[Indic-computing-users] FEATURE: VERN VERSION (BusinessToday, March 16, 2003 www.business-today.com)

[Frederick N. (FN) <fr...@by...>]

V E R N   V E R S I O N

With companies such as HP, Microsoft, Red Hat, NIIT, and Reliance putting 
serious money into it, the vernacular computing market in India tooks set 
to bloom in 2003. 

BY PRIYA SRINIVASAN
www.business-today.com

AS REVOLUTIONS GO, THIS IS A QUIET ONE. IT HAS ITS BEGINNINGS IN hundreds 
of villages such as Madantusi in Uttar Pradesh, where children exposed to 
computers and the Net have their own unique lexicon -- 'dumroo' (drum in 
Hindi) for the hourglass icon and 'sui' (needle) for the cursor. Sify and 
Rediff, portals with local language sites and Hindi-site Webduniya (its 
user base has almost trebled from 426,310 to 12,44,493 since 2000) are 
card-carrying members. And converts to the cause include the likes of HP, 
Microsoft, Red Hat, Reliance, C-DAC, and Mumbai-based start-up Netcore 
Solutions.

Welcome to the great Indian language computing offensive.

Efforts to take computing to the masses are as old as computing itself, 
but it is the Internet -- and the hundreds of web-based applications 
following in its wake -- that has endowed them with a sense of relevance 
and purpose.

The most viable manifestation of this is content. "The Internet is a 
self-organising system," says Sugata Mitra, the Chief Scientist at 
computer education firm NIIT. Madantusi is one of the 100-odd villages 
covered under its Minimally Invasive Education initiative.

"As content providers see enough people to cater to, they begin to cater 
to them; what we are seeing now is the beginning of the movement." And 
with the Net breaking the ice with a hitherto computer-shy audience, 
companies are queued up in the wings with their own vern versions.

THE ENGINE INSIDE

Software is an obvious gambit. By 2003-end  Microsoft with launch Hindi 
versions of Windows XP and Office 11. Around the same time, if not 
earlier, Red Hat will be out with a Hindi-enabled version 9.1 (built 
around Linux).

Both are priced offerings, but Red Hat's software can, unlike Microsoft's, 
be copied to several machines. After all, Red Hat is an advocate of the 
Free Software, or the Open Source Software movement. Several hundred 
developers who swear by Open Source are working towards making the layers 
that go over the operating system support local languages.

Part of the umbrella GNU (a recursive acronym that stands for GNU's Not 
Unix) system this includes the GNOME layer (GNU Network Object Model 
Environment), a sort of Windows-like desktop for non-Windows environment 
and the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

		PHOTO: Rajesh Jain, managing director, Netcore
		Solutions. This former Indiaworld man will soon launch
		a PC branded Emergic Freedom that will be enabled
		in Hindi -- from Operating System to Graphical
		User Interface. Prices will start as low as Rs 5000.

Linux is one kernel around which GNU systems are built -- the Free 
Software Foundation has its own kernel of choice, HURD -- and most local 
language experiments use it.

"We see a definite demand for localisation and from a Linux standpoint, a 
lot of work is happening since anyone can take on this work," says Javed 
Tapia, Director, Red Hat India, referring to the fact that any developer 
is free to participate in the movement to provide local language support 
on the GNU/Linux system.

The result is a rash of activity among developer communities (and 
companies) across the country. 

"GNU systems are becoming very popular at both the government and 
enterprise level -- it's not just about cost, the technology helps us to 
share, distribute and improve; that these systems are economical is 
incidental," says Nagarjuna G., Director, Free Software Foundation of 
India and a scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, 
Mumbai.

Several governments (and arms of governments), non-governmental 
organisations and environmental institutions are currently working on Open 
Source support for languages. Microsoft's reaction to a body of work that 
could change the face of the market is predictable.

"Drill down a little on the Open Source work and you will find a 
reinvention of the wheel," says Raveesh Gupta, Program Manager, 
Localisation, Microsoft India. "Why replicate all the work on another 
platform?"

The real issue, according to Gupta, isn't about who is doing what, but 
about adopting a common standard for application development. The man 
isn't far off the mark -- this is the refrain of anyone involved in 
creating language software.

The problem is that developers of Indian language software have been 
following proprietary standards. That means data stored in one software 
cannot be transferred to another, at least not without expending time and 
money. That goes against the cross-platform philosophy that resides at the 
heart of computing today and has raised the hackles of anyone involved 
with local language computing development.

