Does The Net Speak Dogri?

Not yet, but government and industry are trying to make the cornucopia of information on the net available in Indian languages.

- Taru Bhatia

A 2016 report of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) is a bit of a misnomer: it’s called ‘Proliferation of Indian Languages on Internet’, but these languages account for hardly 0.1 percent of internet content. The internet, as the Chinese and speakers of other languages would agree, is dominated by English – as high as 56 percent of the content.

This has serious consequences for India, where barely 10 percent of the people can use English. “We are leaving 90 percent of the people behind,” says Rajat Moona, director-general of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a government research and development organisation. “We’ll not be able to move ahead without them.”

What’s worth noting, though, is that, despite the scarcity of local online content, the country has witnessed a sharp rise in internet usage in rural parts. The number of people with mobile internet access reached 87 million in December 2015 – a 99 percent growth over the previous year, according to the IAMAI report. Around 75 percent of new internet user growth is expected to come from rural India, and these users will prefer content in local languages, says a Nasscom-Akamai Technologies 2016 report. The growth in internet usage in non-metros and rural areas owes largely to people buying more mobile phones; though not everyone is going for smartphones, even simple phones these days allow internet usage. Data from the Telecom regulatory Authority of India (September 2016) indicates a positive growth in wireless subscriptions in Haryana (4.04%), Odisha (2.67%), West Bengal (2.39%) and Assam (2.33%). Delhi, on the other hand, saw a decline in growth rate with only 0.93% increase in subscribers.