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Background

Providing a smorgasbord of multi-media offerings, ranging from information and knowledge to pure entertainment, and from art to commerce and trade, the Internet has become the quintessential symbol of our times. It is the harbinger of a globalized information age, which is going to replace the products of industrial manufacturing with specialized knowledge - packaged as information bytes - as the highest commodity.

But are we ready in Pakistan to embrace the Internet and actualize the great potential of this universal tool? Recently there has been a proliferation of the Internet in Pakistan, its growth fuelled by the Universal Internet Access scheme of the government, coupled with drastic reduction in bandwidth rates. No longer confined to major cities alone, the Internet is now accessible from hundreds of small cities and towns all over the country. However, it's still being used by a small minority that can read and write English.

What does the Internet offer to a Pakistani, who is part of a vast majority that doesn't know English? One hardly needs any complex search techniques to realize the paucity of Pakistani content on the Web. One of the principal reasons for this unfortunate state of affairs is the difficulty of using Urdu - and other Pakistani languages - on the Internet. It is also exacerbating the already stark 'digital divide' - between the haves and have-nots - to between those who are well versed in English and those who are not.

The Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP), a global programme of UNDP, managed by IUCN - The World Conservation Union, in Pakistan, has been trying to address this question. During the last few months, it has organized a number of training workshops in Urdu and Sindhi Web publishing, in addition to a variety of other initiatives like the development of district websites and Cyber Community Centres (CCCs) in remote areas of the country. Urdu Web publishing has been facilitated by the adoption of a standard code plate for Urdu last year. In addition, some progress has also been made to incorporate it under the Unicode scheme, but so far there has been no concerted effort to set up domain names, email and Web addresses in Urdu. Without putting such a system in place, true and meaningful Urdu Internetworking would not be possible.