Language Computing Important For Progressive & Developed India: Dr. Abdul Kalam

Language Computing Important For Progressive & Developed India: Dr. Abdul Kalam

Bhopal, November 15 (Pervez Bari): Former President Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam has said that language computing has an important role to play for making the country progressive and developed. He said that self dependence in agriculture and food processing, education and health, information and technology, qualitative electricity, road, availability of infrastructure and technology is must for a developed India in the year 2020.
Dr. Abdul Kalam made above observation while inaugurating the language computing workshop at the Academy of Administration and Management here today. He said that the local language should be given digitalization which is language computing in real meaning. He said that the heritage documents in local language should also be digitalized and they should be changed into Unicode through Optical Character Recognition method. In this way, documents written in local languages not only be digitalized, but also people can reach them through Internet. This will help greatly to improve knowledge of students, villagers, and people living in small towns. The necessity of using English compulsorily will be stopped and those without knowledge of English will also be able to take benefit of this knowledge. He said that if we computerize the local language, particularly Hindi, a large number of people will be benefited with it.
He said that Unicode is such a universal character which is used for presenting the subject in computer process. Unicode is very useful for those using computer on multi-language system. With this effort, crores of people of our country who speak 18 different languages need not know using English keyboard for operating computer can take advantage of Internet.
The former President said that by using Unicode the state government will be able to provide better service to the citizens in the local language. For example a farmer of a village near Bhopal will be able to know about agriculture development, agriculture products, marketing and expert advice in Hindi from Tamil Nadu through his mobile phone. This way the citizens of this country will create knowledge-based society very fast. In this society knowledge will become strength and it will be ready to compete with the whole world.
Discussing role of language computing in this era of development Dr. Abdul Kalam said that with this the gap between the developed and developing world could be filled and better relations based on competition could be established. He said that in the global innovation index the position of India is 15th.
"We will have to come up from this position and should reach the top through competition and thereby improve our strength. Our leadership should have such vision through which it can take the society and country to such areas which are so far untouched", Dr. Abdul Kalam opined.
Madhya Pradesh School Education Minister Mrs. Archana Chitnis, who presided over the inaugural session of the workshop, said that there are unlimited opportunities in the state where quality and quantity is equally available. She said that technology and culture unites the country. Mrs. Chitnis said that Madhya Pradesh is a leader in language computing and it will be established that the common man takes advantage of technology through Hindi. She said that our technology should be helpful for developing the country and not to hurt our pride. Only school education department will be able to play lead role in this direction. Dr. Mahesh Kulkarni said that use of Indian languages is being increased in computer. Now people will be able to work in Hindi also on computer. He said that use of Hindi is very important in e-governance. Prashant Mehta said that all state government departments have developed their own computer software. It is very necessary that using computer language should be simplified in Hindi.
In the second session of the workshop Dr. Mahesh Kulkarni, Arun Ramratnam from Bangaluru, Anurag Shrivastava, J N Narsimhamurti, Dr. Amba Kulkarni and others spoke on different subjects. (pervezbari@eth.net)
Date: 16-11-2010 Time: