Chennai IIT has created a linux-based operating system that works in a range of Indian languages. These tools will allow a new generation of students from disadvantaged rural backgrounds to enter the world of code on their own terms.

Dr Hema removes her sandals at the door of an air-conditioned computer lab at Chennai's Indian Institute of Technology. Inside, her students are demonstrating their work on creating linux-based operating systems that work in a range of Indian languages. One of her students boots a machine and sets its second language to Malayalam. The entire operating environment is now bilingual in ASCII, the international computing standard, as well as Malayalam in ISCII, the standard developed several years ago for Indian languages.

But that's not their only achievement. The team has also developed a bilingual system of writing and checking software. The chunk of code they show me uses the conventional ASCII system for the operating code -- but all the comments, which are non-operational, are in Malayalam. Next, they run a compiler program, which processes the code for errors. The compiler spits out its error messages in Malayalam as well.

There is nothing revolutionary about this system, says Dr Hema. This is the way they write software in most parts of China and Japan. The code has to be in ASCII in order to ensure compatibility with international standards, and since it's just like mathematics, anyone can learn its rules. But the comments and discussion about the code needn't be in English -- they can be in any language the programmers are comfortable with. In this Indian context, if we're talking about rural empowerment, it makes sense for people to learn programming in their own languages, with the code remaining in ASCII so that they can later get jobs in larger cities, or anywhere else in the world.

Dr Hema and her students might just have created the tools that will allow a new generation of students from disadvantaged rural backgrounds to enter the world of code on their own terms.

Contact: Dr Hema Murthy
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology
Chennai, India 600036

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