IT and The Indian Continent

A much fuller picture of the Dravidian (proto-Tamil) Civilization in the Indus valley has emerged in the last few decades.  Now more than one thousand settlements are known in an area the size of Western Europe that extends from Afghanistan to Delhi and from the Himalayas to Mumbai (Bombay). People of Indus shipped cotton, hardwoods, ivory, precious stones etc. to Sumerian cities like Ur, where there was a colony of Indus merchants in the third millennium BC. Cotton was first cultivated in the history of humanity in Sindh (Indus).  Indians were great, whether they were Dravidians or Indo-Europeans.

The Indian destination was not the same as the western world and India never missed anything, but ignored many things.  Industrial revolution, cultural renaissance, computer revolution, information technology revolution are various phenomena that don't appeal to Indians.  The British had left the Indian continent after rekindling an interest in the Western World.  The myopic kings disappeared, but they were replaced by another set of myopic selfish rulers in a new democratic setup. The present politicians are no less despotic and arrogant than the erstwhile dynastic kings/feudal lords.  It is like old wine in a new bottle.  In the past fifty years the democratic Indian Union could have achieved a lot more than she had, but for the  wrong policies.(see my paper on the Indian Continent and Computers).  It appears as if India almost ignored the computer revolution as well, though she is trying to catch up now.  But, can she catch up with the computer and IT revolution?  Certainly, if India wishes.  The real question is if India has that interest.  To verify that I searched the web using Alta Vista to see how Indians are doing in terms of web sites. The following (unscientific and limited) data might help Indians understand their position in catching up with the fast moving technological revolution.

AltaVista found following web pages for various nationalities in India, Europe and Middle East:
147612 Web pages for Tamil
93042 Web pages for Hindi
51290 Web pages for Sanskrit
39220 Web pages for Urdu
35330 Web pages for Bengali
28190 Web pages for Telugu
7512 Web pages for Nepali
6268 Web pages for Gujarati
5237 Web pages for Marathi
5183 Web pages for Malyalam
5208 Web pages for Kashmiri
4722 Web pages for Kannada
4008 Web pages for Sindhi
1960 Web pages for Assamese
1904 Web pages for Oriya
1042 Web pages for Tulu
948 Web pages for Konkani
678 Web pages for Gondi
676 Web pages for Manipuri

15,938,322 Web pages for English
4,720,343 Web pages for British
4,071,370 Web pages for French
3,754,689 Web pages for Russian
3,507,570 Web pages for German
2,213,014 Web pages for Italian
2,249,866 Web pages for Spanish
1,223,155 Web pages for Irish
1,025,642 Web pages for Jewish
377,746 Web pages for Arabic
264,402 Web pages for Persian
39,420 Web pages for Kurdish
Americans top the list with 17,596,330 Web pages.

What I found was disappointing to me.  Being an optimist, I would like to think that Indians are not aware of their status and stature to rectify the situation.  India has been prodigiously gifted and creative in every field of human endeavor. Though India placed the spiritual quest at the center of life in the way that no other civilization did, the continent also placed corruption at every corner of the society, somehow. If Indians change their attitude from lazy-corrupt materialism and work toward competitive materialistic goals, they will not stay where they are any longer than the change of attitude takes.  Each individual has to change, for the society is made of individuals. (Easier said than done!) Sreenivasarao Vepachedu, 3/30/99

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