of Satyam, Mr F C Kohli, vice chairman of Tata Consultancy, Mr Sunil Mittal, Chairman, Bharti group, Mr Rajeev Chandrashekhar, chairman and managing director, BPL Telecom, Mr R S Pawar, chairman of NIIT and Mr Satish Kaura, chairman of Samtel.

The panel also has representatives from industry associations such as NASSCOM, CII and FICCI.