Page 314 - Culture Technology Communication

Language, Power, and Software 297

The preservation of cultural diversity in the world, and in South
Asia in particular, is a high value, perhaps on a par with the reduction
of inequity and the promotion of political freedom. Cultural diversity
can, of course, be perverted into reactionary fundamentalism. But this
is most likely when local cultures are deprecated, spurned, marginal-
ized, viewed as inadequate, and when their members experience ex-
clusion, condescension, or discrimination because of their membership
in the culture. There is, then, every reason to value local cultures and
to seek to make information technology a medium for their preserva-
tion and enhancement, not an instrument in their marginalization.
Given strong arguments that would support the creation of ro-
bust local language software in the major languages of South Asia,
we need to ask why so relatively little has been done, despite the
many voices raised to encourage vernacular computing. After all,
the World Bank estimates that in the year 2020, India will have the
world’s fourth largest economy and the world’s largest population.
It is, of course, a poor nation at present, but it is also a thriving de-
mocracy, a nation with five hundred million literate men and
women, a nation with a rapidly growing middle class, and a nation
which is, as Bill Gates put it, a “rising software superpower.” India
has twice as many university graduates as the People’s Republic of
China, although much higher illiteracy rates. In short, India, and
South Asia more generally, is a region where one could anticipate a
rapidly growing market for local language software in the decades
ahead. Yet as I have noted, few are responding to this emerging
market. Instead, what appears to be a “Tower of Cyber-Babel” may
be emerging with regard to Internet communication, and vernacu-
lar software remains, at best, a niche market.

Why So Little Local Language Software?

Among the reasons for the relative absence of local language soft-
ware, economic factors surely play a key role. Indeed, it is often said
that were there a market, localized software would simply appear.
Indians as a group are poor; telephone penetration is low (and there-
fore Internet penetration is necessarily low). It can be argued that,
given the fusion of language, wealth and power in India, there is
simply no market (and perhaps no need) for software in any lan-
guage other than English. Asked about localization to Indian lan-
guages, international software firms sometimes reply, “But everyone