Hindi in canadian school

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:i think the argument ought to be reframed.

let us first reach a consensus (or start to debate) on what languages the privileged or middle and above classes ought to learn. the fact is that the children of these classes are taught three languages in their schools -- across states -- be they in private or public schools. we are tacitly a nation of trilingual ruling public. english is one of the languages we were taught. what ought to be the other two languages our children should learn?

english, hindi/hindustani, and one regional language.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:i think the argument ought to be reframed.

let us first reach a consensus (or start to debate) on what languages the privileged or middle and above classes ought to learn. the fact is that the children of these classes are taught three languages in their schools -- across states -- be they in private or public schools. we are tacitly a nation of trilingual ruling public. english is one of the languages we were taught. what ought to be the other two languages our children should learn?

I like the trilingual model. I think the native language of the place should be the primary language. Second is English. For third, ideally I think students ought to be given a choice between 2-3 Indian languages that have the closest cultural and economic ties with the region. In Andhra, that would be Hindi, Kannada and Tamil. In Orissa, that would be Bangla, Hindi and Telugu. In Maharasthra, it would be Gujarati, Kannada and Hindi.

In practice, not many schools have the resources to teach a third language. IMO it is more important to teach students their native language, English, math and the physical and social sciences better, than it is to teach a third language. So priority should be given to those, over teaching Hindi.

artood2 wrote:
I saw a word "imperialistic" all over this thread. That is the word people used to describe English.



You gave no valid economic reasons. Your "dont care" is neither a justified argument nor an economic reason. You stop representing "south indians" because you do not. There are native Hindi speakers in South India and what is the basis of your definition of south India? Assimilation does not mean loss of diversity. It would just mean breaking barriers: more inter marriages, breaking tribal mentalities (yes i am looking at you sir) and better understanding and respect of other cultures.

voted +

not all boards had a three language model, at least not when i was in high school many decades ago. i grew up partially in the CBSE board and partially in the TN state board which only had two languages -- english and one other language. i obviously studied tamil, but many of my classmates opted for hindi or french. if you wanted to take something other than one of these three, then you could opt out of the class in school and study a different language elsewhere. many studied telugu or sanskrit; but they had to show periodically to the school that they were taking exams from time to time and in general preparing for board exams in that language.

i think a three language system is too burdensome. i'd rather spend that time on more math, science, computation, or economics.

respect for other cultures artood2? let me tell you a bit about that.

southern indians have been routinely mocked in hindi movies of all things for their hindi accent! do you consider that respect for other cultures?

or do you think a better model for respect for other cultures is taking up an art form not native to one's culture and excelling at it, to the extent that one becomes a concert artiste?

you have it backwards.

charvaka wrote:I like the trilingual model. I think the native language of the place should be the primary language.

come on. we are talking of middle class and above. it has to be english.

Second is English.

if you agree with my comment above, the second would be the native language of the the place or the native language of the foreign resident of that place.

For third, ideally

ok, you tell me.

I think students ought to be given a choice between 2-3 Indian languages that have the closest cultural and economic ties with the region.

yes this choice is always given in schools for the second and third languages (but not the first).

R2D2 wrote:I can't believe you are using illiteracy of people and English as a link language in the same argument.

Yes, I am. If the purpose of a link language is to make it easier for illiterate people to communicate with Indians who don't speak their language, then Hindi is a good choice because more illiterate people in India speak Hindi than any other language. But if the purpose of the link language is to enable the largest possible percentages of Indians of various language groups who travel to other regions interact with people there at the lowest cost to the exchequer, English beats Hindi hands down.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:not all boards had a three language model, at least not when i was in high school many decades ago. i grew up partially in the CBSE board and partially in the TN state board which only had two languages -- english and one other language.

ok, i stand corrected. but just to reaffirm --you mean there is no third language as compulsory in the TN board?

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

charvaka wrote:I like the trilingual model. I think the native language of the place should be the primary language.

come on. we are talking of middle class and above. it has to be english.

I think it is a big loss if Indians started studying English as their primary language. I would prefer that Indians continue to study their native languages first, before they go on to study English.

I sit next to the floor kitchen, and yessir, the link language is HINDI. Only in smaller groups do you hear another indian language, including English. And if I collect a dime for every maan ki behen ki I hear, I might retire soon enough.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:southern indians have been routinely mocked in hindi movies of all things for their hindi accent! do you consider that respect for other cultures?

LOL are you even real?

charvaka wrote:

Assimilation is neither necessary nor desirable. There is nothing bad about the existence of regional identities. India's incredible diversity is the result of thousands of years of cultural evolution; I would rather that people who move from one part of India to another (a miniscule percentage of its population) have to learn the local language to feel completely at home in their new chosen home, rather than giving up India's diversity based on the Soviet or the Chinese model.

