Guwahati, April 27: Now you can share knowledge in topics such as agriculture, health, education or e-governance in Assamese, thanks to a portal developed by a Guwahati-based NGO.

The Centre for Rural Development has developed the Assamese version of multilingual knowledge portal Vikaspedia, which is part of a national-level initiative, India Development Gateway, of the Union ministry of communications & Information Technology and executed by Hyderabad-based Centre for Development of Advanced Computing.

The portal, launched recently, emphasises key areas of social development and provides responsive and credible information in four other languages, including English.

The information is available under six sections — agriculture, health, education, energy, social welfare and e-governance.

“Apart from developing the Assamese version of the portal, the centre has been identified as the state nodal agency for Assam and we have taken the responsibility of co-ordinating the activities in the state since August last year,” Pradip Kumar Sarmah, executive director of the centre, told The Telegraph.

The portal framework provides an opportunity for collaborative content creation through public participation.

“The objective of the version is to reach out to people across the state and outside and make them contribute and share information in Assamese. Information available in the vernacular language will immensely benefit those who can read and write only in Assamese,” Sarmah said.

“As of today, the response has been good with people from as far as Qatar also contributing. Currently, we have 146 content contributors, and of them, 50 have so far contributed voluntarily in the form of write-ups in topics such as health and agriculture,” he said.

So far, the Assamese version of the portal has 3,000 pages, including xobdo.org, a descriptive dictionary.

“We have used Unicode compliant software such as Rodali and Jahnabi. All one needs to do is to visit our website, www.vikaspedia.in and register for contributing relevant, need-based and demand-driven information. The centre will provide training on the usage of the software. Readers, for their part, can rate the write-ups by clicking stars, to a maximum of five, and also give their feedback. We also have a discussion forum under each sector,” Sarmah said.

“Besides, writers who contribute between May 5 and May 25 will be eligible for awards based on their content, credibility and quality. This has been taken up to encourage people to contribute more,” he said.