The Hindu : Opinion / Editorials : Boost for Indian language computing

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Monday, Apr 18, 2005

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Opinion - Editorials

Boost for Indian language computing

Few policy-driven initiatives in recent times have advanced the agenda for mass computing in India as much as the recent launch in Chennai of a basket of free software and tools for Tamil computing by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. There is now in the public domain, for one of India's two most ancient languages, a package of free resources comprising more than 200 new fonts (true type and open type) and handy software such as optical character recognition, email, a spell-check and dictionary, a modified Firefox browser, and a suite of office productivity applications. These have been developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Anna University, and a few private companies under the Language Technology Mission of the Ministry of Information Technology. In addition, the Ministry has encouraged Microsoft to make available, at a middling price that can be brought down further, a Tamil language interface pack for Microsoft Office 2003. Launching this package is a first big step in an ambitious effort to provide within a year a battery of computing and software products and solutions for all the 22 scheduled languages of India. Communications & IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran, who has already done much for telephony, for a national internet exchange and the `.in' domain name, and for broadband connectivity, must be commended for delivering on his promise to put Indian language computing on a fast track; this was an item on the ten-point agenda he unveiled when he took charge in May 2004. The Language Technology Mission has intervened effectively with its new software by cleverly tapping India's advanced software capabilities and the open source environment.

It is widely acknowledged that one of the major reasons why computers and the internet have not touched the lives of hundreds of millions of Indians, especially those who live in rural India, is the poverty of digital content in their mother tongues — and of Indian language digital technology tools, products, and services. It is heartening that the IT Ministry has on its immediate agenda the provision, in the public domain, of tools and products such as internet browsers, search engines and email, online translation service tools, and speech-to-text as well as text-to-speech interfaces in various Indian languages. The release of C-DAC software will cheer resource-strapped government departments, panchayati raj institutions, and citizen sector organisations that can now migrate more easily to a computerised environment. The big challenge is making computers and internet connectivity accessible and meaningful to the majority of citizens. An internet subscriber base of 5.4 million (in September 2004) and an estimated internet user population of 15 million (compared with China's 90 million) in a country with a 1.1 billion population indicate how far India has to go in bridging the digital divide.

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