Beyond Barriers

Language is intended to lower barriers not raise them, but more
than 90 crore Indians have been left out of the computing revolution

Over the
past decade, both IT and Indian languages have discovered each other as
impediments in each other's growth. While a large mass of population is left
out because of a 'lack of English' knowledge, the other school of thought
says that the presence of so many languages has curbed the growth of IT in the
country. Obviously, a lot has to go into bridging this gap and to make sure that
Indian language technology catches up with the strides of the fast developing
technology.

In the words of B
Mallikarjun, the Central Institute of Indian languages, Mysore, “The variety
and richness of natural languages is itself an impediment for the growth of IT.
Applications tend to be more standardized or homogenized because technology
becomes easier only with standardization. In order to control the damage being
done to Indian languages due to globalization and information technology, the
concept of localization of technologies is advocated.”

Though the going seems
tough, the tough are already on the go. Among a few verticals that is aggressive
on the use of local languages in IT, the Indian e-Gov initiatives have come
across as a strong user and supporter of Indian language software. A number of
initiatives promoting and propagating the use of Indian language software but
there are still miles to go.

The Key Drivers

It goes without saying that government is the biggest user of language
software, and this is where local language software applications are silently
causing a big revolution. Without a regional language interface, the
government's main objective of a transparent, people friendly governance
cannot be fulfilled.

Citizen service Centers
(CSC) and rural knowledge centers are major hubs for beneficiaries of such local
language software. It is the important that Gram Panchayats, help them connect
better at the block levels, thereby giving the whole state a tool for seamless
and comfortable internal information interchange.

Some such examples are:
Agmarknet, which is a government of India portal on agricultural marketing, is
available in 8 regional languages. Jagriti E-Sewa, which is a Government of
Punjab initiative for community-owned, people centered information is available
to rural folk in the Punjabi language.

Though government
initiatives are being rolled out at a heady pace, many are still waiting to be
customized to Indian languages. Mala Mittal, Technical Director, NIC says,
“NIC's web-based solution for community information 'eNRICH' that has
been rolled out for the benefit of north-eastern states is currently available
in English. However, it is a matter of time before the content is customized to
the local language.”

In the corporate space
printing and publishing is the only major industry seeking Indian language
software. Not that the market is stagnant here-with new regional news channels
popping up by the day, the demand for software here, keeps on increasing.

Software Availability

According to Frost and Sullivan's 'Language Technologies Market Survey
report', the local language Applications market is expected to cross $64 mn in
2005. The study reveals that the limited availability of vernacular software,
fonts, and lack of standards hitherto have been the major causes. In addition,
the industry is highly nascent and fragmented.

According to Alok
Gupta, CEO, Softmart Solutions, “The issue is not the software alone, the
Indian education sector will have to focus on fundamental quality and efficiency
of vernacular IT education.” Softmart has recently shipped 2000 cases of such
software to the Government of Rajasthan.

Raveesh Bajaj, senior
product manager, office and localization at Microsoft is very positive about the
current situation and future prospects of language software in India, not only
for the government initiatives, but also in other verticals. “SMS in Indian
language is increasing by the day. It is only a matter of being able to provide
the relevant software to the concerned community of users.”

Microsoft's Project
'Bhasha' that was launched in 2003 focused on four key areas
primarily-product localization, government collaboration, academia, and
developer integration and building a local language eco-system through community
involvement. Under the initiative, Microsoft has done a lot of work with the
state and the central government.

Artech India, which is
another major company pioneering work in Indian Language Software since 1984,
has approximately 25% of its software revenues being generated from this stream
of business.  Ajay Poddar, MD,
Artech says, “ Except publishing, we have seen scanty demand for language
software in the corporate sector and even in the home segment. NGO's are
however promoting these software's for citizen reach projects through
kiosks.”

Some of Artech's
clients from the government space include-the PM's office, Defence Research
and Development Organization (DRDO), Ministries of Food, Finance, Science &
Technology and Defence. Some of Microsoft's application users include Ministry
of Railways, Ministry of Communications, and Department of Posts, Governments of
Kerela, Gujarat and Karnataka.

Stumbling Blocks

The slow growth of language software, in both the government and the
industry can be traced back to quite a few reasons. According to Raveesh,
Microsoft, “Earlier the Language applications market was highly fragmented and
de-focused, with different ISVs developing software following different encoding
schemes, leaving many users who were in a need to communicate, operating in
silos. This is the biggest reason why the Indian language software industry has
not seen major growth in its lifetime of existence.”

As Ajay Poddar, Artech
says, “ Data reusability and inter-portability were not seen as important
issues then. Today a significant percentage has shifted to the globally accepted
ISCII and Unicode standard, making language easily portable. Unicode currently
includes 13 scripts, which support 16 Indian languages.”

CDAC had spearheaded
the ISCII movement in India and went on to develop highly sophisticated software
for language computing, some available free of cost. According to Mahesh
Kulkarni, Group Co-ordiantor, Graphics and Intelligence Script Technology
(GIST), C-DAC, Poona, “E-governance initiatives can only succeed with Indian
languages. Though content is sparse and user knowledge has to be increased, Free
CD's and tools available from CDAC for non-commercial purposes, will act as a
catalyst to the whole process.” CDAC has approximately 60,000-65,000
registered users each of such free software for all the languages of Hindi,
Tamil, and Telgu.

As per the MAIT- Frost
and Sullivan study on the local language IT market in India there seem to be
more challenges than drivers. There is a lack of formal IT- based language
training among the users. For the government employee, the citizen sitting at
the Citizen Service Center or the common man who prefers using the computer at
home in Hindi, there is an absence of familiarity of user interface. In most
cases users do not even know that the Indian language software exists.

Future Scenerio

The newspaper reading population of our country is the direct reflection of
the potential language software base of our country. According to a recent Top
10 newspapers survey, English dailies of the pie captured 55-lakh readership,
there were 41 lakh readers of Hindi newspapers, while there were another 40 lakh
readers of regional language newspapers (Bengali, Gujrati, Telgu, Malayalam).
This is an identified, essentially large literate group, which would like to use
regional language applications.

E-Governance aims to
empower citizens, but how many from the above estimated numbers would have the
right kind of empowerment at the click of the mouse. Local Language Computing in
government departments and NGO's, translate to a more transparent and citizen
friendly governance. Undoubtedly, the right propagation and encouragement to
these services currently available would go a long way in making IT, Indian
friendly.

Jasmine
Kaur, New Delhi  

jasminek@cybermedia.co.in