pronounsword-usage
I've seen that people use "how easy is it to […]?" and "how easy is to […]?"
Another example could be:
I couldn’t ignore the barrage of research showing how easy it is to screw up your kids.
Could it be written as follows?
I couldn’t ignore the barrage of research showing how easy is to screw up your kids.
Admittedly, it sounds much better the first form, however, is there any rule regarding the use of it's versus is.
Use commas, not commata. The latter is simply not used by native speakers.
Take a look, for example, at Google's Ngram Viewer on commas versus commata:
It's not even close.
TL;DR:
I'd hate for anyone to walk away with the idea that Indians think 'i' is acceptable. You won't find it in any respected Indian publication. You won't find the average Indian writing it down on paper. It's just textspeak and that's why it's common in text and tweets and comments online.
Detailed answer:
I’m from India. I assure you there’s no such thing as the lowercase 'i'. No grammar teacher of mine — and I've had quite a few good ones — ever so much as mentioned it. In fact, this is the first I'm hearing of it.
The tendency of Indians to write in textspeak is unfortunate, but 'i' is as erroneous as 'u'.
I'd like to point out that almost all of these violations occur in the electronic medium. Nobody writes 'i' on paper. They type it. And if there's no autocorrect, most of them can't be bothered to rectify it themselves.
How established is this practice among Indian English speakers?
Based on my experience, this is pretty established, but not so much among Indian English speakers as among Indian netizens.
Is writing i a means of circumventing the perceived limitations of the English language?
If you mean the limitations regarding the tiered system of politeness, then no. The tiered system affects more pronouns than 'I', and affects verbs and modifiers as well.
I might as well mention that Hindi's script Devanagari (or any other Indian script I'm familiar with) does not have the concept of capital and small letters. So, the question of whether this practice is a carry-over is moot in this case (unlike that of some European languages).
Can anyone confirm this practice, and/or provide a link to the aforementioned article?
Don't know about the link, but I can confirm that what you have there is a practice evolved solely for digital media. Admittedly Indians use it a bit more, but it's not exclusive to Indian English and shouldn't be considered a part of it.
I don't know what article Jeega was referring to, but that was just an opinion piece, an opinion he seemed to agree with. But it's definitely NOT a feature of Indian English. I'll eat my words if anyone can provide a shred of evidence to the contrary.
EDIT: Sumelic seems to have unearthed the article link in his answer below.
Best Answer
Just ignore the second example: it's ungrammatical.
OK, that's a slightly glib response, but seriously: I don't think many native speakers would use your second example. Whereas, it's a common mistake among native speakers of pro-drop languages such as Spanish.