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Karnoor Mohan Rai and Journalist Rons Bantwal Felicitated at the 19th Kannada Sahitya Sammelana.

Bantwal, Aug 4, 2014: Mumbai based kannadigas, "Kalasarathi" Karnoor Mohan Rai and Rons Bantwal were felicitated at the 19th Kannada Sahitya Sammelana at Polali, Bantwal. Mohan Rai was felicitated for his social service and Rons Bantwal for journalism. On behalf of Rons his brother Dony Bantwal accepted the felicitation from the hands of State minister for youth and sports, K. Abhayachandra Jain and chairman of Alva’s Education Foundation, Dr. Mohan Alva.

Linguist laments lack of help from governments

The festivities of the Kannada Sahitya Sammellan took a sombre tone when sammelan president K.P. Rao, computer linguist, lamented the lack of government aid for digitalising Kannada.

No recognition

During his keynote address at the district sahitya sammellan here on Friday, he said for over 30 years he had developed software to allow publishing in Kannada without receiving any recognition.

“There is no aid whatsoever. It is left to the interest of individuals to ensure the preservation of Kannada books and digitalisation of the language,” he said.

Linguist K.P. Rao delivering his presidential address at the 19th Dakshina Kannada district literary meet at Polali, near Mangalore on Saturday. Photo: H.S. Manjunath

Case in point

A case in point was Lohit D.S. from Davangere, who had developed software that adopted Kannada to various operating systems and smartphones.

He had developed the software to suit Windows and Linux operating systems over the past year. Though he claimed no other Kannada software was this much compatible, he said he was struggling to take the software to a wider audience.

Similarly, a group of people were attempting to record Havyasi folklore for posterity without any financial aid from the government, said Mr. Rao. “There is no recognition for people who work for the language,” he said.

Mr. Rao said schemes announced by governments and organisations for developing software for languages nearly always ended in failure.

Nitpicking

“I don’t know how governments do it, but they succeed in seeing through people interested in digitalizing Kannada and instead choose someone who knows nothing about the language,” he added.