What!!! By assimilation I do not mean everybody looking as one. A better assimilation would not have cause Kannada-Tamil riots for Cauvery water. Why does a Kannada beat up a Tamil who has been living in Bangalore for 30 years? The importance of water to Kannada guy in TN is as much as a Tamil guy in TN. How did a purely geographical problem become a linguistic problem? Nobody is taking away anyone's local language or culture. When Sublime or Impy gives HK their recipes, it is assimilation. No Hindi speaking Tamil stops speaking Tamil and loses his culture. You comparison to China or Soviet is far far off.

When two people speaking different languages, who picks up whose language is a matter best left to the market to decide. If left to the market, customer is king. A good chunk of people who move across regions in India speak English. Those who don't are moving for construction jobs and other physical labor that they provide to their customers. If they want opportunities in say Bangalore or Chennai, they ought to learn the local language. The central government's promotion of Hindi with my tax money puts Telugu-speaking laborers at a competitive disadvantage over Hindi-speaking laborers in Bangalore and Chennai. Despite the centuries of active links between the Telugu people and their neighbors without any such "link language" nonsense.

No no and no. you are so way off the mark. By your argument Govt would have no role at all. Why provide law and order? Let the market define it. Let the zamindars have the money and lathaits to protect them. Let them loot anybody else because they do not have money. Let the govt never spend a penny on any infrastructure.



A good chunk of people who move across India speak BOTH Hindi and English. They do not speak English when they go to pick up vegtables from road side stalls or when they have to talk to the housemaids there. Yeah if there are riots in Vijaywada make sure that you bring Telugu speaking jawans in CRPF. A guy from Coimbatore should be able to go to Bhiwani and easily do a job. Why even have anything printed in English for Govt papers? Let the local language be used for printing all paperwork.



The whole notion of a single country requires the ease of movement within the country for economic opportunities, medical treatment, eloping whatever. The local language argument is just promotion of a tribal mentality. There are no economic arguments against it. OTOH, younger generation is much more open to it and are picking it up more and more. Unfortunately it is happening in the segment that avails of the most economic opportunities anyways.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:not all boards had a three language model, at least not when i was in high school many decades ago. i grew up partially in the CBSE board and partially in the TN state board which only had two languages -- english and one other language.

ok, i stand corrected. but just to reaffirm --you mean there is no third language as compulsory in the TN board?

that's correct. that's how it was when i studied there. i don't know if things have changed now. i only studied english and tamil.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:southern indians have been routinely mocked in hindi movies of all things for their hindi accent! do you consider that respect for other cultures?

LOL are you even real?

Max, have you realized that half of those movies are SI productions?

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:southern indians have been routinely mocked in hindi movies of all things for their hindi accent! do you consider that respect for other cultures?

LOL are you even real?

you mean it's not true?

charvaka wrote:

R2D2 wrote:I can't believe you are using illiteracy of people and English as a link language in the same argument.

Yes, I am. If the purpose of a link language is to make it easier for illiterate people to communicate with Indians who don't speak their language, then Hindi is a good choice because more illiterate people in India speak Hindi than any other language. But if the purpose of the link language is to enable the largest possible percentages of Indians of various language groups who travel to other regions interact with people there at the lowest cost to the exchequer, English beats Hindi hands down.

Numbers please. It cost barely anything to the exchequer. This govt money argument is a farce. it is money well spent.

charvaka wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

charvaka wrote:I like the trilingual model. I think the native language of the place should be the primary language.

come on. we are talking of middle class and above. it has to be english.

I think it is a big loss if Indians started studying English as their primary language. I would prefer that Indians continue to study their native languages first, before they go on to study English.

i disagree 100%. next time you mention this to me in a debate and if i quote vachaspati mishra (without your permission), do not take it personally.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:respect for other cultures artood2? let me tell you a bit about that.

southern indians have been routinely mocked in hindi movies of all things for their hindi accent! do you consider that respect for other cultures?

or do you think a better model for respect for other cultures is taking up an art form not native to one's culture and excelling at it, to the extent that one becomes a concert artiste?

you have it backwards.

Yes Sir, this is what I mean by assimilation. People will have more respect as they intermingle more. You made a frivolous argument based on "imperialism" ad now you are essentially arguing my point.



OTOH, people mock people's accents in other ways as well. Hindi movies mock marwaris, gujjus, sindhis, panjus what ever. English folks mock Geordie accent. So stop being sissy about that,

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:southern indians have been routinely mocked in hindi movies of all things for their hindi accent! do you consider that respect for other cultures?

