India OS

Indian Opensource is an initiative towards documenting projects which have been designed/customized for the Indian context.

The basic premise for starting this wiki is based on an article by Sam Pitroda on Silicon India:

I wish India's IT policy would go beyond what the IT industry wants, to what IT can do for the people. And that is the real message. "What should we do to promote the IT industry?" is not the way to look at it. We need to ask instead, "How can we really use IT as a tool to solve India's problem?"

Unfortunately in India, most of the decisions are made in New Delhi. We need to investigate the role of Panchayat Raj system in IT policy - we can't have real decentralization without a combination of IT and Panchayat. For instance, how would you train a bunch of villagers in managing accounts, preparing a balance sheet, collecting taxes or providing services?

Let's not lose track of the fact that IT is not for just a few people; it's not just to increase exports of software and make a few companies productive and rich. The real potential and use of IT in India is to solve problems for the masses, to empower people with instant information in their local languages.

- Sam Pitroda Chairman, National Knowledge Commision

Original Article: Silicon India http://www.siliconindia.com/magazine/displaydetail007.asp?article_id=508