The government on Wednesday launched the ‘.bharat’ domain name in the Devanagari script covering eight languages including Hindi, Konkani and Marathi.

With the launch, individuals of companies who are interested in owning a website with domain name in Hindi language would be able to book the name in Hindi script.

The name would have ‘.bharat’ in Hindi script as its extension instead of commonly top level domains such as .com, .net or .in.

“This initiative should not stop at eight languages. I asked the department to make .Bharat domain name available in all the Indian languages very soon,” Communications and IT Minister Ravishankar Prasad said.

The National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI) will soon also launch the Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) in other Indian languages like Bangla, Urdu, Punjabi, Telugu, Tamil and Gujarati.

Mr. Prasad said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a big propagator of information technology.

“We will connect 60,000 villages with broadband this year, one lakh next year and another one lakh in the following year through the National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN),” he added.

The project is worth around Rs. 35,000 crore which aims to provide high-speed broadband connectivity to 2.50 lakh gram panchayats in India by March 2017.

The Minister said that e-commerce is going to bring in revolutionary changes in the economic activities of rural India. It will not only generate new jobs but also create large number of business opportunities for all sections of populations in rural India.

Mr. Prasad said as internet will reach villages, the people there will go online to shop for things, which in turn will lead to expansion of e-commerce and opening up of more warehouses and creation of more jobs.

He added NOFN will herald an e-commerce revolution in India.