Rural India is expected to be the key beneficiary.
By Dileep Thekkethil
BANGALORE: The long wait for domain names in Devanagari script has finally ended as the BJP-led government successfully launched the ‘.bharat’ domain name, giving support to eight regional languages, including Hindi, Konkani and Marathi in the first stage.
Dot Bharath can be handy for those who target a regional audience as they can customize the whole URL in the same language that they selected for the domain extension.
Introducing it, Communications and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said, “This initiative should not stop at eight languages. I asked the department to make .Bharat domain name available in all the Indian languages very soon,”
He also added that the government has asked the National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) to launch Internationalized Domain Names (IDN) in six more Indian languages like Bangla, Urdu, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati.
The new initiative of the BJP government is aimed at bridging the digital divide between urban and rural India, which was one of their key promises in the election manifesto.
Rural India is expected to be the key beneficiaries of dot bharat domains as local news, culture and other development policies of the government can disseminate faster among people, resulting in better governance and expansion of internet in India.
Prasad also said that India is awaiting a big revolution in the e-commerce industry and when the rural population becomes aware of it, new jobs and bigger business opportunities will start to emerge.
The proactive move of the communication ministry comes as the first step of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Digital India Project,’ was launched, which promises to change India into a connected knowledge economy by offering the best services in just a click of a button. The government has planned to implement Digital India Project in a phased manner.
Individuals who would like to get domain names registered under dot bharat extension can check for availability starting from Thursday. In addition to Hindi, Konkani and Marathi, users can also secure domains in Boro, Dogri, Maithili, Nepali and Sindhi-Devanagari languages.