If Hindi continues to struggle to establish itself as a pan-Indian official language more than six decades after independence, it is not for lack of funds. The central government spends crores of rupees each year to promote its use.

An army of translators and Hindi officers in the department of official language (DOL) under the home ministry keep themselves busy translating reams of government material, bringing out journals and newsletters meant to promote the use of Hindi for official purposes of the union. Eight regional offices have also been established to monitor the implementation of the official language policy. There is also a retinue of people who expand administrative glossary by finding Hindi equivalents for commonly-used English terms. Never mind the fact that even Hindi speakers might find the English terms more familiar.

The Official Language Resolution of 1968 adopted by Parliament stated that "concerted measures should be taken for the full development" of all the languages under the Eighth Schedule of the constitution, besides Hindi, as it was necessary for "the educational and cultural advancement of the country" .

"The reality is that no language gets even a tenth of the budget that Hindi gets. Even our embassies have courses teaching Hindi, but no other languages. The Centre funds innumerable seminars and events for Hindi. There is hardly any funding for other languages," points out Prof V Arasu, head of the department of Tamil in Madras University.

D K Pandey, joint secretary , DOL, says that his department is merely carrying out what the Official Language Act stipulates by training officers in using Hindi. "We don't use any funds to promote Hindi outside the central government offices. The human resources development ministry is responsible for the promotion of all languages in the Eighth schedule, including Hindi," adds Pandey.

The DOL has a budget that has steadily increased over the years. This year, the budget allocated is nearly Rs 36 crore. In comparison, the National Institute of Communicable Diseases, which does work that impacts the health of millions , gets Rs 25 crore. The National Archives of India get just over Rs 20 crore. Even the Central Drug Standard Control Organisation, which carries out the crucial function of ensuring quality and safety of drugs sold in the country, gets less than Rs 32 crore. In the last decade alone, DOL has been allocated over Rs 200 crore.

Besides the money allocated to DOL, it is mandatory for every department, ministry, nationalised bank, institute, PSU, in short, thousands of offices across the country, to have a Hindi division ensuring thousands of jobs for people from the Hindi belt. These departments have Senior Hindi Officers, Hindi Officers, Assistant Hindi Officers, senior translators, translators, junior translators, Hindi typists and so on. Several thousand crores are spent on keeping them at work.

"All that the people in Hindi divisions do is harass officers insisting that they sign their names in Hindi, keep tabs on how many letters you write in Hindi and so on. They spend their time putting up name plates and sign boards in Hindi even in non-Hindi speaking states. What sense does that make?," asks an exasperated civil servant. "Such partiality to Hindi ignoring other languages in a country that claims to be multilingual is bound to cause heartburn," says a government employee from a non-Hindi speaking state.

- RN

