India may not be a huge contributor to the development of Open Source and Linux, despite being an IT force, it is definitely becoming a big user of Open Source. Emerging economies like Brazil already champion the adoption of Open Source and India is not far behind.

The Indian government recently prepared a draft for the "Policy on Device Drivers for Procurement of Hardware for e-Governance". The goal of the policy was to ensure that computers must be capable of running on all general purpose operating systems including GNU/Linux and not just Microsoft Windows.

The government is now mulling plans to popularize FOSS within the government and beyond. DIT (The department of information technology) of the center government is now seeking advice from the International Center for Free and Open Source Software, Kerala. The state of Kerala which has made some "remarkable strides in the use of free and open sources software," as reported by Deccan Chronicle.

The reason why the center government is looking at Kerala because it is one of the few states which uses FOSS for e-governance projects. The state also gets the credit to introduce FOSS to student through its IT@School program. The state has been using FOSS technology for its Aadhaar enrollment program.

There is a visible connection between DIT and Kerala. The joint secretary in DIT, Ajay Kumar, used to be the IT secretary of Kerala and he brings with him the successful FOSS experience.