[lg policy] World Mother Tongue Day: Time for India to implement a multi-lingual policy

Fri Feb 21 15:59:33 UTC 2014

World Mother Tongue Day: Time for India to implement a multi-lingual policy

[image: IBNLive] <http://ibnlive.in.com/xml/author3708.xml>

  Anecdote 1: It was a state run bank situated in a lower middle class
locality of South Bengaluru. Several middle aged women, looking confused,
were moving from desk to desk seeking help. I inquired the bank staff on
what's going on and learnt that they were here to get their LPG subsidy
amounts and seeking help of the staff to fill the money withdrawal forms.
These women were facing two problems. The SMS that they received about
credit of subsidy was in English and the withdrawal form at the bank was
printed in English and Hindi and not in local language Kannada. This
language barrier was forcing these women to trouble the staff for help. The
technology and policy intervention that was brought in to help citizens was
actually making their lives difficult in this case!

Anecdote 2: It was a post office in a small town of Dharwad district in
Karnataka. A rural woman, with a Kannada newspaper in her hands, came to me
seeking help to fill a money order form. Seeing her holding a newspaper, I
was surprised as why is she seeking my help at the first place. When
inquired, she told me that she has studied till 5th standard and knows how
to read and write Kannada but unfortunately the money order form was
printed only in English and Hindi. As she didn't know either of those
languages, she needed my help to fill the form. When I inquired the staff
as why the local language is not used, they pointed their fingers at
Official language act that mandates increased usage of Hindi at all levels
of communication in all institutions belonging to the Central government.

Anecdote 3: She was a house maid widow living in Vijayanagar area of
Mysore. She was pooling in whatever little she could save for her
daughter's wedding and in the process meets an agent selling ULIP policies.
Sensing an opportunity to sell a policy and earn commission, he convinced
her to put her savings into a ULIP policy without actually revealing that
it's a stock market linked scheme where earnings is linked to fluctuations
of the market. Although she knew reading and writing in Kannada, her
inability to read English or Hindi was taken to advantage by the agent who
got her to sign the policy document and invested her savings on a ULIP
policy. Three years down the line, to her horror, she realized that all her
savings had tanked due to fluctuations of the market.

Anecdote 4: It was a private bank's ATM in South Bengaluru and I was
waiting for my turn to get into the ATM for almost 20 minutes. The person
who was at the Kiosk was trying hard to withdraw money and later turned
back inviting me to help him out. I duly obliged and found out later that
he works in a nearby Garment factory and doesn't understand anything other
than Kannada. It was his first salary and he was unable to withdraw money
as the ATM interface was available only in English and Hindi and not in
Kannada.

These are just some of the anecdotal examples I have experienced personally
in the past few years. They tell a grim story of how India's language
policy is creating an artificial information asymmetry where non-Hindi
speakers are put to great trouble due to a language barrier placed by the
system. The Official language act of Union government makes it mandatory to
run operations only in Hindi and English while effectively sidelining other
languages spoken by as many as 60 per cent of Indians. This is also a big
reason why financial inclusion in India has failed to achieve its
objectives of bringing majority of Indians under the reach of financial
institutions. The success of a democracy lies in bridging the gap between
system and the people and the language of the people plays a vital role in
achieving that. Sadly in India, only Hindi is considered as people's
language, effectively pushing other languages to the corner.

On a day when the world celebrates International Mother Language day to
celebrate diversity, India, hailed as world's largest democracy (I doubt
whether we can say so after seeing how Telangana Bill was passed in the
Parliament!) should recognise the follies of imposing one language in the
name of link language. Bangladesh broke away from Pakistan when Urdu was
imposed on Bengalis of then East Pakistan.

Soviet Union broke into pieces when Russians tried imposing Russian on
everyone in USSR. Those stark examples from history should teach India that
it's time for India to recognize all scheduled languages present in the 8th
schedule of the Constitution as official languages of the Indian Union,
giving equal status to all languages. Such a language policy will go a long
way in fostering greater sense of unity among Indians speaking different
languages.

With rapid technological progress, implementing such a multi-lingual
language policy is not a big problem. Current language policy of the
European Union holds a classic testimony on how linguistic diversity should
be celebrated and not cursed. Remember, Europeans learnt this lesson in a
bitter way after the devastating Second World War! Hope all the advocates
of federalism including Mr. Modi will consider this demand seriously in
2014 Lok Sabha elections.

http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/vasantshetty/3708/65107/world-mother-tongue-day-time-for-india-to-implement-a-multilingual-policy.html

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