LOL are you even real?

you mean it's not true?

max you cannot quote uncyclopedia to affirm your stand in debates. perhaps you were searching for a reference in wikipedia.

artood2 wrote:By assimilation I do not mean everybody looking as one.

Then what do you mean by assimilation? It is a word that you used in this debate, so please do define what you mean by it, before assuming that it is desirable or necessary for a successful federation.

artood2 wrote:By your argument Govt would have no role at all.

In matters like who speaks what language with whom, who wears what clothes, who eats what food, etc., yes, the government has no role at all.

artood2 wrote:Why provide law and order? Let the market define it. Let the zamindars have the money and lathaits to protect them. Let them loot anybody else because they do not have money. Let the govt never spend a penny on any infrastructure.

Let the government do its core job of protecting law and order, creating physical infrastructure, etc. -- where the markets are not as effective -- before it squanders resources interfering in areas where the markets have very effective solutions.

artood2 wrote:The whole notion of a single country requires the ease of movement within the country for economic opportunities, medical treatment, eloping whatever. The local language argument is just promotion of a tribal mentality. There are no economic arguments against it.

There is an economic argument against taxpayer funded promotion of Hindi. It is a squandering of precious resources on low-value-add activities, when those resources can be better spent on things that markets don't do well. I have no problem with private, Hindi TV channels and movies promoting the language indirectly all over India. I think that's a good phenomenon. My problem is with government -- dominated historically by Hindi-chauvinists -- devoting my tax money to disadvantage Telugu-speaking laborers when they are up against Hindi-speaking laborers in Bangalore.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

charvaka wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

charvaka wrote:I like the trilingual model. I think the native language of the place should be the primary language.

come on. we are talking of middle class and above. it has to be english.

I think it is a big loss if Indians started studying English as their primary language. I would prefer that Indians continue to study their native languages first, before they go on to study English.

i disagree 100%. next time you mention this to me in a debate and if i quote vachaspati mishra (without your permission), do not take it personally.

Haha.

artood2 wrote:Yes Sir, this is what I mean by assimilation. People will have more respect as they intermingle more. You made a frivolous argument based on "imperialism" ad now you are essentially arguing my point.

assimilation is a poor choice of words to convey your idea then. what you probably want to say is cross pollination. cross pollination of cultural ideas has been occurring in the realm of music for centuries without the need for any government programs. the earliest example of this is when mutthuswamy dikshitar, one of the trinity of carnatic music composers, went to benares to learn hindustani music in the 18th century. he brought back many musical treasures, ragas like brindavana saranga, dwijavanti (the carnatic equivalent of jaijaiwanti) and so on. in more recent centuries and decades, numerous southern indians have taken up hindustani music essentially a northindian art form and have become masters of the music -- mallikarjun mansur, bhimsen joshi, n.rajam, basavaraj rajguru, m.s.gopalakrishnan to name just a few. although there are no reciprocal examples, many carnatic melakartha ragams have been adapted into hindustani musicians in recent decades.

i see this as an organic natural process and insist that there is absolutely no need for anything prescriptive or programmatic; i am especially against government programs that seek to achieve this.

artood2 wrote:Numbers please. It cost barely anything to the exchequer. This govt money argument is a farce. it is money well spent.

Do you even know what the government's Hindi-promotion money is spent on? They spend it on things like: funding the Dakshina Bharata Hindi Prachara Sabha, paying for Official Language Cell employees in various government offices whose job it is to translate forms from English into Hindi, publishing forms and materials in Hindi in the AP hinterland, provide salary increments and incentives for government employees to learn Hindi -- a whole bunch of unnecessary sinecures. Hindi has risen because of Bollywood and television, not because of any of those atrocious wastes of public funds.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:what you probably want to say is cross pollination. cross pollination of cultural ideas has been occurring in the realm of music for centuries without the need for any government programs.

This cross pollination has been occurring not just in music, but in all matters of human endeavor. Incidentally, the literary arena, this cross-pollination has occurred through English as a medium, not because of government programs, but against the interests of the government of the day. I am talking about the Bengali renaissance that spread to Andhra and other places; ideas of reform in Hindu society, and of nationalism, spread among Indians in the 19th century through the English language, although the British would have much preferred that those ideas didn't take root.

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:Numbers please. It cost barely anything to the exchequer. This govt money argument is a farce. it is money well spent.

