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Language, Power, and Software 299

At the very least, then, we need to examine critically the argu-
ment that economic factors alone suffice to explain the absence of
local language software. Indeed there is a self-confirming quality to
many economic arguments. If one asks why, in nineteenth-century
Europe, there was no demand for video cassette recorders, the an-
swer is simple: there were no video cassette recorders available. An
analogous reply might go part way toward explaining the absence of
demand for local language software: there can be no demand for a
product which does not exist, or whose existence and utility is un-
known. If local language software is not developed, or invisible, then
the international software companies that claim that “there is no de-
mand” will inevitably be correct.
A second factor that stands in the way of local language soft-
ware is the very complexity—cultural, political, bureaucratic—of
South Asia. One leader of a major American software firm, asked
about localization to Indian languages said, “Okay, but which lan-
guages?” This is a reasonable question, but it has an answer:
“Start with Hindi, go on to Bengali, Urdu, Tamil, Marathi, Telegu,
etc.” All of these languages are spoken by populations orders of
magnitude larger than the populations of many nations for which
locale coding or localization is currently available: for example,
Norway, Denmark, or Latvia. Forward-looking companies, antici-
pating the steady growth of the vast Indian market, would be well
advised to anticipate this market by localizing to major Indian lan-
guages. The winners in the next ten or twenty years in the Indian
domestic market will be the firms that provide access to comput-
ers, Internet, and the Web in local languages.
Yet the complexity of the linguistic scene in South Asia points to
the problem non-Indians (and some Indians as well) have in dealing
with the subcontinent. India contrasts in this regard with the rela-
tive simplicity at the level of politics and written language of the
other great Asian power, the People’s Republic of China. In the lat-
ter, it is possible for American software firms to make binding
agreements in Beijing for the use of the standardized written lan-
guage that is employed by 1.3 billion Chinese. In India, for the many
reasons suggested above, this is utterly impossible.
Other factors contribute to the slowness with which Indians and
non-Indians alike have responded to the apparent potential of local
language software. Among these is the fusion of language and power
that has been at the center of this paper. The powerful in India, Pak-
istan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh are almost invariably those whose
command of English is most perfect. Not only have they no personal
incentive to encourage local language software, but, on the contrary,