Technology Connections Bypass South Asia Barriers

["Irfan Khan" <khania2@super.net.pk>]

[with thanks to banglaICT for the lead]

Technology Connections Bypass South Asia Barriers

Partha Pratim Sarker, May 2003

In 2001 a devastating earthquake claimed the lives of nearly 20,000 
people in Gujarat. Many expatriate communities were enquiring for 
their missing friends and relatives. One of Bytes for All's key 
volunteers Archana Nagvekar, got in touch with a ham radio-based 
network that had already started a search and rescue mission there. 
She contacted the team leader of the network and we arranged to open 
up an emergency e-mail account to receive enquiries and relay them to 
the network to help locate specific people. It was an unusual but 
great achievement for the HAM network and within weeks, they helped 
unite hundreds of missing families and persons in Gujarat.

That the ham radio network with e-mail connectivity could reach the 
common people on the ground establishes the strength of convergence 
in media. Yet again, it proves that ICT brings a whole new 
opportunity for people who are otherwise separated by geographical 
and political borders.

For South Asia, this is a hard core reality too. The bitter divide 
among nations -- that includes nuclear threats to each other -- might 
leave the Internet as the only means of interacting.

That is also echoed by the citizens of South Asia. Shubhranshu 
Choudhary, a producer of BBC South Asia in Delhi, points out: "As we 
live in a divided world and our Berlin wall is yet to collapse...e-
lists/e-mails are the only effective way to sneak in to each other 
... I am sure you understand I am talking about [India and Pakistan] 
here. I work as South Asia producer for BBC but physically I have 
been to [Pakistan] only once when they invited journalists on the 
occasion of 50th year celebration of Independence. The situation is 
similar from the other side. But now I read Dawn newspaper [Online 
English-language Pakistani newspaper] every morning. We have long 
discussions on Kashmir and people from both sides are participating. 
I think we have more understanding of each other (journalists) though 
we haven't met physically."

Zunaira Durrani, editor of the Pakistan-based computer and IT 
magazine, Spider, has this to say: "South Asians have taken to the 
Internet with more enthusiasm than their Western counterparts. 
Although the number of Americans online far outstrip surfers from 
countries like India and Pakistan, knowledge workers in this region 
are more keen on exploiting the situation. Businessmen and women are 
connected via instant messengers, activists flood mailing lists 
catering to news and features from the subcontinent, and chat rooms 
are full-blown confrontational sitting rooms. Often, this is at times 
when even diplomacy fails to deliver.

"Pakistanis want to keep up with news of India, whether its politics 
or ground-breaking technology. If the Tamil Tigers [Sri Lankan rebel 
forces] are pulling punches in cyberspace, it makes news here too, 
and not just because it's news about the Internet. Without the Net, 
at least the connected elite in South Asia would not have developed 
the understanding critical at this point in time to perhaps work on 
common grassroots objectives."

Internet and e-discussion forums have played an important role in 
bringing different linguistic communities (such as, Tamil, Bengali, 
Urdu, Hindi etc.) of South Asia together in different lists. Talking 
about Tamil integration, Bala Pillai, one of the organizers of such 
activities in Sydney says, "Early on we realized that the primary 
addition that the Internet brings to the available media range -- 
i.e. newspapers, television, radio etc -- is interaction. Thus, our 
focus is on interaction. Our first challenge was to find and bring 
together the Internet-enabled Tamil community around the world in 
1995-1996. Our second challenge was to convince the community of the 
need for information interchange standards -- what the U.S. Navy did 
for the English language with ASCII in 1963."

Many of the e-lists that started on networking early in the 90s have 
actually led the process of developing language standards in their 
own languages.

Talking about e-lists in Urdu, the official language of Pakistan, Dr. 
Muhammad Afzal says, "E-lists are playing an unprecedented role. 
Years ago, in 1997 or so, we realized the need for standards for Urdu 
and other Pakistani Languages, and a couple of us got together, and 
started exchanging on Internet, using our own e-mails lists. Later we 
substituted these with appropriate lists, and since 2000, we have a 
number of lists which we are using and communicating on different 
issues. These discussions have enabled us to move the Urdu Character 
Set to Unicode and other international standards, which would not 
have been possible without these lists."

Irfan Khan in Karachi set up a mailing list, S-Asia-IT on IT in South 
Asia in 1998, probably the oldest one on IT-related issues in the 
region. Do South Asians fully realize the potential of mailing-lists? 
Says Khan in "Mailing list: Linking a Diverse Country" by Frederick 
Noronha: "Yes and no. There are mailing lists that are reaping all 
benefits of this technology. For example, sasialit (South Asian 
literature) is vibrant, active, interactive (several threads of 
discussions emerge every day), full of useful content, etc. Often 
there are heated arguments on the list, as well. Of course, there is 
an issue of signal-to-noise ratio in almost every list. Not all 
postings are liked by all subscribers, and the rules that apply to a 
product's life cycle also apply to mailing lists."

