 I didn't expect that. So sorry for the small technical difficulties that we had. The rest of me is freezing but my palms are sweating because of that right now. I think. So my name is Kirtna. I am from India. For all those of you who was here yesterday evening I think I had given a shout out. So maybe you have met me then. But if not I am here to talk about my home country and my home state. And Karen just left us a little bit disappointed about how companies may or may not be doing it for profit. I think it's a bit of a downer. So hopefully my story will cheer you up because I'm speaking about how my state has the entire legislative and the government has shifted to open source. So I'll come to that and so I'll start off with India. So I hope everybody knows where India is. We are in the South Asian region. It's huge. Colors, Taj Mahal, everything you can associate with India. I've written in the first slide. So the population of India currently stands at about 1.2 billion. And it's a very small place and everybody is jam-packed in there. So that has its own difficulties and situations that we have to overcome. And technology is one of those things that is connecting India right now. So I'll give you a really fascinating statistics. So why India technology is gaining ground in India is because if you look at other countries with high levels of population, obviously China is first. But they have a higher level of technology penetration into the population. They have it about 70% I think. And USA has more than 90%. So India seems to be South Asia I should say with India and nearby neighbors, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, we all come together in the same subset. So the penetration there is like 40% or so. There are lots, large swaths of people still left unconnected into the internet. So that is a huge frontier that technology or tech companies would like to tap into. So the funny thing is only 30% of people in India have access to basic sanitation. But we have half a billion cell phone connections. So that is technology has penetrated more than sanitation in India. So that is the level of technology that we are looking at. And this is only half of India. So the rest of India and when the rest of Pakistan and people come in, we have almost a billion people getting connected in the next few years. That is the amount of network and the scale of magnitude that we are looking at. So human resources. So another thing that India will have is the human resource. Almost a large part of our population is below 35 years of age and almost everybody has a mobile phone. So everybody knows their WhatsApp and their Facebook and everybody is getting connected to that. So if we can get that population to be interested or at least one person of that billion to be interested in open source software, that will be a great boost, I believe. So that's a powerful incentive. And that is why we have, in the last six months alone, we have a lot of high profile tech people visiting. We had Tim Cook about last month. Mark Zuckerberg came there to push his free basics. It did not work. We voted him out. So we all of us spammed the Ministry of Telecom. We told him we do not want free basics. No, we want free internet, not free basics. So there's a huge swath of underutilized technical talent just waiting there because of the population. And that is the place that we can really tap into. So this is India. And I'll come and I'll be mainly talking about my state. My state is this small little thing at the end. Here is where I'm from. It's small like me. So that is Kerala. And I'm a Malayali. So this is Kerala. And I'm from Ernakulam. It looks medium-sized in this map, I suppose. But Ernakulam is the largest district in Kerala. And it's also the most developed. It's the urban center of Kerala. So a bit about Kerala. I'm from the land of coconuts. The name translates to the land of coconuts. And inside that little slice of land, we have about 3.5 crore, that is 35 million people living there. So that's a high density of population. And in Kerala is one of the most developed states in India. We have a very good GEP. We have the highest literacy rate. It's almost 100% primary education. So a lot of people in Kerala have access to technology. And that is why I think the origins of FOSS in India has started with Kerala. Kerala, I think, is the first state in the world to have a pro open source policy. It started in 2001. We had a huge conference. Richard Stallman came. I don't know about 2001. I was maybe six then. So I remember 2008 when there was huge conference. And 2010 or something, he came. And I saw posters over there. And my mother was trying to explain who this person was. And all I noticed was, he's a guy, but he has long hair. That's all I noticed. I was a kid. So all these huge conferences were held in 2001, 2008. And 2011, there was a 10-year anniversary of the first one in 2001. And ICFOSS is the International Center for Free and Open Source Software. It was an institution created by the government of Kerala. And I think it was the first of its kind to promote free open source software by a government. So that was created in 2009. I'm a student ambassador from ICFOSS. So I have this really cool job of meeting people in Kerala in and around Kerala and trying to tell them about open source software. Some of them were like, are you crazy? We have Google. We have everything. And some people were interested. And so I'm the student ambassador from my district of Vernakulam. So this is the screenshot of the front page. ICFOSS, we have a lot of activities happening like every two to three months. We have this workshop for people. So anybody can attend. Usually it's free for all the people to attend. And yeah, so one thing that led that happened because of ICFOSS is IDS School. So IDS School is the state board, the Kerala government board. It introduced a lot of technology into its curriculum. So we have people in the 10th grade. The 10th grade would be 15 year olds who are starting to learn Python, who are starting to learn what FOSS is and what technology is. So that's a huge leap. And the empowering thing about the state board is that