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Budget for IT language scheme cut by 7 times in Maharashtra

In India, where there are 22 official languages and 12 scripts, the TDIL's aim is to ensure the benefit of Information Technology reach the common man.

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The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) wants education to be imparted in mother tongue or constitutionally recognised state languages, but the government has slashed allocation for Technology Development for Indian Languages (TDIL) programme by seven times from the proposed Rs 140 crore.

A parliamentary panel has expressed concern over this development, saying that given the government's mission of "Digital India", there was urgent need to have IT facilities in Indian languages for its spread to the masses. "Hindrances in the projects will hamper the public delivery of services in local languages," the Standing Committee on Information Technology said in its report on Demands for Grants for 2015-16.

The Committee said the TDIL programme was playing an important catalytic role in promoting development of linguistic resources and for wider proliferation of Indian language technology products and solutions. "The budgetary allocation and utilisation under this project reveal that the targets of allocation have been met during the last two years. Nevertheless, the committee note with concern that in spite of utilizing almost all the allocations during the previous years, the amount allocated for 2015-16 (Rs 20 crore) for this programme has been reduced by seven times from the proposes sum of Rs 140 crore," said the panel headed by BJP's Anurag Thakur.

Recommending enhancing the budgetary allocation to TDIL, the committee has asked the department to pursue the matter with the finance ministry. Further, it said that the implication was accentuated in view of the department's submission that targets in several projects in the area of technology, language resource and standardisation could not be achieved due to shortage of budget and only token amount of grants-in-aid have been released to several projects.

The TDIL has identified "communicating and moving up the knowledge chain by overcoming language barrier" as its mission. The RSS had brought out a resolution asking the Centre and state governments to review their present language policies and ensure an effective system to impart education in mother tongue or constitutionally recognised state languages and simultaneously take initiative for use of "Bharatiya" languages in education, administration and delivery of justice, at its Akhil Bharatiya Pratinidhi Sabha in Nagpur last month. In India, where there are 22 official languages and 12 scripts, the TDIL's aim is to ensure the benefit of Information Technology reach the common man.

However, according to the parliamentary panel, during the year 2014-15, no new projects for the development of multilingual computing in future technology area could be initiated. "The computer scientists trained under it have left the project which has resulted in shortfall of the targets; the delay in implementation of projects has a cumulative affect on the pace of overall technology development in this area," the report said.

A BJP leader said the party was also in favour of encouraging Indian languages but sometimes budgetary allocations depended on utilisation and priority areas. As part of its research efforts, the TDIL under the leadership of University of Hyderabad a consortium Mode project has been initiated with the objective to develop Sanskrit computational tools and use them to develop machine translation technology from Sanskrit to Hindi.  

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