Hindi lags behind, House panel goes places

The 30 MPs on the committee, which is now chaired by Home Minister L K Advani, are expected to inspect 3,000-odd government departments across the country and give a feedback on the use of Hindi. If there’s will, there’s a way. The MPs simply pick a popular destination and nominate departments, banks and corporations to host them. Just one PSU, Indian Airlines, has hosted the Hindi committee 21 times in four years!

And the Indian Oil Corporation seems to be the other favourite. Last year the committee visited 15 IOC offices all over India, and this year, nine tours have already been wrapped up. Year after year, our MPs have been inspecting the same tiny IOC office at Port Blair in the picturesque Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Two consecutive visits were made in 2001 and 2003.

It is no coincidence that the IOC is also among the nodal agencies listed for an on-going visit of the committee to Srinagar, Jammu, Chandigarh and Shimla (June 14-25) even as it gets ready to host another tour scheduled for Bangalore, Mysore, Wellington, Mumbai and Mangalore (July 2-11).

Besides IOC, Bharat Earth Movers, Mumbai Port Trust, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited, Central Reserve Police Force, KRIBHCO, National Fertilizers Limited and Ordinance Factories Board are listed as nodal agencies for the tours and elaborate written instructions have been sent to each (see box).

They are the ones who pick up the tab for hotel accommodation, transport and gifts.

Deputy Chairman of the committee Dr Laxmi Narayan Pandey admits they have met only with ‘‘partial success’’ in their job but insists he tries to keep tour costs low. ‘‘I have said arrangements should be as simple as possible.

Often there is no proper guest house or circuit house and therefore MPs have to be put up in hotels,’’ he says.

PSU officials, however, scoff at this claim. Most delegations stay in five-star hotels and travel in individual air-conditioned cars. They also look forward to gifts from the host and hate being disappointed.

An IOC official recalled how two years ago MPs visiting them in Bangalore hinted that instead of receiving the same gift over and over again, they would prefer a microwave oven. ‘‘Such requests come from small groups of MPs, mostly when the deputy chairman is not there. We have no option but to comply,’’ he said.

Another PSU official recalls how a few weeks ago they had purchased Strolleys (bags with wheels) for Rs 3,000 each to gift members of the committee on a tour but learnt that they weren’t too happy. A leather briefcase and shawl was then thrown in.

Even for the meetings of its drafting committee, gifts are a norm. At a recent one in New Delhi, 12 companies (mostly oil PSUs) pooled in and gifted a silver bowl costing Rs 4,200 to each MP.

And what has the committee got to show for its labour. The just-finalised seventh report — an outcome of four years spent in inspecting 938 offices — observes that ‘‘statistics show that due to lack of proper encouragement by the senior officers, there is a negative situation in some government offices. It is necessary to rectify this situation. In its natural course, water flows downwards; similarly, in the case of Hindi, it has to disseminate from top to bottom like river Ganga.’’ The English-speaking babudom is to be blamed, say the MPs.

‘‘In some offices in the Department of Atomic Energy, for example, it was found that only 7.4 per cent of the staff had a 75 per cent proficiency in Hindi,’’ says the report.

Committee members are not deterred by the criticism. ‘‘If Indira Gandhi hadn’t pushed the formation of the Committee during the Emergency, it would never have been formed,’’ says Congress MP Balkavi Bairagi. ‘‘If the bureaucracy had its way, they would shut the committee down.’’

CPM MP Sarla Maheshwari had a different spin. ‘‘There is a tendency among government officials to dissuade us from visiting their offices. They would rather put us up far away in a plush hotel and keep us happy that way.’’