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The exercise may give BJP an edge over its bitter ally Shiv Sena, which has until now projected itself as the custodian of the Marathi language in the state.

Mumbai: In what is seen as a politically significant move, the BJP-led Maharashtra government wants its employees to upload information about the government and the state’s geography, culture and literature in the local language on Wikipedia.

The exercise — the brainchild of education minister Vinod Tawde — may give the BJP an edge over its bitter ally Shiv Sena, which has until now projected itself as the custodian of Marathi language in the state.

“These days, the first instinct is to look up information on Wikipedia. For example, if someone plans to visit the hill station of Mahabaleshwar, the person will browse Wikipedia first for information, not the state tourism website,” Aparna Gavde, deputy secretary in the Marathi language department, told ThePrint,

“We realised that as compared with other Indian languages, Marathi has very few pages on Wikipedia and this kind of training will increase awareness and activity,” she added.

The state Marathi language department has organised a workshop for government employees to train them on how to create an account to upload information on Wikipedia, the kind of information to upload and fonts to use, among others.

Gavde said the ultimate aim is to expand the amount of Marathi writing on the internet to promote the use of the language, not only among Maharashtra’s youth, but also outside the state.

Citing her department’s research, the officer said Wikipedia has a large number of users across Maharashtra who go to the English pages of Wikipedia and translate the information for various purposes as the availability of information in Marathi is limited.

The state government has tied up with a team from IIT-Bombay to train its employees in January. With this training, the department is hoping to make available a wide range of information about all government schemes, towns and villages, writers and poets of the state on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, a publicly editable encyclopedia, started in 2001 and is now available in 288 languages, including several Indian regional languages. The Marathi Wikipedia currently has 2.04 lakh pages containing 49,733 articles, 80,996 users and nine admins. Among other Indian languages, Tamil has 3.25 lakh pages and 1.24 lakh users, Malayalam has 3.45 lakh pages and 99,676 users, while Bengali has 5.43 lakh pages and 1.63 lakh users.

“States like Tamil Nadu have done much more to promote and conserve their regional language. In comparison, Maharashtra has lagged behind a bit until now,” Gavde said.

“If we can encourage more Marathi writers to create accounts and contribute to the language pages on Wikipedia, we will be able to promote the language on a global platform,” she added.

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