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292 Kenneth Keniston

and the Regulatory Authority of India. Competition or non-communi-
cation between these groups often resulted in conflicting rules or in-
compatible standards. Early on, of course, Indian computer scientists
fully recognized the need for standardization of the major Indian lan-
guages and developed a coding system termed ISCII. ISCII is cur-
rently seen as more or less adequate for the northern Indian
languages (which are based on Sanskrit and of Indo-European ori-
gin), but it is criticized as inadequate for the southern (Dravidian)
languages. Indeed, a recent meeting of Tamil-speakers from India
and other countries rejected the use of IISCI in favor of another, pro-
prietary code. 7
At the corporate level, too, efforts have also been ineffectual or
non-existent. Microsoft, which controls 95% of the operating system
business in India, has a number of collaborations like that with NCST,
to develop Indian language capabilities for its programs. Microsoft has
announced publicly that the next version of Windows NT (Windows
2000) will contain “locale coding” ability for two Indian languages,
probably Hindi and Tamil. But “locale coding” is not localization.
Rather, it involves the capacity to use a basic English language pro-
gram such as Word in order to input and print another language.
Thus, for example, locale coding for Hindi entails a system of keyboard
mapping such that the individual can input Hindi characters [either
phonetically or through direct (stick-on) keys], an internal software
architecture that recognizes, interprets, and organizes these charac-
ters for output, and a set of fonts for monitor display and printing uti-
lizing Hindi (Devanagari) characters. Although it is a step in the
direction of localization, locale coding for Hindi nonetheless requires
the ability to operate Windows and Word in English, and, in the case
of keyboard mapping that uses the Roman keyboard phonetically,
knowledge of the Romanized phonetic versions of Hindi words. Al-
though it permits English-speakers to use the computer as something
like a Hindi typewriter, it presupposes an advanced level of English.
Other multinationals and Indian firms have taken steps in the
direction of localization. The MacIntosh interface lends itself to lo-
calization, and Apple has been a pioneer in localizing to Indian lan-
guages. The pity is that MacIntoshes are virtually unheard of in
India, where they have less than one percent of the market. IBM an-
nounced in 1997 a Hindi version of MS-DOS. The pity here is that
MS-DOS has not been used as a programming language or operating
system for many years in most nations. Modular Technologies in
Poona has a series of innovative products that permit the use of sev-
eral Indian languages. BharatBhasha, organized by the brilliant