1.
I
will focus on one topic that is going to be very important for India over the
next ten years and beyond.
2.
I
am talking about e-books or books in the digital form, particularly those in
Indian languages. What is special about them, as compared to traditional books?
The effort required to create the manuscript is the same in the two cases. But,
there are two major differences:
a.
The cost of production is zero. Once the first copy is ready, it costs
practically nothing to produce the later copies. Low cost tablets will be
available widely, and every educational institution would be capable of
providing WiFi access to the Web. Every tablet would be able to carry hundreds
of e–books, if not thousands.
b.
e-books
in Indian languages are very few. The tools for putting manuscripts into e-book
are not available. Standards have not been evolved for e-book formats.
3.
There
are plenty of writers in various fields in India, and academics who can decide
what books are most badly needed and are likely to be widely used. But, let us
not under-estimate the significance of the technologists who need to show how
we should face e-book revolution that is staring us in the face, and is going
to have a greater impact on India than even the green revolution.
4.
Inexpensive
computing devices are coming up rapidly – starting with tablets. There will be
a whole variety of them, manufactured by various manufacturers. I am excited by
the low-end book readers – I bought a Kindle Touch for about Rs 5,000, using an
impressive e-ink display that allows me to change font size as needed to read
under different conditions. It is small, very light, is quite rugged, and has a
battery life of over a month!
5.
All
I want to take from the tablet discussion is that there will be millions of
them in students’ hands sooner or later. This will require content in Indian
languages – thousands of e-books, with millions of copies needed in the case of
each one of them. The content will cost a lot more than the tablets will.
6.
I
believe that there are over 70,000 public libraries in India, over a hundred
and fifty thousand high school libraries, and over 30,000 college libraries.
For the moment, consider the cost of acquiring copies of ten thousand modern
books for each of these libraries. This will cost Rs 25,000 Crores. Now
consider that you may need copies of about 20 books a year for each of the millions
of tablets Indian students will acquire. There has been a lot of discussion
about making tablet hardware inexpensive, but none about producing e-content in
Indian languages.
7.
We
need lots of ideas to deal with problems like this. I will discuss just one.
Imagine a project which encourages those who write useful, good quality books
for use in libraries. Let this project select 100 such books in any of the
languages of interest to India including English, and give national awards with
a cash payment Rs 200,000 each to the selected writers. This will cost Rs 2
Crores per year. Those whose books are not selected for the award will retain
the commercial interest to their creations and will be free to take them to any
commercial publisher. The awardees, on the other hand, will be expected to
transfer all rights to the Govt of India, except the copyright in its
non-commercial form. This will ensure their name as the author, along with a
short bio, to be retained in every copy to be distributed. I would propose that
that these books be made free to download all over the world. Books in most Indian
languages will be of significant value only in India, but those in English may
be very attractive in many other countries. This will enhance the visibility
and prestige of Indian authors. What
about those who prefer printed copies? The project can authorize any and every
publisher to print and sell copies of the books.
8.
Let
me come back to the technical issues in creating e-content. We need to sort
them out before we plan any major content creation project. What are the
essential requirements? How much flexibility should we give to implementers and
e-book creators? How important is it that the lowest cost devices should be
able to benefit from e-content produced Govt funds?
S. Ramani
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