Infocomm2003 has begun at The Oberoi Grand and the Kolkata Maidan. In the light of the AnkurBangla LiveCD, we had requested the organisers and especially Mr K K Mahapatra to look into the matter and see if it would be possible to accomodate us at the seminar/panel discussion. Unfortunately the proposal was roundly rebuffed. A group of volunteers working in a self funded environment towards an objective that ties in neatly with the proposed and publicised E-governance initiative of the GoWB and they are ignored in the roadshow that promises to change the future of the state. Surprised ? Not me. The past six months have seen a few of us at Ankur run from pillar to post and from person to person trying to get some amount of media space, a presentation or a hearing. And till date the nonchalance has really been mind boggling.

At this point consider the scenario - GoWB desires to obtain the optimisation of the resources by using a F/L OSS based infrastructure. It also plans to rollout the largest localised implementation of e-governance initiatives. IBM is one of the key players in the scenario and takes an active part in setting the project roadmaps. Yet the project needs a localised GNU/Linux distribution, which we possess and we are not the part of any Special Interest Group . The fun part is that from the time the IT Policy was drafted and circulated, the Ankur Group has been releasing the beta of the CD in an attempt to prove its technical competence. Technocrats and other people from the entire spectrum, be it from the Indic Consortium, Unicode Consortium, C-DAC, WBEIDC as well as the internal L10n unit of IBM are aware of the announcement releases and the availability to the project ISOs at the sourceforge site. And here we are still going around with the begging bowl to ensure that our efforts are recognised while at the same time plunging neck deep into other languages.


- posted by sankarshan @ 11/18/2003 04:25:00 AM