Gerard,

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 7:37 PM, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen@gmail.com> wrote:
Hoi,
  • You agree with me that these people exist.
  • The Malayalam Wikisource is getting more attention then the Malayalam Wikipedia
  • It is relatively easy to learn to read the script. 
  • Having native speakers type text that they could decipher is something they can do if they choose
  • Everybody benefits when more literature is transcribed

Such people exist but they are a minority. Teaching them their language is not the way to grow Indic language projects even if they are already part of the community.

Taking the case of Tamil, we do have highly qualified tech groups like http://thamizha.com/ that support FOSS. We also have organizations like http://infitt.org/ that have the best of developers, Govt. officials, software makers, thinkers, academicians that work with international organizations like Unicode consortium.

So, you need to identify the right people to partner with for Wikimedia.

India is a country of many languages with varying problems and specialities. In this situation, don't make generalizations and call Indians illiterate of their languages in an international blog.

Ravi