I think it has to do with the fact that Internet access in India is still very limited, and, in some ways, very new.
As a journalist (based in Goa), I've been on e-mail access since 1994. But till just about 12-18 months back, I paid for every minute of internet time. Around that time, I managed to get unlimited dial-up access. Some six months back, I got access to broadband. And only about two months back, got unlimited 256 kbps broadband (at an affordable Rs 900 per month).
This may not reflect everyone's situation, since I live some ten kms out of a town in the smallest state. But outside of the metros (the four big cities), most people are in a similar predicament.
Also, not enough people have discovered the Wikipedia yet in India. Or so it seems. But you can expect the tide to turn in not too long a time. Let's hope so! FN
On 01/09/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Frederick "FN" Noronha wrote:
"It's not as bad as it was a year ago. We had almost nothing then. Now, languages like Bengali, Kannada, Marathi are in the 3,000-5,000 article range. Hindi, Assamese over 1,000. But Hindi, a very large language, has only 1,500 entries. That's a little surprising," Wales told IANS.
This actually doesn't surprise me too much. Hindi is a lingua franca of sorts in India, but so is English. In particular, the Hindi speakers most likely to be editing an encyclopedia on the internet (middle to upper class, well-educated) are highly likely to also speak very good English. Anecdotally, there are indeed a lot of Indians making good contributions on the English-language Wikipedia, so it seems that many seem to prefer to put their efforts there, probably for a variety of reasons (bigger base to start from; feeling that their contribution will have more global impact; etc.).
-Mark