Can Technology Lead to Cultural Stealth?

(For PC World, Pakistan)

And here I’d been thinking it was only Indian songs, soap operas, movies and the latest fashion trends that had been infiltrating our society, turns out the trend doesn’t stop there. Now Pakistani businesses looking to localize their domain names, or hoping to have a domain name in Urdu, will be forced to get the domain from India rather than Pakistan only. And here’s how this came about:

With the introduction of IPv6, and the new domains that will be made available thus, it is now possible to have a wider variety of domain names than before. Furthermore the domains do not necessarily have to be in English or in any form of Roman English either, even though it will possibly continue to remain the most popular language online. So with the new domains at hand, business organizations in particular; and anyone else in general, may apply for a domain name in the local language of the region. In which case, if yours is a local business in Pakistan, then what you could do is to apply for a domain name in Urdu, or if you’d like to go more regional, perhaps getting a domain name in the local regional language; Sindhi, Balochi, Pashto or any other language could also be possible.

The Benefits of Local Domain Name

The benefits of a local domain name would be enormous to say the least. This is because, foremost, it would be able to draw a large number of consumers online and towards your more localized, local customers’-friendly website and consequently easier to convince them to purchase your goods and services.

Furthermore, the more websites that any people, or rather, group of people, see online that talks about them, is in their local language, or in any way relates to them, the more likely will they be to come online, and make a regular habit of it, and eventually, visit your website also. Since language will no longer be a debarring factor here, people will also be able to come online and enjoy all those luxuries and benefits that the Internet provides us.

Look around you and you will come across ample proof that there are millions of people in the country who can neither understand, nor read nor write in English… and this inability has contrived to make this very large segment of our population in capable of either using the internet or utilizing it to their benefit. Due to this, not only has a large segment of our population remained ‘Internet  illiterate,’ but  businesses, increasingly moving towards online advertising, were unable to profitably promote their businesses online because that huge segment of the local population that they has hoped to target was missing.

The Downside

However, while the expected divergence in domain name and more localized online content availability becomes more than just a dream, there is another drawback as far as local Pakistani businesses, as well as the overall image of the country’s economy on a global level is concerned. One of Pakistan’s neighboring countries, India, has actually won the rights to hosting Urdu domain names. According to one report, “India has been delegated the International Domain Name extension for Urdu Language, which will allow Indian authorities to sell domain names with Urdu fonts,” reported DNA India.

As of now, India has already been awarded rights to host at least seven different languages’ domain names’ hosting rights by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). These languages include Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu and now Urdu, written in the Delhi script. The report further stated that “subject to last stage ICANN approval, this will make India the first and only country to have Urdu domain name extension.”

That is not to say that the concerned Pakistani authorities did not apply for the Urdu domain name extension, but such a very long time had elapsed by the time they sent if their application, so that now ICANN has to yet delegate the ccTLD for Urdu language to Pakistan. Moreover the process allegedly generally takes over six months to complete. However, as a result of India’s getting Urdu IDN, all the domain names will be sold by the National Internet Exchange of India, and this agency has been allocating ‘.in’ domain names. So for local businessmen, your domain name will, in short, carry the .in suffix at its end. Here’s stealth indeed!

In short, for businessmen, it means that the localized domain names of their business websites will not show that the business hails from Pakistan. Rather, it will appear that the business comes from India, and while this may or may not really affect your business, it is certainly off-putting to imagine introducing your website in Urdu only to be forced to sport the .in suffix at its end rather than .pk!

So are there any possible solutions here? For now, there doesn’t really seem to be a lot that could be done, but perhaps our local government could also try and get the rights to hosting Urdu domains also?