All premier institutes viz IITs, IIMs etc to independently must roll out and use their own Linux Distributions.
This will have the following advantages.
DEVELOPERS - With independent Linux distro, they have their own developers who are both actively engaged within the greater Linux community, know the kernel cold (there certainly are Indian programmers who can be and are even now developing software currently in the kernel), and have their loyalties to the Indian society. This means India has the developer base to keep up with the rest of the world in a critical area.
SECURITY - The only way to have a genuinely secure operating system is to review each and every line of code that goes into that OS by somebody both with the skills necessary to properly evaluate the software, and the loyalty to the organization necessary to fix things that seem out of place. See also the above point, which is even more critical here.
MEETING INDIA NEEDS - by having a group that is embedded within the University culture they have a much better grasp of what is needed for Indian society. NATIONAL PRIDE - There is also a little bit of national pride on the line here as well. Having something MADE IN INDIA is powerfully attractive for a number of reasons... at the very least to show that our country is able to keep up with the best and the brightest on the planet.
..A top to bottom review of the Linux kernel from another group of developers with a completely different interests, backgrounds, and motivations than other major contributors to Linux would also be a very good thing for the development of Linux as a whole.
The NSA (National Security Agency of America) has their own distro for most of the reasons I've listed above, and has nearly continuous recruitment going on at college campuses for CS graduates. The Red Flag distro (Chinese) is another national distro that has been done for more than just pressuring Microsoft into lowering the price of Windows.