there's an international board where all the kids go to CVSE, the central government board that the middle class goes to. A state board is usually lower income people are people that they want, they want to go to CVSE, but they can't afford it. So that's why they used to go to state. But these days, the its quality of educational state is so high that people in CVSE they don't know what C is. But people in the state board, they can program in Python already. So the technology is really good. They've pushed it really well. And so Swatendra Malayalam computing is the local powerhouse of computing that we have. Malayalam is my native tongue. So these guys, what they do is they code everything in the in our native tongue. That is why Malayalam is so I think Malayalam is one of the strongest sub wikis in Wikipedia because these guys, they push, they translate everything into Malayalam. They're really Malayalam centric people, very religious, the lids of the language. I'm not really that good. So when because of SMC, I'll come back to start up a little later. So because of that, our legislator, the entire legislative body of Kerala, which services almost 35 million people, it moved entirely into free open source software. It happened about 2014, I think, and there's a lot of interesting stuff about it, because it's the first administrative body in the world to move into free open software entirely. And the mainly what convinced them to move was that if you do it, it will be cheaper. Okay, we're in the new signing up for this. So and the legislative assembly, name means law in Malayalam. So name is what our assembly is called and all the documentation is which was for that is done in Malayalam. Malayalam is a complex index script. It is written in rounded wobbles. So if you see SMC, the part over at the left top, that is Malayalam. It's not you can't write it in one single way like you write it in English. It has a lot of different subways to write it. It's a bit complex. And Malayalam is said to be one of the toughest languages to speak, because we have all these slang words coming in. And we have like, so a lot of people find it difficult to roll their tongue like that. And we have these are the specifications of the magnitude of the tasks that they managed. So 80 operators and 500 pages of text every day, all that is done in Malayalam, and it's all done up in source software and everything. And then the government mandated that all the public sector undertakings KSE, we are electrical board, everything, those are all done in open source system. And we have an Indic keyboard released. So everybody can who wants to use Malayalam in their keyboard, when they want to type, they can use Malayalam. And recently some these phones are also so these things were released in 2013 or 14. So nowadays, almost all these languages are supported by Google and Android. This was then, and that was a significant milestone then. And our electricity board has moved to free source, free open source software solutions, and the building software ORIMA is called Unity in Malayalam. And SARAS is simplicity. That's the accounting software. Yeah. So and now I'll come back to the startup village. So we've, they found out these guys are really good at policy planning and very interested in it. So they found that a lot of the youth on an average, a lot of people pass out, but there are not enough jobs for everybody who passes out. So they created this thing called the startup village. startup village what basically does is that it enables a student who has an idea for an entrepreneurship. So they support, they give a part of the attendance. If you're working in startup village, you'll get at leniency in your attendance, you'll get leniency in your subject marks, and they encourage you. And then there are a lot of companies inside startup village, or people who are like just passed out, or people who are with their jobs to come and start and all that. And the government gives them incentive, they give them tax cuts. And startup village was started in 2010, almost, I think last year or so, the central government has also started its version of the startup village, they're giving tax breaks to all these startups from the last budget onwards, but our government started in 2010. So I'm really proud to talk about this. And I have in my own class, I have classmates who have their startups incubated in it. I help out, I have friends in startup village with whom I help out with content and friend and development. And so that's about startup village. Startup village is a place, there's an actual physical place in Cochin, where you can come and you can register, but it also provides online incubators. So if you're in some other part of KLR, which is not accessible, or if you want to live in your own hometown, and start something, then you can have an online version of this incubation, and they give you online support. You have to have Wi-Fi sometimes, since it's India, it doesn't work in all, but we adjust. So that's what startup village is. And finally, eDistrict. So eDistrict, I'm not sure of exactly when this was implemented, but all our public service announcement and all that, everything has gone online. And I believe it's all done in open source software as well. So if you want any documentation, your birth certificate, death certificate, marriage certificate, other is our social security number. So if you want any of these administrative documents or these official documents, if you want them for KLR government, everything is online, you can give your number, and it's all very transparent. So you can ask that person and they have this 30 day policy. Like if you don't get what you have asked for in 30 days, your government is held accountable. And so everything is online. This again, this is Malayalam. For all those who didn't understand, this is Malayalam. So Malayalam is written when you write it, when printed Malayalam looks like this, written Malayalam looks a whole lot worse. Sometimes even natives can't read it. So we have early scripts of Malayalam. Like India is very ancient. So Malayalam has been, we have old scripts like Geeta, Mahabharata that is written. So