WE ARE PLEASED to introduce the India Region special section to Communications’ readers. The Indian subcontinent has a population close to 1. 8 billion, and is unique due to its diversity of people, cultures, spoken languages, and wide disparities in socioeconomic conditions. The region plays an important role
in the global computing landscape with its highly trained manpower, software
companies, and top universities that produce students that not only serve local
needs, but move around the world and have global impact. We developed this
special section to mirror all these facets.
Last year, we publicized the plans for the special section and made an open
call for contributions through ACM member channels and the ACM India
website. We received 45 proposals through this period and augmented the list
by reaching out to others to cover specific topics and areas. We also received
proposals from colleagues in Sri Lanka and Pakistan. A selection of 22 outlines
were identified for consideration. A workshop held at Microsoft Research in
Bangalore on February 23, 2019 converged on the selection of 17 proposals to
pursue as full articles. These articles underwent three rounds of reviews and
modification. The final section presents nine articles covering Hot Topics and
nine articles following Big Trends.
Computing solutions for the India region must deal with the scale of its popu-
lation. We feature India’s attempt at creating digital infrastructure and solutions
at that scale, notably the biometric identification through Aadhar. The other big
story is the success and reach of India’s software industry; practically every piece
of software sold in the world has components developed in India. The linguistic
diversity of South Asia is a challenge when creating computer-based solutions,
We hope this collection of articles gives you a glimpse of the unique problems,
opportunities, and exciting work in computing from the Indian subcontinent.
—P J Narayanan, Pankaj Jalote, and Anand Deshpande
India Region Special Section Co-Organizers
P J Narayanan ( pjn@iiit.ac.in) is a professor and director of the International Institute of Information Technology Gachibowli, in
Hyderabad, India. He is the former president of ACM India and former co-chair of ACM India Council.
Pankaj Jalote ( jalote@iiitd.ac.in) is Distinguished Professor at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology
Delhi, India, where he previously served as its founding director.
Anand Deshpande ( anand@persistent.com) is the founder, chairman, and managing director of Persistent Systems, a
global technology services company headquartered in Pune, Maharashtra, India.
Copyright held by owners/authors.
DOI: 10.1145/3355552
Welcome to the India
Region Special Section
EDITORIAL BOARD
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Andrew A. Chien
eic@cacm.acm.org
DEPUTY TO THE
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Lihan Chen
cacm.deputy.to.eic
@ gmail.com
CO-CHAIRS, REGIONAL
SPECIAL SECTIONS
Sriram Rajamani
Jakob Rehof
Haibo Chen
INDIA REGION
SPECIAL SECTION
CO-ORGANIZERS
P J Narayanan
International Institute
of Information Technology
Pankaj Jalote
Indraprastha Institute
of Information Technology
Anand Deshpande
Persistent Systems
Watch the co-organizers
discuss this section
in the exclusive
Communications video.
https://cacm.acm.org/
videos/india-region-special-section
