Rajasthan has become the first state in the country to offer free e-mail address in Hindi to its residents.
The facility —name@rajasthan.bharat (in Devanagari script) is introduced for the people who are not comfortable with English e-mail ids.
Background
During Digifest Kota in August 2017, Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje intented to have a vernacular e-mail service for the residents who are not fluent in English as she felt that language should not be a hindrance for anybody using emails or electronic communication. Hence, the vernacular e-mail, in Hindi, was launched in December.About the Project
- The first e-mail id that was created was that of the chief minister, Vasundhara@rajasthan.bharat (in Devnagari).
- The project has been implemented by the state IT department with a partnership in form of in-sourcing with private IT companies. A dedicated team of 10 experts from the state IT department worked for three months on the project. Apart from people who use Hindi keyboard, the email also works for those who use English keyboard.
- The initiative will ensure maximum participation of people towards e-governance and also that maximum facilities are available in the vernacular language. This e-mail is small part of the bigger picture ‘Rajasthan DigiKit’ which has an enrollment of more than one crore people
- In December 2016, state-run BSNL had launched e-mail address service in eight Indian languages for its broadband users by launching a ‘DataMail’ service.
- However, unlike BSNL, the Hindi email offered by Rajasthan government is for all the Internet users.
- As per TRAI, total Internet subscribers in India are just about 30 per cent of the country’s population. So, about 70 percent of population is not having access to the Internet and most of these belong to rural India.
- As per official data compiled in 2016, Hindi is spoken by 544 million people in India making it the most spoken language.
