Dot Bharat Domains Launched for Website Names in Devanagari Script

The government on Wednesday officially launched the .bharat domain name in Devanagari script covering eight languages including Hindi.

With the launch, individuals of companies who are interested in owning a website with domain name in Hindi, Boro, Dogri, Konkani, Maithili, Marathi, Nepali, and Sindhi-Devanagari languages would be able to book the name in Devanagari script.

The name would have '.bharat' in devanagari script instead of commonly top level domains such as .com or .net. India already has a .in TLD, but that's for website names in the Roman (Latin) script used by languages such as English.

"This initiative should not stop at eight languages. I asked the department to make .Bharat domain name available in all the Indian languages very soon," Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

Most of the future expansion of the Internet is going to come from Asia, Africa and the developing world. Local languages, content and culture will increasingly become important themes for the future expansion of the internet, the minister said, adding that mobile devices and applications as well as social media will be important determinants of this growth.

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) will soon also launch the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) in other Indian languages like Bangla, Urdu, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati.

Prasad that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a big propagator of information technology.

"We will connect 60,000 villages with broadband this year, 1 lakh next year and another 1 lakh in the following year through the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN)," he added.

The project is worth around Rs. 35,000 crore which aims to provide high-speed broadband connectivity to 2.50 lakh gram panchayats in India by March 2017.

The minister said that e-commerce is going to bring in revolutionary changes in the economic activities of rural India. It will not only generate new jobs but also create large number of business opportunities for all sections of populations in rural India.

Prasad said as Internet will reach villages, the people there will go online to shop for things, which in turn will lead to expansion of e-commerce and opening up of more warehouses and creation of more jobs.

He added NOFN will herald an e-commerce revolution in India.

Written with agency inputs