Envisioning And Enabling The Creation Of Public Digital Infrastructure For Kannada — Deputy CM Ashwath Narayan Launches Unique Initiative

The state that has given the country its IT hub and silicon city had, until now, not seen its own state language have a great digital presence.

Hence, this Rajyotsava, the day of Karnataka’s formation, the government launched a unique initiative to empower the use of Kannada in the digital sphere.

As envisioned and spearheaded by the Deputy Chief Minister, Dr Ashwath Narayan, on the 65th anniversary of its statehood, the government has kickstarted the formation of Kannada Tantrajnana Abhivruddhi Tanda” (K-TAT).

K-TAT will be operational as a sub-mission of the Vision Group on Startups under the Department of IT, BT and S&T and be led by its president Prashant Prakash.

”It is a matter of immense joy that an initiative to ensure Kannadigas can avail all the knowledge they wish to in Kannada itself is being launched on the day of Kannada Rajyotsava” said Narayan at the launch.

“It will further amplify the technological leadership being exhibited by the state whose capital, Namma Bengaluru, has been a leader in developing multiple technological public goods for the entire country including Aadhar, UPI, GST-Sahay and Bharat Health Stack,” he added.

This initiative mainly aims at enhancing the use of Kannada in all levels and spheres of digital technology and communication. From development of Kannada fonts, typing interface platforms, software, grammar correction software and so on, to making its treasure trove of literature into the digital sphere, this initiative will go a long way in ensuring Kannada is digitally everywhere.

As Narayan explains, the initiative, among other objectives like formation of documentation and policy making cells and development of open-source software’s, aims “to bridge the existing gap between the latent knowledge corpus in Kannada language and its easy accessibility, and to create and empower a digital forum to scout, mentor, hand-hold, network and develop the access to resources of Kannada language using technology, digitise and make available to the general public the accessible formats of all out of copyright works ever published in Kannada and establish an archive”.

This initiative will also encourage and coordinate the development of dictionaries, thesauri and other relevant language tools and provide translation services to Constitutional Posts, to translate policies and tweets of constitutional posts of the Union government.

Additionally, it will work to ensure greater digital dissemination of information in Kannada as well as establish partnerships with Kannada publishers and universities to create a common e-publishing platform and offer digitisation and publishing services at viable commercial rates.