Do you even know what the government's Hindi-promotion money is spent on? They spend it on things like: funding the Dakshina Bharata Hindi Prachara Sabha, paying for Official Language Cell employees in various government offices whose job it is to translate forms from English into Hindi, publishing forms and materials in Hindi in the AP hinterland, provide salary increments and incentives for government employees to learn Hindi -- a whole bunch of unnecessary sinecures. Hindi has risen because of Bollywood and television, not because of any of those atrocious wastes of public funds.

saar a long list does not necessarily mean more money. try again.

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:Numbers please. It cost barely anything to the exchequer. This govt money argument is a farce. it is money well spent.

Do you even know what the government's Hindi-promotion money is spent on? They spend it on things like: funding the Dakshina Bharata Hindi Prachara Sabha, paying for Official Language Cell employees in various government offices whose job it is to translate forms from English into Hindi, publishing forms and materials in Hindi in the AP hinterland, provide salary increments and incentives for government employees to learn Hindi -- a whole bunch of unnecessary sinecures. Hindi has risen because of Bollywood and television, not because of any of those atrocious wastes of public funds.

saar a long list does not necessarily mean more money. try again.

Do you think any of the items on the list is "money well spent"? What's the return India is getting from those sinecures for bureaucrats?

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

artood2 wrote:Yes Sir, this is what I mean by assimilation. People will have more respect as they intermingle more. You made a frivolous argument based on "imperialism" ad now you are essentially arguing my point.

assimilation is a poor choice of words to convey your idea then. what you probably want to say is cross pollination. cross pollination of cultural ideas has been occurring in the realm of music for centuries without the need for any government programs. the earliest example of this is when mutthuswamy dikshitar, one of the trinity of carnatic music composers, went to benares to learn hindustani music in the 18th century. he brought back many musical treasures, ragas like brindavana saranga, dwijavanti (the carnatic equivalent of jaijaiwanti) and so on. in more recent centuries and decades, numerous southern indians have taken up hindustani music essentially a northindian art form and have become masters of the music -- mallikarjun mansur, bhimsen joshi, n.rajam, basavaraj rajguru, m.s.gopalakrishnan to name just a few. although there are no reciprocal examples, many carnatic melakartha ragams have been adapted into hindustani musicians in recent decades.

i see this as an organic natural process and insist that there is absolutely no need for anything prescriptive or programmatic; i am especially against government programs that seek to achieve this.

What are you trying to say? A slow process should remain slow? You mean never publsih an article on internet for quick consumption because there are always printed magazines that used to carry it?

charvaka wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:what you probably want to say is cross pollination. cross pollination of cultural ideas has been occurring in the realm of music for centuries without the need for any government programs.

This cross pollination has been occurring not just in music, but in all matters of human endeavor. Incidentally, the literary arena, this cross-pollination has occurred through English as a medium, not because of government programs, but against the interests of the government of the day. I am talking about the Bengali renaissance that spread to Andhra and other places; ideas of reform in Hindu society, and of nationalism, spread among Indians in the 19th century through the English language, although the British would have much preferred that those ideas didn't take root.

Yes it acted as an English medium because that was the language in which they could learn about all the revlutions and concepts. Once they learnt it they went about spreading ti in local languages. The use of English was just incidental in obtaining information from foreign sources. Had there been a better link language it would have happened faster and sooner.

charvaka wrote:

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:Numbers please. It cost barely anything to the exchequer. This govt money argument is a farce. it is money well spent.

Do you even know what the government's Hindi-promotion money is spent on? They spend it on things like: funding the Dakshina Bharata Hindi Prachara Sabha, paying for Official Language Cell employees in various government offices whose job it is to translate forms from English into Hindi, publishing forms and materials in Hindi in the AP hinterland, provide salary increments and incentives for government employees to learn Hindi -- a whole bunch of unnecessary sinecures. Hindi has risen because of Bollywood and television, not because of any of those atrocious wastes of public funds.

saar a long list does not necessarily mean more money. try again.

Do you think any of the items on the list is "money well spent"? What's the return India is getting from those sinecures for bureaucrats?

Tell me how much money is it. Yes official translation of forms is necessary even in the hinterland. Why do you even have someone to translate the form in English in hinterland? It should be there for whoever migrates/travels for whatever reason. That is the idea of link language. Having Govt. employees know Hindi helps them work better for a larger section. That is improving efficiency. It also helps the employees to transfer elsewhere if needed. You just broke down a normal job profile and increment process to sound it a lot.





The idea of English as alink language was always the idea of elites and it still remains elitiist. The number of English speakers in India is still very small. Yes there are illiterates and money spent on them is well spent. a lot of them will become literates and yet not know English.

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:By assimilation I do not mean everybody looking as one.

