The Dot Bharat domain name will be a step towards connecting people from all walks of life through e-governance. “People can now log in by typing in Hindi into the sites. So far they had to type in English even if the site had Hindi content,” Govind noted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his maiden Republic Day address from the Red Fort on Friday, said: “E-governance is a way to good governance…There was a time when it was said that railway unites the country. I say today IT has the power to unite the country and its people.” The idea behind the new URLs is that “language must not be a barrier to use the Internet,” Govind said.

Indian Internet users will surpass those in the US by the end of this year and around 500 million people will be online by 2018, Rajan Anandan, managing director, Google India, said recently. India took 10 years to go from 10 million Internet users to 100 million. Now, five million new Internet users are added every month.

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