Promotion of Hindi in Institutions

In News

• Recently, the centre is taking efforts to promote Hindi in Indian government institutions in foreign countries.

More about the news

• The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has written to the External Affairs Ministry to promote the use of Hindi for official work in banks, public sector undertakings, embassies and other government offices located in foreign countries.
• MHA had previously asked the External Affairs Ministry to constitute an Official Language Implementation Committee that would oversee the progress of Hindi in official work.

Government’s efforts to promote Hindi

• Language of Parliamentary reports: 
  • In 2017, MHA accepted most of the recommendations contained in the 2011 report of a parliamentary standing committee on Hindi. 
  • Some of the recommendations were:
    • Option to write exams in Hindi, 
    • Minimum knowledge of Hindi must for government jobs, 
    • 50% government advertisements in Hindi, 
    • Railway tickets should be bilingual- Hindi being one of the languages and announcement at railway stations in “C” category (non-Hindi speaking) such as Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana and Kerala should be in Hindi.
• Websites open by default in Hindi:
  • In 2017, the government stated that the websites of all the Union Ministries and the offices under their control should be bilingual and the Hindi pages should also be compulsorily uploaded while updating the website.
    • Most government websites are bilingual now — Hindi and English. 
  • However, the websites of organisations such as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Border Security Force (BSF) and even the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) open in Hindi by default.
• Press releases:
  • In the past two years, most press releases by the Union Ministries were released first in Hindi.
• Digital dictionary:
  • Ministry of Education in collaboration with the MHA had developed a digital dictionary that included commonly used words in various regional languages. 
  • This included words from technology and banking to ensure that people from various fields could work in Hindi with ease.

Promotion of Education in regional languages

• The National Education Policy 2020:
  • The National Education Policy 2020 emphasises multilingualism and proposes a three-language formula in schools, where at least two of the languages are native to India. 
  • State Government are publishing bilingual and trilingual textbooks at foundational level and the learning material on Diksha platform relevant to the school curriculum has been made available in 33 Indian languages.
• Higher education:
  • As far as higher education is concerned, engineering courses are being offered in six Indian languages in 19 engineering colleges across 10 States from 2021-2022. 
  • The provision for the additional supernumerary seats in regional languages and up to 50% of the sanctioned intake in the regional languages have also been made by the AICTE.
  • At the UGC we have formed a committee for translating books in subjects such as commerce and humanities.

Source: TH