Then what do you mean by assimilation? It is a word that you used in this debate, so please do define what you mean by it, before assuming that it is desirable or necessary for a successful federation.

I defined it in another post.

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:By your argument Govt would have no role at all.

In matters like who speaks what language with whom, who wears what clothes, who eats what food, etc., yes, the government has no role at all.

Government is not decidiing what who speaks. Government is deciding in what language to administer and how to amke things easier for people in moving from one part to another. This is a pure Giovt. role. It is not intrusion in personal lives. There is a war on Eastern front and you snet your army there and they do not know how to converse with locals: that would be really efficient?

artood2 wrote:Why provide law and order? Let the market define it. Let the zamindars have the money and lathaits to protect them. Let them loot anybody else because they do not have money. Let the govt never spend a penny on any infrastructure.

Let the government do its core job of protecting law and order, creating physical infrastructure, etc. -- where the markets are not as effective -- before it squanders resources interfering in areas where the markets have very effective solutions.

artood2 wrote:The whole notion of a single country requires the ease of movement within the country for economic opportunities, medical treatment, eloping whatever. The local language argument is just promotion of a tribal mentality. There are no economic arguments against it.

There is an economic argument against taxpayer funded promotion of Hindi. It is a squandering of precious resources on low-value-add activities, when those resources can be better spent on things that markets don't do well. I have no problem with private, Hindi TV channels and movies promoting the language indirectly all over India. I think that's a good phenomenon. My problem is with government -- dominated historically by Hindi-chauvinists -- devoting my tax money to disadvantage Telugu-speaking laborers when they are up against Hindi-speaking laborers in Bangalore.[/quote]



There is no chauvinism in promotion as a link language. The money spent on promotion is minscule and if Hindi TV serials are doign enough teaching classes so that people stop going to these Prachar Sabha for help government should stop funding them. As long as they are serving a purpose and people are benefitting from it, the current level of funding is not dispropotionate. I can cut 10 other govt programs which are more wasteful. It is not a low value add activity. It helps people of the lowest economic strata the most. It does not disadvantage Telugu speaking labourers in Bangalore. If anything it expands the opportunites for those Telugu labourers to move anywhere in India. They can pick up the basics fast enough. they would know that learnign Hindi will allow them ot go anywhere within the country and hindi being an Indian language shares a lot of common word and language features. So it should be easier for them to learn one.

artood2 wrote:Tell me how much money is it.

According to Jagran, a Hindi newspaper, the government is spending Rs. 700 crore this year just on a promotion campaign for Hindi in its offices. They are promoting the use of Hindi in Dehradun with a crore rupees.

This does not include the budget of the DBHPS, or the increments given to employees for learning Hindi (which would add up to a much larger bill, given the size of the bureaucracy.)

http://post.jagran.com/centre-will-spend-rs-700-crore-to-promote-hindi-across-the-country-1311998573

As we know India is infamous for being one of the multilingual nations
in the world, however most of them, especially national language Hindi,
have been at the receiving end at the cost of English – which has become
the functional language of the country.

The Central government has 120 offices, Banks, enterprises in Dehradun
district. These Central Organisations spend approximately one crore
annually to promote the national language. Even after that, many central
organizations avoid working and conversing in Hindi.

Despite having the Hindi translation department, the scientific institutes not develop a Hindi copy of the research reports.

Looking
at this, the Ministry has decided spend Rs 700 crore for the language
promotion through different advertising mediums like FM Radio,
televisions and outdoors.

Now, I think spending money advertising Hindi in a Hindi region is borderline-retarded use of public funds. You need to demonstrate that the benefits of doing that exceed the costs.

artood2 wrote:Yes official translation of forms is necessary even in the hinterland. Why do you even have someone to translate the form in English in hinterland? It should be there for whoever migrates/travels for whatever reason.

Do you realize that in many places, the forms are not printed in Telugu, but only in Hindi and English? The ostensible reason for that is the form has two sides, and they print one language on each side. Do you think that makes any sense? Is serving the occasional visitor from the north in his native language more important than serving the local populace in their language?

artood2 wrote:Yes there are illiterates and money spent on them is well spent. a lot of them will become literates and yet not know English.

Yes, but 700 crore rupees spent on educating illiterates will have a lot more benefit to society, than 700 crores spent on radio and TV ads advertising Hindi as a brand!

artood2 wrote:Government is not decidiing what who speaks. Government is deciding in what language to administer and how to amke things easier for people in moving from one part to another. This is a pure Giovt. role. It is not intrusion in personal lives. There is a war on Eastern front and you snet your army there and they do not know how to converse with locals: that would be really efficient?

