1 DISCLAIMER This impact assessment report by no means has any commercial intention and is solely undertaken for the purpose of assessing the impact of Technology Development for Indian Languages. IIPA will not be responsible for any interpretation drawn by the reader on the basis of information contained herein. The reader is solely responsible for the use of this material to achieve its intended results. Unauthorized publication/edition/modification of the content of this report is strictly prohibited. ---IIPA Team 2 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We express our tremendous and sincere gratitude to Chairman-IIPA, Honourable Sh. T. N. Chaturvedi, IAS for staying our never flickering beacon of guidance in this project. Deepest appreciation for our most respected Director Sh. S.N. Tripathi, IAS whose contribution in stimulating suggestions and encouragement helped me to coordinate my project especially in writing this report. Special thanks to Sh. Amitabh Ranjan, Registrar, IIPA, for extending all the institutional and administrative support throughout the project. We are grateful to Secretary, MeitY, Sh. Ajay Prakash Sawhney, for giving us an opportunity to perform the impact assessment of Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL). His persistent support deserves a special mention with all our humble gratitude. We are extremely thankful for being provided such an endless support and guidance, although he has a busy schedule. We would like to express our deepest appreciation to Additional Secretary, MeitY, Sh. Pankaj Kumar, for his valuable inputs and constant encouragement that helped us in this daunting project. We are grateful for his timely and unconditional guidance till the completion of our report. We are fortunate to have worked with his on this assignment. We are immensely grateful to the Project Head of MeitY, Dr. S. K. Srivastava. TDIL has had the benefit of the vision of Dr. Srivastava since its inception. He played a major role in bringing the initiative ‘National Roll-Out Plan’ for wider proliferation of Indian language Software Tools and Fonts. His vision for TDIL helped fuel the growth of industry in this sector. The spin-off of these efforts has resulted into increasing interest of MNCs to look at India as a large market for Language Technologies. India is, thus, poised to emerge as Multilingual Computing hub. From TDIL team - special mention of Mr. Vijay Kumar for his dedicated support, input and kindest cooperation that made us more surefooted in this convoluted project. Additional thanks to Mr. Bharat Gupta, without his support, this report would not have been so updated and complete. We can’t forget our concealed force of Sh. Mithun Barua, Dy. Registrar, Academic Support, Sh. O.P. Chawla, Dy. Registrar, F& A and Sh. R. D. Kardam, Assistant Registrar, Accounts, Pension & Membership. As a team, we stay unhesitant to state, “We are indeed incomplete without our leader Dr. Charru Malhotra, who, with her prudent thought process and effective leadership, helped us sail this boat in a distinctive manner.” Special thanks to indispensable team members of IIPA involved in this project. Profuse thanks to Mr. Atul Garg and his team, who burnt the midnight oil and brought shape to this report. He was constantly supported by Aniket Basu, Research Officer, IIPA, for strategic coordination and threading the report in one unit throughout the project along with other IIPA team members. He was wholeheartedly supported by the content team including Ms. Anushka Bhilwar, Mrs. Sugandha Vihan, Mr. Arun Ramasubramanian, Ms. Sanjana Ahluwalia, Ms. Vinti Manchanda, Ms. Nishtha Agarwal, Mr Swentanshu and Ms. Anu Raj Rana. We thank Mr. Amit Garg, Finance and Operations Expert for his continuous support in various tasks of the report generation. Special thanks to Mr. Yatharth Chaudhary for the team building efforts. Last, but not the least, the report 4 in its beautiful format could not have been possible without the hard work of Mr. Gurpreet Singh and his team. Printed and Published by Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA) Indraprastha Estate, Ring Road, New Delhi-110002. Fax.(O) +91-11-23702440, +91-11-23356528 E-mail: [email protected] ©Copyright 2019. All rights reserved by Indian Institute of Public Administration (IIPA), New Delhi 5 INDEX ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................ 4 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ................................................................................................ 20 1.1 CHAPTER OVERVIEW ....................................................................................................................... 20 1.2 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ....................................................................................................... 21 1.3 SCOPE AND OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY ............................................................................................. 22 1.4 DEFINING THE ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY .................................................... 23 1.5 STAGES OF TDIL IMPACT STUDY ...................................................................................................... 24 1.6 DELIVERABLES AND STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY REPORT .................................................................. 26 CHAPTER 2: BACKGROUND OF TDIL ............................................................................................................ 28 2.1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 28 2.2 HISTORY ......................................................................................................................................... 29 2.3 NEED OF TDIL .................................................................................................................................. 30 2.4 VISION OF TDIL ............................................................................................................................... 32 2.5 SALIENT FEATURES OF TDIL ............................................................................................................. 33 2.6 KEY INITIATIVES .............................................................................................................................. 34 2.7 TECHNOLOGY OFFERINGS ............................................................................................................... 34 2.8 RESOURCE OFFERINGS .................................................................................................................... 36 2.9 OTHER OFFERINGS .......................................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER 3: FUNDAMENTAL RESEARCH IN TDIL .......................................................................................... 38 3.1 OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................... 38 3.2 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 39 3.3 RESEARCH AREAS UNDER TDIL PROGRAMME .................................................................................. 39 3.3.1 DEVELOPMENT OF ROBUST DOCUMENT ANALYSIS & RECOGNITION SYSTEM FOR INDIAN LANGUAGES (OPTICAL CHARACTER RECOGNITION) ..................................................................................................................................... 40 3.3.2 DEVELOPMENT OF AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION(ASR) ......................................................................... 45 3.3.3 DEVELOPMENT OF ON-LINE HANDWRITING RECOGNITION SYSTEM (OHWR) ..................................................... 49 3.3.4 MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEM (MT) ...................................................................................................... 53 3.3.5 DEVELOPMENT OF SANSKRIT HINDI MACHINE TRANSLATION SYSTEM (SHMT) .................................................. 59 3.3.6 CROSS LINGUAL INFORMATION ACCESS ...................................................................................................... 60 3.3.7 DEVELOPMENT OF TEXT-TO-SPEECH SYSTEM FOR INDIAN LANGUAGES (TTS) .................................................... 65 3.3.8 DEVELOPMENT OF CORPORA OF TEXTS IN MACHINE READABLE FORM (TEXT CORPUS) ........................................ 69 3.4 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................... 74 CHAPTER 4: UNDERSTANDING TDIL STANDARDISATION ............................................................................. 75 4.1 OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................................... 75 4.2 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 75 6 4.3 NEED AND BENEFITS OF STANDARDISATION ................................................................................... 76 4.4 PROCESSES OF STANDARDISATION IN TDIL PROGRAMME ............................................................... 77 4.4.1 UNICODE STANDARDS............................................................................................................................