Indian languages have finally got their due in the internet world with the introduction of the domain name .bharat in the Devanagari script. The domain name is the result of joint efforts of the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) which have been working on this project for the last two years.
With the launch, individuals of companies who are interested in owning a website in the Hindi language with the domain name would be able to book the name in Hindi script.The name would have ".bharat" in Hindi script as its extension instead of commonly top level domains such as .com, .net or .in.
 |
[(L-R) Dr Govind, CEO NIXI, Dr Ajay Kumar, Joint Secretary IT, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communications and IT Minister, Government of India, R S Sharma, Secretary IT, Prof. Rajat Muna, DG C-DAC, Yu-Chuang Kuek, VP and Managing Director, APAC at ICANN]
"This initiative will continue to many different Indian languages. As of now, it is ready with 8 languages. I directed the department to make .Bharat domain name available in all the Indian languages very soon," said Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communications and IT Minister, Government of India.
The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) will soon launch the Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) in other Indian languages, including Bengali, Telugu, Gujarati, Urdu, Tamil and Punjabi.
Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a big propagator of information technology. In his speech, Shri Prasad spoke about connecting 60,000 villages with broadband this year, 1 lakh next year and another 1 lakh in the following year through the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN). The project is worth around Rs.35,000 crore which aims to provide high-speed broadband connectivity to 2.50 lakh gram panchayats in India by March 2017.
The Communications and IT Minister said that internet will reach villages. People will be able to shop online and will give a great boost to e-commerce and hence bring about revolutionary changes in the economic activities of rural India. It will also generate new jobs and create a large number of business opportunities in India.
Dr Govind, CEO, NIXI (National Internet Exchange of India) and Chairman of .IN Registry, said that this initiative was a step towards a multilingual Internet to connect people in every corner of the country. Dr Govind said that NIXI was working towards promoting Internet in rural areas.
