Tags:
Journalism of Courage
On HRD Minister Kapil Sibals agenda for 2011 is a special roadmap for minorities,and work on developing it is set to start on Wednesday. Experts will help the ministry chart out a Minority Agenda that will look at ways to ensure the revival of the Urdu language,to help create sustainable employment opportunities for Urdu speakers besides preservation of art and craft forms associated with the language and to bring Urdu within the three-language formula popular in CBSE schools.
The New roadmap to empower the Urdu-speaking population is on the agenda of the Annual General Meeting of National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) that will meet on Wednesday and will be chaired by Sibal. Among those who will attend the meet are prominent educationist P A Inamdar,social worker Kamal Farooqi,Vice Chancellor of Maulana Azad National Urdu University,Chairman CBSE,DG Doordarshan,and Chairman,Commission for Scientific & Technical Terminology.
This roadmap will focus particularly on bringing in vocational education and opening the doors to technical education for Urdu speakers and will find a reflection in the approach paper to the 12th Plan as well.
The idea is to reinforce that good technicians or experts need not have complete knowledge/mastery of English language but can also excel in the field while primarily speaking in Urdu. The aim is to focus on enhancing the capabilities and capacities of the Urdu-speaking population to enter these professions and we hope to do the same by developing equivalent technical terminology in the Urdu language, said an official in the HRD ministry.
Mainstreaming Urdu and redefining it through inclusion in the three-language formula is also on the meetings agenda. The three-language formula reiterated in the National Policy of Education,1986 provides for Hindi,English and a modern Indian language in the Hindi-speaking states and Hindi,English and a regional language in the non-Hindi speaking states. Later the Gujral committee recommended a modified version of the formula to accommodate Urdu in it. However,Urdu speakers still feel that enough has not been done to preserve the Urdu language at school level.
The NCPUL,meanwhile,is working on developing synergy between Urdu,Persian and Arabic languages to enhance literary linkages with Central and West Asia.
Besides tying up with the Arab cultural centres in India and abroad,NCPUL is also working on translating Indian epics like Mahabharat and Ramayana in Urdu,Arabic and Persian besides boosting sharing of contemporary works across the regions.
