Two things I meant to add:
1. The eGov standards body for India has recently notified Unicode 5.1.0 as the default standard for all eGov applications henceforth. (Sadly, their website is DoA - http://egovstandards.gov.in/) I am hopeful that this will be the start of some initiative within Government and would, hopefully, spread.
A cache of their Approach Paper on Localization is here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:e28QCFBDI-cJ:egovstanda...
And a cache their Character Encoding Standard For Indian Languages is here:
http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:dYxnM6D7IMQJ:egovstandards.gov...
2. On input methods - is there anything of a best practice or even a Government notification about an input standard?
Thank you.
Best,
Gautam ________ http://social.prathambooks.org/