The Directorate of Information Technology (DIT), recently set up to computerise entire functioning of the State Government, will provide each minister with a laptop by the end of this year. And as the bureaucracy is always accused of red tapism and delayed decisions, the DIT has also decided to equip about 50 senior bureaucrats with the laptops to accelerate decision making.

``We have decided to provide the ministers and the secretaries with most modern laptops. The sole objective is to make them incorporate computers in their work. They can store and retrieve any information anytime anywhere, which will help them take decisionsfaster. If the ministers are not computer literate, we have plans to conduct training classes for them in Mantralaya. They can spend three to four days a week and our instructors will teach the ministers how to use the laptops,'' an officer from DIT told The Indian Express.

The officer added that tenders will soon be floated to supply the DIT with the laptops. It will take another couple of months to complete the procedure and by January 1999, the ministers will have the laptops with them, the officer informed. He said that budgetary provision of about Rs 1 crore has been made by the DIT to buy the laptops. The laptop will not go with the minister whenever the government changes and will be property of the department concerned, he added.

However, the mantris and the babus should have started using these most modern computers at least four months back. The DIT had in July 1998 sent a proposal to the ministers requesting them to buy a laptop and add the expenses to their respective department's annualbudget. ``But the ministers asked what was a laptop and why they should buy the same. We thought it was high time the ministers became computer literate and hence decided to buy the laptops on our own,'' added the officer. Apart from the laptops, the DIT will also purchase about 1,500 computers to be provided to the 27 government departments in Mantralaya. ``This will help us achieve our aim of making Mantralaya paperless and accelerate State Government's functioning,'' the officer said.