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Bridging India's digital divide
with Linux
By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - Anyone who doubts the power of
Linux needs only to get hold of a nifty, hand-held
device that the Indian army plans to give soldiers
in its million-strong army. It is unlikely that
Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, ever intended
this open-source operating system to be put to
military use. But it is a mark of the robustness
of this revolutionary operating system that the
Indian army is adopting it, and has now completed
user trials on the device.
Called SATHI
(short for situational awareness and tactical
hand-held information, and Hindi for buddy), the
875-gram device helps soldiers coordinate with one
another on the battlefield. It is one of the many
spin-offs of a low-cost computer developed
indigenously, the basic version of which is
available on the market for about US$200.
"This is the world's first integrated
battlefield computer run on Linux," exulted
Samyeer Metrani, general manager of Encore
Software, a firm run by professors from the Indian
Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. The
institute first conceived of what it called the
"Simputer", a cheap personal computer for Indian
users, three years ago. The irony is that though
Indian software companies provide solutions to
bigwigs such as Microsoft, most people in this
country cannot afford to buy licensed software
products. Like several other developing countries,
India depends overwhelmingly on a flourishing
cottage industry in assembled personal computers
and pirated software. Institutional users -
including central government departments and
several state governments - have thus been
steadily turning to open-source Linux for their
needs.
The World Social Forum (WSF) opened
on Wednesday in Porto Allegre, Brazil, with a
focus on open information systems to go hand in
hand with open political ethos. All of the
1,000-odd computers at the forum are using free
software. The official website has been developed
for the first time in "php", an open-source
language. One of the aims of the WSF is to give a
voice to the world's poor and excluded sectors.
The WSF, which ends on Monday, is an annual
gathering of civil society representatives, held
as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum,
which brings together the world's political and
business elite in the Swiss resort town of Davos
every year.
"There are many misconceptions
about Linux. It is much easier to install and use
than many people realize," said Professor Edwin
Wells, an active member of the Delhi Linux Users
Group, who participates in programs that help
beginners familiarize themselves with the
operating system and its applications. "The best
introduction to Linux is to use a bootable Linux
'distro' available on a single compact disc, from
which Linux can be run directly without a hard
disk. There is nothing like that in Windows," said
Wells.
Officially, India's strategy is to
make Linux the standard for students in all
academic institutions while the government trains
employees to help them work in a Linux environment
with support from IBM. In Bangalore, a global
information-technology hub, Linux now runs a
Center of Competency (CoC), equipped with IBM
hardware, that offers consulting, education and
certification and allows users to test and gain
insights into how Linux can help them. Jyoti
Satyanathan, general manager for Linux-IBM in
South and Southeast Asia, believes that the CoC is
set to play a "significant role in the worldwide
Linux community". Red Hat, a leading purveyor of
Linux, now has offices in several Indian cities.
Microsoft has not been taking the steady
encroachment of the Linux-IBM combine into its
Indian turf lying down. Apart from partnerships
with leading Indian software firms and investments
in research and development, Microsoft runs a $20
million program to provide information-technology
education. It aims to cover 80,000 teachers and
3.5 million students over the next two years.
"Cost is a factor, but Linux actually
offers better security as the source code on
proprietary software is always secret, making
Linux-based solutions ideal for applications like
the SATHI," said an official in the Department of
Information Technology. One popular version of
Simputer is Amida, a cross between a personal
digital assistant (PDA) and a hand-held computer.
It was built with support from Bharat Electronics
Ltd, the public-sector giant that produces
electronic devices for the defense industry.
Targeted at Indians who are techno-savvy
but on the wrong side of the digital divide
because of limited financial resources, Amida does
everything that can be done on a standard notebook
- web browsing, mailing web pages, and sending
voice mail over wireless Internet. The Amida
website offers downloadable programs for users of
Windows and Macintosh operating systems. "Amida
qualifies to be a truly converged device that
incorporates the key functions of both PDA and
cellular phone, and I find it ideal for use while
traveling," said Amit Mittal, an enthusiast.
Because Amida has a slot for reading smart
cards, it is also useful in non-urban settings.
For instance, it allows a village panchayat
(local body) or even a shopkeeper to hire out the
device to individuals for specific periods - each
user investing only in a smart card with his or
her personal profile stored on it. Said Puneet
Kumar, a commentator on information technology and
an executive with WIPRO, the global software
major: "Simputer demonstrates that no country need
fear being left out of the computer revolution if
they learn to adapt it to local conditions."
Kumar added that an example of India's
unique formula of public-sector support for
private entrepreneurship in information technology
can be seen at the Center for Development of
Advanced Computing (C-DAC), based in Pune city in
the western state of Maharashtra. C-DAC was
created in 1988 soon after the US government
refused to sell supercomputers to India on the
ground that they could be diverted for the
country's missile and atomic energy programs.
Not only did C-DAC come up with a
supercomputer within three years using the
revolutionary parallel computing method, it also
produced a series of ever more powerful machines
called Param. Over a span of 15 years, C-DAC has
converted the denial of the supercomputer into a
challenge. It went on to deliver four generations
of supercomputing platforms involving some 50
machines in active use not only in India but also
in countries such as Russia, Canada, Germany and
Singapore. By April 2003, C-DAC was able to open
to the public the Terascale Supercomputing
Facility within its Knowledge Park in Bangalore
city. There it installed the Param Padma, a
teraflop machine (capable of processing data at a
trillion floating point operations a second) made
by connecting together 248 ordinary computers and
with a Linux option.
The Param Padma is
now ranked 171 on the list of the world's top 500
supercomputers. C-DAC is also involved in enabling
people in India and other countries in South Asia
to use computers while working in their own
languages. This is done by creating special
packages such as the Indian Language Standard
Codes, the Language Interface Card, the Indian
Language Word Processor and the Indian Language
Interface to Mobiles.
In October 2004,
C-DAC launched a new project to develop software
suites based on the open-source Linux operating
system and designed to help community initiatives
to produce and disseminate free and open-source
software systems to break language barriers and
bridge the digital divide.
(Inter Press
Service/TerraViva) |
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