Whose language is it anyway?

Politics of the state, in particular the city, may revolve around it, but that's little solace for the state's official language. In fact, a look at the Marathi Language department, which looks after the development, awareness and use of the language, shows that it does not reflect the shouts demanding its use and development everywhere.

The top layer that is supposed to supervise and guide the department seems the most neglected. 

The department has not had a dedicated secretary looking after it for more than half the period since its inception, which was in July 2010. 

A secretary is the senior-most person in the bureaucracy heading a department. In the language department's case, for over two years, secretaries of other departments have been given additional charge of it at different intervals. Similarly, even the post of deputy secretary is vacant, with another department's counterpart managing the show here for over three months now.

It's been more than a month since a dedicated person for the post of deputy secretary for the Marathi Language department was selected. But she is yet to take charge because her previous department has not relieved her of her duty there. The language department has more than 25% vacancies, ie of the total sanctioned strength of 273, 71 are vacant.

As a result of lack of strong management at the top, development of the language has been slow. All volumes of the 23-volume Marathi encyclopedia are yet to come out despite work on them starting as early as the 1970s. So far, only 19 have been published and, of these, 17 digitised. Officials say the last volume that came out was two years ago. "Ideally, you expect an encyclopedia to be revised every 10 years, which happens in English, for example, the Britannica series. That is not the case here," said Deepak Pawar, faculty in the Department of Civics and Politics, who also works to encourage use of the language.

Also, Marathi Vishwakosh Nirmiti Mandal committee's tenure is over and a new committee is yet to be formed. The Vishwakosh department, under which it comes, hasn't had a president for over a year. Same is the case with the director of language post. It has been vacant for over three months.

The language department looks after the translation of state and central Acts. Besides the Constitution of India and 15 central and six state Acts, a large number of Acts are yet to be translated. Justice C Dharmadhikari, chairman of the Vidhi Anuwad Samiti (committee on translation of legalese) declined to give the total number of Acts that have not been translated, but said a lot of work is needed. "It is an ongoing process but there needs to be a permanent set-up.

The problem is there are no draftsmen for drafting the Acts, particularly state ones, in Marathi. Unfortunately, with respect to Acts, Marathi has become a language of translation. In every state, Acts drafted in English are being translated in the regional language. It is the translation that is put in the legislature as if it is the original draft of the law. Many draftsmen are required, but several of these posts have not been filled. One reason people do not want to take up the job is because salary is low and qualification required is high. One should have a very good knowledge of English, Marathi and Sanskrit as well because legal terms used in Hindi are Sanskritised. But the government is not serious about filling up these posts," said Dharmadhikari.