The extent of mainstream political support for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) and Open Standards seems to be getting stronger. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition party in the current parliament, today released a National IT vision document (http://www.lkadvani.in/eng/images/stories/it-vision.pdf)

which contains strong support for FOSS and Open Standards, such as:

1. Ten Million students to get a laptop (worth Rs 10,000 or around USD 200) which will be loaded with FOSS, (Page 21 of the document)
2. Creation of royalty free open standards ; call for all government software to be based on open standards (page 36, 37)
3.  Promotion of user generated, FOSS knowledge repositories in Indian languages - similar to Wikipedia (page 20)

The Left parties in India has been a traditional supporters of FOSS and open standards, with Kerala being a pioneer in the adoption and promotion of FOSS. Now with the BJP too clearly coming out in support of FOSS and Open Standards, there seems to move towards a political consensus favoring FOSS and Open Standards.