BENGALURU: Soon, a domain in Kannada language will be launched by the Union Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI), which is authorised to build domains in Indian languages, is finally doing it in Kannada. NIXI took part in the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2017.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on one hand stressed on the need to include IT in day-to-day affairs, but on the other hand, spoke about 70 per cent of the Indian population living in rural areas and not being comfortable with English. NIXI sources said to bridge this gap, the domain has been developed in regional languages so that people are introduced to IT.
NIXI sources added that at present they have developed domains in 15 Indian languages including Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. “We are considering 22 Indian languages, of which 15 are completed. Over 22,000 people have registered. These are all Indian made and the domain will end with dot bharath. In many foreign countries like China, Japan and Korea, they are building domains in their languages and popularising it. NIXI also plans to interact with the state governments. Every state government can make use of this,’’ the source said.
IT expert U B Pavanaja, CEO of Vishva Kannada Softech and Wikipedia representative, told Express that this should have happened long back. “Kannada was not considered for the domain name. This is because the state government representatives do not send a capable person to represent Karnataka in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) meetings or any concerned meeting,’’ he said.
“We have Unicode software which they can use in all the mails and social media. Domain in Kannada will definitely help in reaching out to more people. But the mindset of the state government, especially the officials, has to change. We need a permanent committee in the state to look after IT and Kannada. We use Kannada in computer as well as mobile phones. We need experts for the same,’’ he added.