Localised map tags: Kannada beats Tamil for top slot

Kannada language has the highest number of localised tags in maps compared to any other Indian language, community members from OpenStreetMap (OSM) said.

Members said there was active participation among the people in adding Kannada tags to the map. They were speaking on the sidelines of State of the Map Asia (SOTMA), the annual conference of OSM communities in Asia, held at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, recently.

OSM is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. The five million registered users will collect data using manual survey, GPS devices, aerial photography and other methods. This will be made available under the open database licence.

“This is already successful in a few Asian countries with the active participation of the people. This has been slowly picking up in India. It was first started in Chennai and then, it came to Bengaluru. But we see a lot of Kannada tags, as soon as the mapping started in Bengaluru. As this is a free editable map, people voluntarily add the Kannada tags for the mapping done in English,” Srividya, a community member of OSM told DH.

Chennai became the first city to be completely mapped. In Bengaluru, most of the central business district (CBD) areas are thoroughly mapped. However, the areas near the satellite towns are yet to kickstart the process.

“There is active participation of Bengalureans and non-Bengalureans in the project. Some members are ensuring that the newly mapped places are read in Kannada. So, as soon as the mapping is done, members add Kannada tags. The response is more for Kannada than any other language. This has also beaten the number of tags in Tamil,” said Srividya, also a panelist in the discussion. Nama Budhathoki, Erwin Olario, Taichi Furuhashi, Airin Akter and Harry Mahardhika were the other panelists who spoke about the mapping scenarios in Indonesia, Philippines, Nepal, Japan and Bangladesh.