in early times, those there are, they have excavators have found instances where all those things that were written in Sanskrit, they were also written in a Davidan script similar to ours. So they have all these research going into how we can connect how all our languages have evolved. Because in South India, I'll go back to India right now. Yeah, so all these places in South India, these four guys, they have almost the same that round script, but it has all evolved in different regions. So there is apparently a common ancestor for all these regions. And so the all this data mining research is going on into how we can find it and all that. And so the Malayalam computing is these guys are pushing about how care Malayalam was the first thing and nobody believes that, but we're still trying to do it. So and a district is that all the legislators are all the papers, everything that a person might need for any of their uses, everything is online, all your grievances, if you want to talk to the government, those are online. So that's basically it. I've given you some references, though, all those screenshots you see, those are all live webpages. If you would like to know any of the websites, I can give them to you. So that's basically it. Hopefully, we're all a little bit happier that some good is happening in the world. So thank you. I'll take questions if anybody has. Yes. Often in Africa, you'll find that in Nigeria or something like that, you'll find someone that has more than one telephone in their pocket. Is that the case also in India? Yeah, there are people with multiple connections, obviously, but the scale, not everybody can have, I mean, if 300 million people have and there are 500 connections, you can assume that almost 200 people have double connections. No, some people who don't care about sanitation, they care about mobile phones, they want to have access to this Facebook and Google and all that. So that's what the numbers is talking about, I think. So it's a very glamorous thing in India, if you have mobile phone, so people want it more sanitation, it's a taboo subject. So nobody wants to talk about sanitation, but if everybody has a mobile phone, which is streaming the latest movie, everybody wants that. So everybody wants an iPhone. Please. Getting a SIM card and you've got to register for it. We've got something similar, the non-flight was bad here in South Africa. Has that affected mobile penetration, being hard to get a SIM card and having to provide documentation? I think it has for a long time, but I think for the past couple of years, a lot of these restrictions have been relaxed. We are trying to make our economy more palatable to the outside world, bring in more foreign investment. So I think changes are happening right now so that people can get it easier than. So, hopefully, Any more questions? Hi, I was just asking, you know about Facebook's internet.org and I was just wondering if it's penetrated to India and how much it has helped. I did not hear Facebook's record. Internet.org, where they provide free internet access to Facebook, I think. No, the Mark Zuckerberg came about three to four months ago to try push a free basics, to glamourize it to Indians and tell them that we here, we have free basics, but we overwhelmingly, we messaged the ministry of telecom and we told them that no free basics, we want free internet in the actual free sense, not something that Facebook is giving us. We want, we have a right to free internet and that's not what Facebook says it is. Thank you. Thanks. Well, I think my question is somehow related to this. Well, you mentioned a lot that, right, the internet connectivity is usually done, usually it got to people through cellular phones. Now, cellular phones are a great way to consume, but a very poor way to create. So how, how much does that translate to people having besides their phone, which is a great tool to understand the world, a computer with which they can create things? I'll tell you the answer. That's a very significant question because the problem with India is that the urban population is well educated, but the rural population is not so well educated. So and all these programming stuff is in, especially in North India, it is probably in English, which they're very much unfamiliar with. But in a mobile phone, if you can, you don't need much to learn how to operate a mobile phone or how to access things in a mobile phone. And I don't think they are in the mode of contributing yet. They are consuming YouTube, they are consuming local videos and all that. And so that is given them an interest in technology. So every Google, Facebook, those are household names in India. And knowing about technology and wanting to know more and explore technology is better than not having any technology at all, I believe. So I think change is happening. It is happening from the south to the north, I think, but it is. And in the next 10 years, hopefully India itself will become a powerhouse of force. That's our aim. That's what we are working for. Any more questions? So the question from IRC is, is there a mobile free software implementation in India at the moment or some projects you'll be aware of? Can you repeat the question? I didn't understand that. Unfortunately. So the question was, is there a mobile free software implementation or project that you know at the moment in India? Mobile free. I'm not sure about that exactly. There are probably, India is a very diverse place. So whatever you're searching for might probably exist, because there are people from very different levels, I mean, there are people from just the top of various brilliant people to people who don't know nothing about communication. Like we have those. That's the level that we're at, but I'm not sure exactly what the user, the person who's talking about mentioning, but probably it does exist. I'm not knowledgeable about it. Okay. So if there is no more questions, I think we should move on because the next talk will be in a few minutes. Thanks again. Thank you so much. And before this ends, if my parents are watching, I think they are a shout out. I hope I did well more. Thank you. You're a great audience.