Hindi Day was celebrated with the President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil as the Chief Guest, in New Delhi today. Dr. Devisingh Ramsingh Shekhawat, the President™s spouse also graced the occasion. Union Home Minister Shri P. Chidambaram presided over the function. The Ministers of State, Ministry of Home Affairs, Shri Mullappally Ramachandran and Shri Jitendra Singh also graced the occasion. The event was organised by the Department of Official Language, Ministry of Home Affairs.
The celebration of Hindi Diwas is marked by awarding of prizes for excellence in various fields viz. implementation of Official Language Policy; Original Hindi Book-Writing on professional domain by the professionals concerned; Hindi book-writing on subjects of Science and Technology, including scientific and technological subjects of contemporary interest; the efficient functioning of Town Official Language Implementation Committees (TOLICs); and contents and presentation of in-house journals in Hindi.
The President recalled the critical role played by Hindi during the period of freedom struggle, and as a link-language for the widest reach of welfare programmes in the post-independence period. It was on this day that the Constituent Assembly had decided to accord to Hindi the status of Official Language of the Union. The country is implementing a large number of welfare schemes with the objective of inclusive economic development and equitable social structure. It will be possible to ensure an effective dissemination of the benefits of the welfare schemes to the citizens through the medium of Hindi which is either spoken or understood in most parts of the country. The linguistic diversity of the country makes it imperative that we strive for the enrichment of all regional languages. The President urged for more organized endeavours to undertake translation of celebrated works in Hindi into regional languages and vice-versa on a mission basis. She exhorted collaborative projects in this direction with the Departments of Regional Languages in various Universities of the country. Giving a clarion call for accelerated development of software applications in Hindi, she underlined the need for facilitating the access of the citizens of the country to latest IT-tools like ˜Shrutlekhan™ (conversion from speech to text), and ˜Machine-Assisted Translation™ (MANTRA) for Hindi-users to ensure speeder spread of Hindi. At the global level, the use of Hindi has been spurred by an increasing number of Universities taking up teaching and learning of Hindi, and by the celebration of World Hindi Day by the Government of India on 10th January every year.
The President made a fervent appeal for increased use of Hindi and other regional languages in day-to-day official work, and-for gaining proficiency in at least one Indian language in addition to one™s mother tongue. The President felicitated the national-level award-winners on this occasion.
In his remarks the Home Minister, Shri P. Chidambaram, observed that Hindi has played a vital role in harmonizing of diverse cultural and linguistic elements, and in the emergence of a united India. Expressing his satisfaction with the notable initiatives taken in the recent months by the Department of Official Language, he said that the endeavours made in this direction will be further augmented in the coming period. He spoke about the direction given by the Hon™ble Prime Minister while chairing the 30th Meeting of the apex-level Committee, known as Kendriya Hindi Samiti on 28th July, 2011 for formulation of an all-encompassing strategy for the promotion and use of Hindi as the Official Language of the Union. He called upon the senior executives representing Ministries/Departments in Government of India, and Chairmen and Managing Directors of nationalized Banks and Public Sector Undertakings and Corporation present on the occasion to discharge their responsibilities as envisaged under The Official Languages Rules, 1976. They should assign greater space to Hindi and implement the principle of cordial co-existence among various languages as has been envisaged in the Constitution and The Official Languages Act, 1963.
Shri Jitendra Singh, Minister of State for Home (MOS), in his Welcome Address, made the welcome information about the augmentation of the cadre of Central Secretariat Official Language Service (CSOLS). The improvement in promotional prospects of the officers working in the field of Hindi will provide a strong fillip to the effective propagation of Hindi, he said. The Service has been strengthened with creation of 112 Group `A` posts and upgradation of 122 Group ˜B™ posts. The Budget of the Department has seen substantial increase, moving up as it did from Rs. 5.50 crores in 2010-11 to Rs. 20 crores during 2011-12. He thanked the Finance Minister for these developments. He noted that the number of Town Official Language Implementing Committees (TOLICs), the city-level entities for sustained promotion of Hindi, had considerably gone up, with 29 such Committees having been constituted in the last nine months. The total number of TOLICs in the country stood at 301. He lauded the revamping of the website of the Department of Official Language which has become contemporary and information-packed and hence citizen-friendly.
With a view to stimulating greater use of Hindi in the field of Science and Technology by the Ministries/Departments concerned, a new category of Indira Gandhi Official Language Implementation Award has been instituted to recognize the good work done by such Ministries/Departments in official work. In the categories of Ministries/Departments having a staff strength of 300 or more, the first prize was awarded to the Railway Board in the category of Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Puraskar (Awards). The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation was ranked as second. Among the Ministries/Departments having strength of less than 300, the Ministry of Labour, Legislative Department and Ministry of Information and Broadcasting were ranked as first, second, and third respectively.
The President also conferred Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Puraskars for outstanding work to the Public Sector Undertakings, and autonomous bodies/Corporations/Boards located in the three linguistic regions of the country namely, ˜A™, ˜B™ and ˜C™ Regions. While the N.H.P.C. Ltd., Faridabad bagged the first prize in region ˜A™, the Cotton Corporation of India Ltd., Mumbai and Rashtriya Ispat Nigam, Visakhapatnam received the first prizes in regions ˜B™ and ˜C™ respectively. Among the nationalized Banks, Allahabad Bank, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank walked away with the first, second and third prizes respectively.
Under the Indira Gandhi Award for Original Book-writing in Hindi, no book was found eligible for awarding the first prize. The Second and third prizes went to Dr. Rekha Vyas and Shri Rajinder for their books entitled “Samaya Prabandhan” and “Karadhan ki Pramukh Avdharnayen” respectively. Under the Rajiv Gandhi Rashtriya Gyan-Vigyan Maulik Original Book-writing in Hindi, Shri Amrit Kumar Singh was given third prize for his book named “Bhumandalikaran, Bharat Paridrishya Aur Vikalp”. No entry was found fit for bestowing first and second prizes.
The Jaipur TOLIC of Banks, the Baroda TOLIC of Banks and the Bengaluru TOLIC of Central Govt. offices were adjudged the best TOLICS in regions `A`, `B` and `C` respectively.
Under the category of House Journals, ˜Vimanika™ of Air India, ˜Rail Darpan™ of Western Railway and ˜Vani™ of Indian Overseas Bank were awarded the first prizes in regions `A`, `B` and `C` respectively. A new sub-category for conferring honours on qualitatively excellent House Journals published by organisations in the field of Science and Technology has been created from this year. The Bharat Petroleum Sansthan, Dehradun bagged the first prize. On this occasion, a total number of 52 awards were given in form of Shields/Mementoes/Certificates/Cash.
Ms. Veena Upadhyaya, Secretary, Department of Official Language, Ministry of Home Affairs, proposed a Vote of Thanks. She observed that the vibrancy and dynamism in Hindi can be ensured by promoting the use of simple, easy and integrative complexion of Hindi. It should be amenable to assimilation of words from various regional and other languages. Hindi, like a mother-figure is expected to further strengthen its approach of cordial co-existence with regional languages and English.
The event saw the participation by officers of the level of Secretary/ Additional Secretary/Joint Secretary, Government of India, Chairmen and Managing Directors of Public Sector Undertakings/Corporations, Chairmen and Managing Directors of nationalized Banks, eminent Hindi writers and scholars and a galaxy of other distinguished persons.
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