This situation occurs in the northeast after 70 years of wasteful spending on promoting Hindi. It would be more efficient to use English in the army's internal communications (which the army does for the most part anyway.)

artood2 wrote:There is no chauvinism in promotion as a link language.

This declarative statement does not have the weight of evidence behind it. It is a fact that Hindi chauvinists of a previous generation tried to force Hindi on others in India. That they failed does not mean they didn't try.

artood2 wrote:The money spent on promotion is minscule

That is no justification of spending the money wastefully.

artood2 wrote:and if Hindi TV serials are doign enough teaching classes so that people stop going to these Prachar Sabha for help government should stop funding them.

Yes, that is what I have been arguing all along.

artood2 wrote:As long as they are serving a purpose and people are benefitting from it, the current level of funding is not dispropotionate. I can cut 10 other govt programs which are more wasteful. It is not a low value add activity.

Absent numbers on costs and benefits, you have no basis for making those declarations. In what world does an ad campaign about Hindi produce greater return than classes in reading and writing for illiterate people?

artood2 wrote:It helps people of the lowest economic strata the most.

You could NOT be more wrong. The only people who take advantage of these programs are the educated middle classes who already know Telugu and English. Illiterate Telugu laborers are not going to DBHPS to learn Hindi; they are better served by a literacy program in their own language.

artood2 wrote:It does not disadvantage Telugu speaking labourers in Bangalore. If anything it expands the opportunites for those Telugu labourers to move anywhere in India.

It absolutely does, because most of those laborers are uneducated. The laborers don't benefit from the program. But because government funds Hindi learning in Bangalore, some of the customers learn Hindi at government expense, and can talk to Hindi-speaking laborers but not to Telugu-speaking laborers. This is how the government's unnecessary interference gives an unfair advantage to Hindi-speakers using taxpayer funds (although southern India contributes a disproportionately higher amount of taxes per-capita to the union.)

artood2 wrote:They can pick up the basics fast enough. they would know that learnign Hindi will allow them ot go anywhere within the country and hindi being an Indian language shares a lot of common word and language features. So it should be easier for them to learn one.

Unless you are a native speaker of a southern language, you are in no position to judge whether it is easier for a Telugu person to learn Hindi or English.

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:Tell me how much money is it.

According to Jagran, a Hindi newspaper, the government is spending Rs. 700 crore this year just on a promotion campaign for Hindi in its offices. They are promoting the use of Hindi in Dehradun with a crore rupees.

This does not include the budget of the DBHPS, or the increments given to employees for learning Hindi (which would add up to a much larger bill, given the size of the bureaucracy.)

http://post.jagran.com/centre-will-spend-rs-700-crore-to-promote-hindi-across-the-country-1311998573

As we know India is infamous for being one of the multilingual nations
in the world, however most of them, especially national language Hindi,
have been at the receiving end at the cost of English – which has become
the functional language of the country.

The Central government has 120 offices, Banks, enterprises in Dehradun
district. These Central Organisations spend approximately one crore
annually to promote the national language. Even after that, many central
organizations avoid working and conversing in Hindi.

Despite having the Hindi translation department, the scientific institutes not develop a Hindi copy of the research reports.

Looking
at this, the Ministry has decided spend Rs 700 crore for the language
promotion through different advertising mediums like FM Radio,
televisions and outdoors.

Now, I think spending money advertising Hindi in a Hindi region is borderline-retarded use of public funds. You need to demonstrate that the benefits of doing that exceed the costs.

Yeah they should stop spending money on it in Dehradun and spend it elsewhere. That would be better use but that does not make the idea of spensing it in other places a bad one.

artood2 wrote:Yes official translation of forms is necessary even in the hinterland. Why do you even have someone to translate the form in English in hinterland? It should be there for whoever migrates/travels for whatever reason.

Do you realize that in many places, the forms are not printed in Telugu, but only in Hindi and English? The ostensible reason for that is the form has two sides, and they print one language on each side. Do you think that makes any sense? Is serving the occasional visitor from the north in his native language more important than serving the local populace in their language? [/quote]



Yep they should do away with English. Which moron came up with the idea of printing forms in English in Telugu hinterland? The form printing in English must have started when barely 5% of Indian population (and the population in Telugu hinterland) spoke English. This kind of things prompted people to take up English as medium of study.





OTOH I have seen forms in local languages where I used to live so I am not entirely buying the argument that forms are not available in local languages.

artood2 wrote:Yes there are illiterates and money spent on them is well spent. a lot of them will become literates and yet not know English.

