Can the government push languages on the net? No!

India’s premier industry body Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) has submitted their recommendations to the Telecom Minister. More about this can be read on Medianama. I was surprised to see a note about languages,

CII has suggested that the government ensure digitisation of music, video and film industry content in different Indian languages so there are more options of entertainment over the Internet. So when there is connectivity, a larger section of people are able to access entertainment.

Medianama has already given its feedback. I agree with most of it.

Not sure why everyone says there is a ‘dearth/shortage’ of Indian language content. Yes, the number of English pages are a lot more than language but I believe the real issue is broadband penetration.

We need affordable and good broadband connectivity across the country. That is the real challenge today. Why is CII asking the govt to work on language content being made available? I don’t think it is the govt’s job to be publishing content, nor can they force publishers to push more language content on the net. We want the govt to work on the penetration and leave the rest to publishers.

The press release talks about the broadband vision for India (for the year 2014),

• India to have 214 million broadband connections
• From the current 50-60m users, India to have 695 million users: Urban (386 million), Rural (309 million)
• At least 50% of the broadband connections will be 2 Mbps (cool!)
• All of urban India and 0.6 million villages to have fibre to the kerb (FTTK) – basically optical fibre

India is expected to have a billion wireless (mobile) users by 2014. It is encouraging to see the size of rural broadband user base. I usually divide the broadband user base to Tier-I and Tier-II cities. I am not too sure how it is in Tier-III cities.

If the government can do something to achieve these numbers then we internet portals have a lot to cheer about. Indian languages will be in a lot of demand in coming years. Jai Ho!