India announces end of the line for typewriters

India’s financial capital has called time on the familiar sight of typists on the streets as some 3,000 stenography and secretarial schools in Mumbai hold their last manual typing exams.

Digitisation by Maharashtra state heralds an end to a staple of Indian life – notary publics tapping away at typewriters outside courts and municipal buildings, providing official documents so that people without access to computers or English can go about their official business.

The modernisation drive is in line with other Indian states.