Yes, but 700 crore rupees spent on educating illiterates will have a lot more benefit to society, than 700 crores spent on radio and TV ads advertising Hindi as a brand![/quote]



700 crores out of toal budget of 1,020,838 crores. That is not a big percent. However if a chunk of it is spent in Hindi speaking region,

then they should remove that portion of the budget.

And about 700 crores to be spent on illiterates, whatever money govt is spending on literacy seems to be working. And as i mentioned literacy is a positive feedback loop process, so after hitting a critical mass it would correct itself. The current level of investment is enough. you can add to that fund but you do not need to borrow from here. There are other programs that are grossly more inefficient.

artood2 wrote:

charvaka wrote:
Now, I think spending money advertising Hindi in a Hindi region is borderline-retarded use of public funds. You need to demonstrate that the benefits of doing that exceed the costs.

Yeah they should stop spending money on it in Dehradun and spend it elsewhere. That would be better use but that does not make the idea of spensing it in other places a bad one.

I don't think spending money on ads about Hindi anywhere in India is a good idea in a country where that money can easily be spent on higher return activities (e.g. literacy programs in the native language.)

artood2 wrote:Yep they should do away with English.

I think that would be a huge step backwards. We are not at the 5% mark you mention. The Hindian leaders of the 60s tried to do just that, and got nowhere with it after risking India's integrity in the process.

artood2 wrote:700 crores out of toal budget of 1,020,838 crores. That is not a big percent. However if a chunk of it is spent in Hindi speaking region,

then they should remove that portion of the budget.

700 crores is spent just on advertising Hindi. A lot more money is spent on all the other crap I listed above. I am looking for a news story last year that talked about the budget for the official language committees (or whatever they are called.) Separately, we have to look for the budget for DBHPS, which is not insubstantial with its bloated, well-paid bureaucracy that does nothing but give speeches about how important Hindi is.

artood2 wrote:And about 700 crores to be spent on illiterates, whatever money govt is spending on literacy seems to be working. And as i mentioned literacy is a positive feedback loop process, so after hitting a critical mass it would correct itself. The current level of investment is enough. you can add to that fund but you do not need to borrow from here. There are other programs that are grossly more inefficient.

So you are now arguing what you accused Max of arguing... that we should not speed up the eradication of illiteracy by devoting more resources to it! How can you possibly know that the current level of funding for literacy programs is the optimum level?

The Times of India reports at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/What-it-costs-to-keep-Hindi-alive-Rs-36-crore-/articleshow/5304154.cms#ixzz0yoBvZHF3:

The [Department of Official Language] 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.

It is rather difficult to make the case that it is better to pay SHOs, HOs, AHOs, and so on rather than beef up other, more crucial functions of government like regulating drugs or fighting communicable diseases, of which many thousands still die in India. If the governments really wants to spend money on language promotion, it would be a much better use of taxpayer funds if central government officers posted outside their own areas are given assistance to learn the local language, so they can serve their customers -- the people of the area -- better.

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:Government is not decidiing what who speaks. Government is deciding in what language to administer and how to amke things easier for people in moving from one part to another. This is a pure Giovt. role. It is not intrusion in personal lives. There is a war on Eastern front and you snet your army there and they do not know how to converse with locals: that would be really efficient?

This situation occurs in the northeast after 70 years of wasteful spending on promoting Hindi. It would be more efficient to use English in the army's internal communications (which the army does for the most part anyway.)

Use English as medium and spent more on teaching Jawans to learn English so that they go to another territory and still not be able to speak to the locals? BTW, the problem does not happen because Govt promotes Hindi in all those areas and they have been far more receptive. In general, government functioning requires a link language and on sheer numbers itself, English is nowhere near it.

charvaka wrote:This declarative statement does not have the weight of evidence behind it. It is a fact that Hindi chauvinists of a previous generation tried to force Hindi on others in India. That they failed does not mean they didn't try.

The chauvinist implementation does not negate the good aspects of the argument. There is a need for a link language and there does not seem to be a better substitute. The formation of linguistic states only reinforced tribalism. A clear example were the Tamil-Kannada riots over Cauvery water. It was a geographical issue. People in one region were getting water and other were not. And it caused the biggest flight of people from one region to another post independence. Aren't Tamils settled in Bangalore local enough? Kannadas in TN were needing water as much as Tamils in TN. why were they chased off?

charvaka wrote:That is no justification of spending the money wastefully.

Cut down the waste in Hindi dominated areas. The Prachaar Sabha has seen their resources utilized more and more so it is not money wasted. Their fundings should continue.

Yes, that is what I have been arguing all along.

