WHY INDIA LOOKS TO GNU/LINUX WITH HOPE AND ANTICIPATION.... By Venkatesh (Venky) Hariharan venky1 at vsnl dot com www.indlinux.org
Today, I am going to talk about why GNU/Linux is god's gift to India. To my mind, GNU/Linux represents one of the finest opportunities for taking the benefits of this wonderful technology to the masses. From the standpoint of cultural, political and economic freedom, there are enormous reasons why the GNU/Linux operating system is relevant to India's future in the digital age. That's the reason why my friend Prakash Advani and I started IndLinux.org to localize GNU/Linux to Indian languages. I am therefore happy to announce that we are launching the first release of IndLinux Hindi, called Milan at this event. Milan represents the culmination of three years of work and we plan to localize GNU/Linux in Marathi, Gujarathi and other Indian languages soon to spark off a revolution in computing in Indian languages. This talk is divided into two parts. In the first part, I aim to visualize the future of computing in India and in the second part, I talk about what free software can do for the future of India. >From a research standpoint, my interest is in the history of technology and in the impact of technology on society. Based on past history of technology, I predict that there will be a hundred million computers in India. To work backwords from this number, let me draw an analogy with a technology that is fairly recent so that you can relate to what I am saying. The domestic software industry today reminds me of the TV industry around 6-7 years ago. Around six years ago, most of the TV channels were either in English or in Hindi. How does that compare to the domestic IT scenario in India? Today, almost all applications and operating systems are in English, a language spoken by a mere five percent of India. Even if you run Indian langauge software, it is usually within an environment that is predominanatly in English. Compare this with the situation around six years ago when regional languages were broadcast in two-hour slots on channels that were mostly in English or Hindi. How things have changed! In the last six years, the explosion of regional channels has been absolutely incredible. Today, each of India's regional languages has at least two TV channels. At one point in time one could never have imagined an elitist channel like Star TV broadcasting in Hindi. Now, they are looking beyond Hindi to other Indian languages. Who had heard of channels like Zee or Asianet or Lashkara six-ten years ago? Who could have vizualised 60 million TV sets in India? This reminds me of an old saying in the technology industry. Old hands in this industry say that in the near term we always overestimate its impact and in the long term, we always underestimate it. The reason for the explosion in TV channels is simply because that's where the markets lay and a similar thing is going to happen to the computing industry in India. Many countries for example, do not have populations that add up to a single language in India. A few years ago, when I was in Hungary, I saw that most operating systems were in the Magyar script. Think about it! A mere 14 million people speak the Magyar language, yet they have an operating system of their own. Yet the third largest spoken language in the world-Hindi, which is spoken by 402 million people-has no operating system! How can we call India an IT superpower when we do not even have an operating system in our largest language? When Prakash and I looked at the situation, we thought it was absolutely crazy. If you look deep into the computer, the only language it understands is the binary language that consists of zeroes and ones. It is India that developed the concept of the zero and gave it to the world. And we cannot even develop an operating system of our own! We wanted to create an operating system for India and when we looked around, there was only one choice-GNU/Linux because we could not modify proprietary operating systems. If I wanted to translate "file" into the Hindi equivalent, I had no freedom to do that. The GNU/Linux operating system was a natural choice because it gave us the freedom to add interfaces in any language we chose. Now, take a look at the top twelve Indian languages Language Spoken by Hindi 402 Bengali 83 Telugu 78.7 Marathi 74.5 Tamil 63.2 Urdu 51.8 Gujarati 48.5 Kannada 39 Malayalam 36.2 Oriya 33.5 Punjabi 27.9 Assamese 15.6 Each of these languages are spoken by populations larger than the population of Hungary! The first freedom I mentioned was cultural freedom. From a cultural standpoint, GNU/Linux was an attractive alternative because when lingusitic groups come together to localize GNU/Linux in a transparent manner, localization can be done in a manner that is far more culturally sensitive than any centrally controlled process. For example, should "file" be called a "file" in Hindi because the word is now part of the popular lexicon among Hindi speakers or should it be called something else? Who should decide this? Should a software company decide this or should local linguistic groups decide this? Apart from this, there are even deeper cultural issues that are so deeply embedded in computers that we are not even aware of it. For example, the whole metaphor of "desktops" and "files and folders" evolved from the work of Ben Schneiderman who argued that the interface of the computer must reflect the real world around us. In rural India, where most people have never owned a desk and are used to squatting on the floor, "desktops" and "files and folders" clearly do not reflect their reality. Yet, rural India is where 70 percent of India lives. Therefore, an enormous amount of research needs to be done to invent appropriate user-interface metaphors for India and GNU/Linux is an ideal platform to do this. The second freedom I mentioned was political freedom. We all know that we are in the digital age and one of the most fundamental platforms of the digital age is the operating system. Therefore, any sovereign nation has to make vigorous efforts to control this platform. From a political standpoint, GNU/Linux is one of the most attractive platforms for a sovereign India, because of its openness. The third freedom is economic freedom. In developing countries like India, the per capita income is around $410. If the cost of operating systems and application software itself add up to this number, it is impossible for the vast majority of India to afford this technology. In countries like the US, where per-capita incomes are around $30,000, it may be affordable but not in India. What India therefore needs is software that's priced in rupees and not in dollars and GNU/Linux fits the bill since it is available free. Therefore, it is clear that there are compelling reasons for the adoption of free software. At IndLinux.org, we are committed to keeping our software free - free as in freedom of speech, free as in free beer and free as in free chai! We want to empower every Indian with this technology and believe that this effort is fundamental to India's future. I therefore invite you all to visit our web site at www.IndLinux.org and volunteer to localize Linux to Indian languages. I look forward to working with all of you to take this wonderful technology to the Indian masses. Thank you and Jai Hind! This talk was delivered recently by "Venky" Hariharan at the February 2002 GNUnify festival in Pune, central India. ------------ ***GKD is solely supported by EDC, a Non-Profit Organization*** To post a message, send it to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To subscribe or unsubscribe, send a message to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. In the 1st line of the message type: subscribe gkd OR type: unsubscribe gkd Archives of previous GKD messages can be found at: <http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/>
