he internet has struck firm roots in India. But how extensive can its impact be unless it finds languages other than English? One of the reasons behind the limited growth of internet in the country - apart from accessibility and affordability - is the underdevelopment of the web in local languages. The real problem, according to Laveesh Bhandari, director, Indicus Netlabs, a Delhi-based research firm, which claims to have developed the first Hindi search engine, raftaar.com, is not the limited number of Hindi and vernacular websites, but "the lack of coordination". In fact, Raftaar has been able to track about 12 lakh web pages in vernacular languages, which include Hindi, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Punjabi and other Indian languages (and even Nepali).

"There are nearly two lakh websites in Hindi alone, but about 85 per cent of them are only one- or two-page websites. Except for a few handful of news-based websites, the rest are self-financed or personal web pages and not commercially viable. The others are educational-based or government websites," says Bhandari. However, commercial success stories like Eenadu.net and Webdunia.com have made internet companies realise the huge potential of regional languages. ... more