The ministry has decided to explore the feasibility of training officials who have little to no knowledge of Hindi.
New Delhi: Apart from the promotion of the government’s rural policies and programmes, the rural development ministry has another task cut out for itself — pushing the usage of Hindi language in all its communication and correspondence.
At a meeting of the ministry’s ‘Official Languages Implementation Committee’ on 15 June, it was pointed out that while “all work of the ministry should be in Hindi, the percentage of correspondence and note-taking/comments in Hindi of several departments is very low”.
According to the minutes of the meeting, a report on the progress in use of Hindi in official communication in the ministry is drawn up on a quarterly basis and as per the report of quarter ending March, the correspondence of 10 divisions — including budget, Information Education and Communication, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and policy etc — in Hindi is “much less than the fixed target of 100 percent”.
The minutes state these 10 departments have also not met the target of writing 75 per cent of their notes/comments in Hindi.
New instructions
The ministry has decided to lay emphasis on exploring the feasibility of training officials who have little to no knowledge of Hindi.
To increase Hindi correspondence, the ministry suggested in the meeting that documents be issued with a covering letter in Hindi and that “officials of the departments not meeting targets should be told to do everything needed to meet the set target”. It has also been decided to outsource the vacant Hindi posts.
The minutes state that necessary instructions must be given to make the ministry website completely bilingual.
“All official communication and correspondence of the ministry has to be in Hindi but isn’t yet. We have to ensure it happens entirely in Hindi. The Official Languages Department of the Home Ministry oversees all this,” said an official in the administration wing of the ministry, which is in-charge of the issue. The official, who did not wish to be identified, was present at the 15 June meeting.
A letter was sent on 23 April to all joint directors in the ministry to increase correspondence in Hindi. A Hindi workshop was organised too on 18 April.
The ministry oversees some of the most crucial schemes of the central government — including MGNREGA, the government’s single largest social sector spending, the PM Awaas Yojana, PMGSY and rural livelihoods scheme, among others.
Hindi imposition
The BJP-led NDA government has received criticism from several quarters who have alleged that it is imposing Hindi on non-Hindi-speaking states. Leaders of several southern states, including Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M. Karunanidhi, have also protested against what they perceive to be the Narendra Modi-led government’s “imposition of Hindi”.
In May 2015, the NDA government had issued an order that as per the Official Languages Act, 1963, all government documents are issued bilingually, in Hindi and English. Before that, in February 2015, the government had constituted a Hindi Advisory Committee in various ministries and departments to “ensure the progressive use of Hindi”.
The home ministry had earlier instructed all bureaucrats to prioritise Hindi over English on official accounts on social media platforms.
“With a view to ensuring compliance of the constitutional and legal provisions regarding official language and to promote the use of Hindi for the official purposes of the Union, the Department of Official Language was set up in June 1975 as an independent Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Since then, this Department has been making efforts for accelerating the progressive use of Hindi for the official purposes of the Union,” the Department of Official Language, home ministry states as its purpose.