Government Websites: The government has taken a big step to promote Indian languages. Now many government websites can be accessed through Hindi web addresses, meaning dependence on English will soon end.
To make the Internet more user-friendly, the government has started using Hindi URLs for many of its websites. Indian languages - especially Hindi – are expected to gain universal acceptance in the coming years. This will allow people who do not know English to access websites by just typing in Hindi.
Hindi Web Addresses: A New Era for Government Websites in India
Under the Universal Acceptance initiative, the government has made a significant change in the International Domain Name (IDN), allowing creation of web addresses and email IDs in Indian languages.
For example, the website of the Ministry of Home Affairs now has a URL in Hindi as well. Users can access the site by typing mha.gov.in or गृहमंत्रालय.सरकार.भारत. The website is available in both English and Hindi.
According to the report, the country code .in used in the web addresses has been replaced with .भारत. Apart from Hindi, this feature will soon be available in Tamil, Telugu and other Indian languages.
Government Websites: From .in to .भारत
Since the invention of the Internet, the Domain Name System (DNS) has only supported English letters. This was mainly because early computer coding standards were based on ASCII, which was limited to the English alphabet. As a result, it was not possible to create websites or email addresses in any other language.
Since the 1980s, researchers had been working to support non-English languages. Today, web browsers can convert language codes and display web addresses in the user’s preferred language.
However, many Hindi or regional language websites in India still use English web addresses. To promote local languages, the Indian government has now started providing many official websites with Hindi web addresses. These sites will use .भारत in their domain names.
Apart from the Home Ministry, the websites of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Ministry of Minority Affairs and National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) are now available through Hindi URLs.
This initiative is being implemented under the BhashaNet programme, which encourages other government agencies to adopt local language IDNs.
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