Internet is no longer a one-way communication medium. User feedback and interaction is paramount. This has been the biggest roadblock, as typing in Hindi script (Devanagari) is exceedingly difficult. The official Hindi computer keyboard ‘Inscript’ has not achieved popularity due to its steep learning curve and has almost gone out of production. Only ‘Inscript’ keyboard stickers are available for QWERTY keyboards. Moreover, phonetic-based solutions are not suitable for fast typing. The problem is so severe that almost all Hindi digital communication happens by typing Hindi in Roman using the normal QWERTY keyboard only. While it is less of a problem for texting, social media or video dominated websites, it is the biggest handicap for most other types of Hindi websites like commercial websites, organizational websites, informational websites and even literary websites.
A lot of web content is generated through non-professionals in the form of blogs, forums, personal websites etc. In spite of huge Hindi speaking population, there is a serious lack of Hindi content because Roman Hindi typing is not suitable for any lengthy or formal article. Middle-age population is typically the top contributor in generating such contents but Roman script for Hindi is totally illegible and even looked down upon by most of them. Moreover there exists a perception that Roman script is destroying the basic fabric of Hindi. Phonetic keyboard solutions have more acceptability and are currently the most widely used among non-professionals. Though learning curve for them is low, but so is their typing speed.
With every new field or technology, a certain unique terminology and words develop around it, for which there are no natural translations in other languages. It is wiser to adopt such words in other languages, especially if the educated population is generally multi-lingual and have been exposed to these words. However there exists a general reluctance to adopt English words into formal Hindi even though they are widely used. The Hindi substitutes generally tend to be difficult and obscure words. The result being that English literate generation and technology enthusiasts drift away from systems in their mother tongue. Many Hindi websites and typically government websites suffer from this problem, resulting in them, not being able to speak in the language of the audience. According to me, bridging this disconnect needs to be a given higher priority than maintaining the purity of the language.
People rarely make a full transition to Hindi computing, by changing the language of OS and all other applications to Hindi, because, the support ecosystem, which helps them get over the technology barrier, is more comfortable in English. Thus a basic knowledge of English is absolutely essential to operate a computer or PDA in India unlike in countries like Japan, Germany etc. Moreover, the domain names of all Hindi websites are in English only. This has led to a whole segment of English ignorant population being away from the reach of Hindi websites. Manish Dalal, vice-president (Asia-Pacific) at VeriSign Naming Services said, “The operating system, browser, domain name and the content, everything from start to finish has to be completely in the local language to really break the entry barrier.”
Lack of standardization has been one of the key problems. Unlike English, Devanagari script has a very intricate design and has special peculiarities of subscript and superscript symbols. There are more than thousand fonts for each conjunct and vowel/consonant combination. Duplicate forms of characters were removed from the script only in 1953 by Lucknow Script Reforms. The Government finalized ‘standard Hindi typewriter keyboard’ only by 1960 and till then many propriety keyboards had become popular. The ‘Remmington keyboard format’ still continues to be widely used, even though the much better and standard ‘INSCRIPT’ keyboard has been released since 1986. Phonetic based systems are highly incompatible with each other and there is still no standardization for them. Conformity to ISCII coding for storage and IFSOC for font rendering is also not followed by some systems.
The growth of the tablets and other touch based devices is very good news for Hindi websites. Touch based keyboards like Android ‘Gingerbread keyboard’, change symbols as per user input, making Hindi typing much easier and faster. The OS too is more user-friendly, bridging the technology gap. The government is already in the process of providing cheap tablets, ‘Aakash’, as part of one laptop per child initiative. ‘Aakash’ would come per-loaded with C-DAC software and will help in bringing Internet to a large Hindi-speaking population. Government is also planning for launching Domain names in Hindi (dot-Bharat). Hence the major hurdles for Hindi in cyber-space might get broken sooner than later. Moreover, once the right ecosystem is formed, economics will find solutions to all other minor problems, with free enterprises rather than the government, leading the way.
