Indian Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran has recommended that Indian patriots popularise the Indian identity on the web by using the .in top-level domain. "In every part of the world, the practice has been to use the short form of the respective countries at the end of the domain names by companies and individuals," said the Minister, in his first speech in the new role.

"During my trips abroad, I have always noticed that people have their email IDs with the initials of their country in the end. For instance, in Britain, the Websites or email IDs have at the end .co.uk, in Singapore it is .co.sg, in Japan it is .jp, in Hong Kong it is .hk and even in Pakistan they have .co.pk. But in India, we are still reluctant to use .co.in or .in. Why this hesitation?", Dayanidhi Maran asked. He has since been encouraging captains of industry and individuals to change their websites and email addresses to use the .in or .co.in extensions.

"I have made this appeal to representatives of the IT industry here, which is considered the IT capital of India. Once the tech industry migrates to this new identity, it will set a trend for the rest to follow in letter and spirit. They need to change the domain names of their companies or organisations by registering their Websites or mail IDs only once for identifying themselves with their motherland," Maran said.

"Though we are not making it mandatory, we are coming out with a number of schemes for Indian companies or organisations to make this transition soon. The ministry will shortly come out with an action plan to enable a smooth migration to either .co.in or .in," he continued. The minister acknowledged that there is currently a lot of red tape involved in registering a .co.in Domain Name; only .gen.in names are available to non-Indian companies operating in the country.

Author: Natalie Catchpole