Frederick Noronha, one of the editors of Bytes for All, is also the 
founder of different mailing lists on GNU/LINUX, ICT-A. "From 
pointers to locate texts in Sanskrit," he said, "to developmental 
information use to India, [expatriots] chatting and fighting via the 
Net, news from a range of sources, and even GNU/Linux techies sharing 
vital information -- all this and more is making itself available on 
India-related mailing lists. Mailing-lists are indeed a treasure 
trove of information, and vitally useful for a country like India. 
Inexpensive to operate, a well-run list can bring in immense results. 
Setting up a list is easy, but keeping it going is difficult."

Sayeedur Rahman, one of the organizers of BANGLA-ICT mailing list 
deals with ICT development in Bangladesh and is happy to announce 
that since its inception on April, 2001 the list has grown to more 
than 2,000 subscribers, which includes many Bangladeshi IT 
professionals who are spread around the world," Rahman explained, 
"you can say it's a Bangladesh IT development think tank. Since its 
inception it has changed lots of stuff regarding regulation or 
legislation change in Bangladesh IT field. All Bangladeshi IT 
companies, prime minister and other governments bureaucrats, all 
Bangladeshi newspaper editors and journalist read the posting of 
Bangl-IT and it creates a huge impact so far."

In a region where physical movement from one country to another is 
restricted and freedom of expression is somewhat limited, it is 
likely that people's voice and taste of interaction would be 
reflected on the Internet where individuals are individuals without 
much interference of the state and bureaucracy. With the reduced 
costs of Internet connectivity and growing IT awareness, E-lists, 
discussion forums and online chatting rooms are growing and gradually 
it has started to influence different issues of our lives. Almost all 
the major newspapers in South Asia do have online versions and they 
regularly update that and takes the online issue as seriously as the 
printed one.

South Asia Mailing Lists and Online Resources
There are numerous South Asian e-lists, chatting and discussion 
forums on the Net. Out of these only a few important lists are 
mentioned below. Much of the information below comes from Frederick 
Noronha's article, "Mailing List: Linking a Diverse Country," and the 
Bytes for All Readers List.

Cyberlaw-India http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cyberlaw-india/ E-
commerce, media, Internet law in India.

pray4peace pray4peace-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Peace Revival 
Association of Youth based in Pakistan.

Bangla_ICT http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bangla_ict/ Deals with IT 
development in Bangladesh.

BYTESFORALL-READERS bytesforall_readers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com For 
discussions on BytesForAll issues.

Exchinnet http://groups.yahoo.com/group/exchinnet/ India Internet 
Exchange.

free-india http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-india/ Forum For Right 
to Electronic Expression.

FSF-India http://mm.gnu.org.in/mailman/listinfo/fsf-india Free 
Software Foundation-India.

India-egov http://groups.yahoo.com/group/India-egov/ One of the 
fastest growing e-groups.

india-gii https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/india-gii

Indialists.org Check links to a range of lists. Some related to 
development.

NWM: Women in Media mailing list 
http://in.groups.yahoo.com/group/NWM_Mumbai

Online helpdesk for Tamil online tools 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/e-uthavi

Online Journalists 
http://www.groups.yahoo.com/group/Indian_Online_Media_Forum

Organic Indian http://groups.yahoo.com/group/organic_indian Organic 
farming and promoting organic products.

PakType@yahoogroups.com - to Discuss fonts for Arabic Script based 
languages and related issues.

SAJA E-mail Discussion List http://www.saja.org/lists South Asian 
Journalists' Association.

Sarai reader-list (Delhi) http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-
list/ Discussion list on media and the city. E-mail to reader-list: 
request@sarai.net with "subscribe" in the subject header.

S-Asia-IT www.apnic.net/mailing-lists/s-asia-it/ Discussing IT 
developments in South Asia.

Sasialit http://is.rice.edu/~riddle/play/sasialit/ The South Asian 
Literature list.

SAWNET http://www.sawnet.org/about.html For South Asian women's 
issues.

Silklist http://lists.vipul.net/mailman/listinfo/silklist For 
knowledgeable and fun conversations about technology, philosophy, 
culture.

South Asia Citizens' Web http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex Independent 
update on South Asia To subscribe: act-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Specific Bangladesh health forums include Shohojogi-AIDS 
http://www.fdp.org An independent forum.

Tamil Localisation Open Source developer community 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/tamilinix

UrduComputing@yahoogroups.com A general list, discusses various Urdu 
computing-related issues.


source: 
http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/international/story.php?docid=53623