Transiting from catch-up to competitive phase
ICT
is the enabling technology for productivity
enhancement and socioeconomic
development.
There is sprawling digital divide between nations
basically due to non-affordability of IT appliances
and non-availability of
requisite computing facility -
fonts and software tools - in local languages.
Conscious efforts are being made through UNESCO
in this direction. Certain
nations have also initiated
their own programmes to develop information
processing tools and applications in their languages.
India has taken a major
initiative towards ensuring
ICT in local languages for rapid socio-economic
development and participation of people at large.
With this backdrop, the national mission on
'Technology Development for
Indian Languages'
promoted development of basic information
processing
tools and linguistic resources for Indian
languages through academic and
government
supported R&D institutions spread over the country.
There are
22 officially recognized languages and 11
scripts in vogue in India. One
script may be used for
more than one language. Hence, India is a unique
country with multilingual, multi-script environment.
Although with her
talented manpower, India has
emerged as pioneer in Information Technology,
with
the ability, to handle turnkey projects from abroad at
lower cost, higher
accuracy and at faster pace.
However, purchasing power as compared to
developed nations such as USA is 1/15. In India
illiteracy persist at about
34.6% and literacy in
English is less than 5%. This necessitates support
for
R&D in the focused areas to develop basic
information processing technologies
and
consolidating and packaging them in user friendly
form and releasing
them to the masses for free-use.
This will greatly promote people's participation
in
the process of using this technology and developing
innovative products
and services.
