Friday, April 17, 2026
News and Views from the Global South
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: IT Powerhouse Strikes Back
Ranjit Devraj* - IPS/TerraViva
- Anyone who doubts the power of Linux needs only to get hold of a nifty, hand-held device that the Indian army plans to issue to soldiers in its million strong army.
It is unlikely that Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, ever intended this open-source operating system to be put to military use. But it is a mark of the robustness of this revolutionary operating system that the Indian army is reposing faith on it – and indeed, has now completed user trials on the device.
Called SATHI (short for Situational Awareness and Tactical Handheld Information and Hindi for buddy), the 875-gramme device helps soldiers coordinate with one another on the battlefield.
It is really one of the many spin-offs of a low-cost computer developed indigenously, the basic version of which is available on the market for about 200 U.S. dollars.
”This the world’s first integrated battlefield computer run on Linux,” exulted Samyeer Metrani, general manager of Encore Software, a firm run by professors from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore. The institute first conceived of what is called the ‘Simputer’ as a cheap personal computer for Indian users three years ago.
But the irony still remains here. Although Indian software companies provide solutions to proprietary software big wicks like the U.S.-based Microsoft Corp, most people in this country cannot afford to buy licensed software products.
Like several other developing countries, India depends overwhelmingly on a flourishing cottage industry in assembled personal computers and pirated software.
Institutional users – including central government departments and several state governments – have been steadily turning to open-source Linux for their needs.
The World Social Forum (WSF) opened on Jan. 26, in Porto Allegre, Brazil, with open information systems in place to go with an open political ethos.
All of about 1,000 computers at the forum, reported IPS, are using free software. The official website has been developed for the first time in ‘php,’ an open source language.
One of the aims of the WSF is to give a voice to the world’s poor and excluded sectors, and hear of their success stories. The WSF, which ends on Jan. 31, is an annual gathering of civil society representatives, held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum, which brings together the world’s political and business elite in the Swiss resort town of Davos every year.
”There are many misconceptions about Linux. It is much easier to install and use than many people realise,” said Prof Edwin Wells, an active member of the Delhi Linux Users Group who participates in programmes that help beginners familiarise themselves with the operating system and its applications.
”The best introduction to Linux is to use a bootable Linux ‘distro’ available on a single compact disc (CD), from which Linux can be run directly without a hard disk. There is nothing like that in Windows,” said Wells.
Officially, a strategy is in place to make Linux the standard for students in all academic institutions while the government trains employees to help them work in a Linux environment with support from IBM.
In Bangalore, a global IT hub, Linux now runs a Centre of Competency (CoC), equipped with IBM hardware, that offers consulting, education and certification and allows users to test and gain insights into how Linux can help them.
Jyoti Satyanathan, general manager for Linux-IBM in South and South-east Asia, believes that the Centre of Competency is set to play a ”significant role in the worldwide Linux community.” Red Hat, a leading purveyor of Linux, now has offices in several Indian cities.
Microsoft has not been taking the steady encroachment of the Linux-IBM combine into its Indian turf lying down.
Apart from partnerships with leading Indian software firms and investments in research and development, Microsoft runs a 20 million dollar programme to provide information-technology education. It aims to cover 80,000 teachers and 3.5 million students over the next two years.
”Cost is a factor, but Linux actually offers better security arising from the fact that the source code on proprietary software is always secret and this makes Linux -based solutions ideal for such applications as the SATHI,” said an official in the Department of Information Technology.
One popular version of the Simputer is the Amida, a cross between a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a hand-held computer. It was built with support from Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), the public sector giant that produced electronic devices for the defence industry.
Targeted at Indians who are techno-savvy but still on the wrong side of the digital divide because of limited financial resources, the Amida does everything that can be done on a standard notebook – web browsing, mailing web pages, and sending voice mail over wireless Internet. The Amida website offers downloadable programmes for users of Windows and Macintosh operating systems.
”The Amida qualifies to be a truly converged device that incorporates the key functions of both PDA and cellular phone and I find it ideal for use while travelling,” said Amit Mittal, an enthusiast.
Because Amida has a slot for reading smart cards, it also becomes useful in non-urban settings.
For instance, it allows a village ‘panchayat’ (local body) or even a shopkeeper to hire out the device to individuals for specific periods – each user investing only in a smart card with his or her personal profile stored on it.
Said Puneet Kumar, a commentator on information technology and an executive with WIPRO, the internationally-known software major: ”The Simputer demonstrates that no country need fear being left out of the computer revolution if they learn to adapt it to local conditions.”
Kumar adds that an example of India’s unique formula of public sector support for private entrepreneurship in information technology can be seen at the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), based in western Maharashtra state’s Pune city.
C-DAC was created in 1988 soon after the U.S. government refused to sell supercomputers to India, on the grounds that they could be diverted for the country’s missile and atomic energy programmes.
Not only did C-DAC come up with a supercomputer within three years using the revolutionary parallel computing method, but it produced a series of ever more powerful machines called the Param.
Over a span of 15 years, C-DAC had converted the denial of a supercomputer into a challenge. It went on to deliver four generations of supercomputing platforms involving some 50 machines in active use not only in India but also in countries like Russia, Canada, Germany and Singapore. By April 2003, C-DAC was able to open to the public the Terascale Supercomputing Facility within its Knowledge Park in Bangalore city. There it installed the Param Padma, a teraflop (capable of processing data at a trillion floating point operations a second) machine made by connecting together 248 ordinary computers and with a Linux option.
The Param Padma is now ranked 171 in the list of the world’s top 500 supercomputers.
C-DAC is also involved in enabling people in India and other countries in South Asia to use computers while working in their own languages. This is done by creating special packages such as the Indian Language Standard Codes (ISCII), the Language Interface Card, the Indian Language Word Processor and the Indian Language Interface to Mobiles.
In October 2004, C-DAC launched a new project to develop software suites based on the open-source Linux operating system and designed to help community initiatives to produce and disseminate free and open source software systems to break language barriers and bridge the digital divide.
(*These stories are part of a special series commissioned from the IPS network by the TerraViva World Social Forum 2005 edition.)
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