"It is a big issue. Without some agreed-upon standard, even simple things 
we have come to expect from most applications, like cut-and-paste, are not 
possible," says San Francisco-based Tapan Parikh, the founder of EkGaon, a 
company that develops Indian language websites and applications.

There is a solution -- the adoption of the Unicode standard for all Indian 
languages. 

For those who came in late, Unicode is a standard that represents 
characters as integers. The widely used ASCII (American Standard Code for 
Information Exchange) code uses 7 bits for each character; Unicode does 
16. Ergo, it can represent some 65,000 unique characters, making it just 
the thing for a multi-language pan-Indian software.

The problem is that developer groups working on some Indian languages feel 
Unicode does not support some fundamental characters. The government has 
now stepped in and is trying to resolve the issue.

"We are in the midst of a trial or suggested version of Unicode. There is 
no controversy, but some southern languages need more numbers of letters 
and combinations, they need more space. Also there are more 
'samyuktaksharas' (combined letters) in these languages," says P.K. 
Chaturvedi, Director, Ministry of Information Technology. 

Still, Unicode  won't solve a bigger problem threatening the spread of 
langauge computing -- access.

		WHY LANGUAGE MAKES SENSE
		It's simply a matter of numbers
		Sify's page views on language portals
	
		TAMIL Dec 2000		5,00,000
		      Jan 2003		8,00,000

		TELUGU Dec 2000		1,80,000
		       Jan 2003		3,50,000

		MALAYALAM Dec 2000	1,00,000
			Jan 2003	3,00,000

		HINDI	Dec 2000	1,00,000
			Jan 2003	1,25,000

WHERE'S THE CHASSIS?

Access has long been a hurdle to the spread of computing in India. Some 
analysts reckon PCs will have to cost a seventh what they do now before 
computing can reach the masses. 

That's where Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions comes in. 

The company, promoted by Rajesh Jain -- the same lucky man who sold 
Indiaworld to Satyam for close to Rs 5000 million -- has an altogether 
different game plan to take access to the masses. "We are the topmost 
layer of the pyramid as far as PC and Net penetration go with just about 
10 million Net users and 2 million PC owners," says Jain.

"The next three years will be about reaching the 100 million mark for Net 
users and how are we going to do it? The approach has to be bottom up -- 
its about making technology accessible to people and language is a big 
component of that."

Jain is currently in the process of taking his desktop PC, branded Emergic 
Freedom, to the market. 

One model of the PC that will be enabled in Hindi (right from the OS to 
the Graphical User Interface) will be priced as low as Rs 5000. How does 
Netcore plan to do it? For starters, the PC will run totally on Open 
Source software -- that cuts out licence fees. Then, based on Jain's 
belief that most users do not really want hard disks, but simple access 
devices that can be connected to a network, Emergic Freedom will be a 
network PC of sorts (Netcore is in discussion with cable operators and 
other possible partners to create a server-centric computing environment). 
And, finally, the company will cannibalise old boxes or discarded PCs to 
really drive down the price.

Only time will tell whether Jain's gamble works, but the urgent need to 
drive down PC prices dramatically to catch the next wave of users is 
indisputable.

In fat, HP Labs India has internalised the need enough to actually call 
one of its language systems divisions 'Affordable Access Devices". HP Labs 
India is currently working on developing an access device called 
Scriptmail where mail can actually be written by hand and then, through a 
simple interface, carried on the Internet.

Another interesting project at HP Labs India is the Directed Dialogue 
System whereby users can actually call out questions into phones and have 
answers called out to them from existing databases, thanks to an online 
voice-enabled Indian language system.

"There are five times as many telephone users in India as Net users and 
this is a system which will make use of that existing base," explain 
Srinivasan Ramani, Research Director, HP Labs India.

		IT's FREE
		Free software for language computing -- a WIP list

		o NCST IndiX Project: This will enable Hindi and other
		Indian languages on GNU/Linux systems

		o IndLinux: Support for Hindi on GNOME

		o Swathanthra Malayalam Computing Project: Support
		for Malayalam on GNOME

		o IIT Madras: Support for Tamil on GNU/Linux system.

Government-run C-DAC is also trying its hand at manufacturing and selling 
a language-enabled device on a commercial scale. The Pocket Translator, 
originally developed for tourists, is now being Internet-enabled and the 
organisation is approaching manufacturers with a view to launch the 
product this year, says R.K.Arora, Executive Director, C-DAC.

From the myriad efforts underway to kick-start language computing, it is 
evident that India is at the threshold of a vern wave. One trigger could 
be all it takes to create a commercially significant user base. That could 
be Netcore's PC, a new access device, or anything else. 

This is a revolution waiting to happen. (###)

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