The Hindi serials are not doing enough till now. Govt. should stop funding if people are doing well through serials on learnign Hindi. so far it is not enough.

artood2 wrote:As long as they are serving a purpose and people are benefitting from it, the current level of funding is not dispropotionate. I can cut 10 other govt programs which are more wasteful. It is not a low value add activity.

Absent numbers on costs and benefits, you have no basis for making those declarations. In what world does an ad campaign about Hindi produce greater return than classes in reading and writing for illiterate people?

Ads are spent for encouragement. There were ads on literacy that kickstarted the whole literacy program ["a aa ee ei ko pehchano"]. There were ads on integration ("mile sur mera tumhara", "ek titli" etc], there were ads on famila planning ("the funny kaunsi waali maala" "pyar hua ikraar hua"]. And all that helped. Literacy campaigns are not underfunded and the 2011 figures show considerable improvement. And again, since a literate parent will not let his kids become illiterate, that program propagtes itself ver y ell.

artood2 wrote:It helps people of the lowest economic strata the most.

You could NOT be more wrong. The only people who take advantage of these programs are the educated middle classes who already know Telugu and English. Illiterate Telugu laborers are not going to DBHPS to learn Hindi; they are better served by a literacy program in their own language.

you are arguing for English as a link language and they will learn english? from whom, missionaries?

artood2 wrote:It does not disadvantage Telugu speaking labourers in Bangalore. If anything it expands the opportunites for those Telugu labourers to move anywhere in India.

It absolutely does, because most of those laborers are uneducated. The laborers don't benefit from the program. But because government funds Hindi learning in Bangalore, some of the customers learn Hindi at government expense, and can talk to Hindi-speaking laborers but not to Telugu-speaking laborers. This is how the government's unnecessary interference gives an unfair advantage to Hindi-speakers using taxpayer funds (although southern India contributes a disproportionately higher amount of taxes per-capita to the union.)

That is the idea of link language. If you learn it, you have lots of opportunites everywhere. If only, it reinforces the argument that govt to spend more on link language. Yes govt should spend more money in southern states for promotion of link language among lowere economic strata. That way tax revenus from that state would result in better economic opportunites for lower strata of that state.



BTW, doesn't most of the southern states get a bigger cut (propotionately speaking) of Planning Commision money?

artood2 wrote:They can pick up the basics fast enough. they would know that learnign Hindi will allow them ot go anywhere within the country and hindi being an Indian language shares a lot of common word and language features. So it should be easier for them to learn one.

Unless you are a native speaker of a southern language, you are in no position to judge whether it is easier for a Telugu person to learn Hindi or English.[/quote] Are you saying Telugu did not have Sanskrit words and if there are those words are not present in Hindi? Do you find any common words in Hindi and Telugu?

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:And about 700 crores to be spent on illiterates, whatever money govt is spending on literacy seems to be working. And as i mentioned literacy is a positive feedback loop process, so after hitting a critical mass it would correct itself. The current level of investment is enough. you can add to that fund but you do not need to borrow from here. There are other programs that are grossly more inefficient.

So you are now arguing what you accused Max of arguing... that we should not speed up the eradication of illiteracy by devoting more resources to it! How can you possibly know that the current level of funding for literacy programs is the optimum level?

What I am saying is that resources are adequate and you cannot make it any faster. The population lagging in literacy is in the old age group. those guys are not keen on learning anything and money spent there would not improve anything.

charvaka wrote:The Times of India reports at http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/What-it-costs-to-keep-Hindi-alive-Rs-36-crore-/articleshow/5304154.cms#ixzz0yoBvZHF3:

The [Department of Official Language] 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.

It is rather difficult to make the case that it is better to pay SHOs, HOs, AHOs, and so on rather than beef up other, more crucial functions of government like regulating drugs or fighting communicable diseases, of which many thousands still die in India. If the governments really wants to spend money on language promotion, it would be a much better use of taxpayer funds if central government officers posted outside their own areas are given assistance to learn the local language, so they can serve their customers -- the people of the area -- better.

Why is there a comparison of numbers betwen National Institute of communicable diseases and DOL? wouldn't a comparison between DOL and DOH make more sense? DOL also gets budget for classical languages? It is the job of central govt to rpovide services to all Indians and they need a link language for that purpose. The choice of hindi over english was a good choice on pure statistics.

We have reached a point where we are merely repeating our arguments. Without any budget numbers, you declare that literacy programs are optimally funded. And you also declare that wasting crores of taxpayer money is fine, as long as it is a small chunk of the overall budget. We will not reach agreement on those points. I will merely respond to the new points you made.

R2D2 wrote:The formation of linguistic states only reinforced tribalism. A clear example were the Tamil-Kannada riots over Cauvery water. It was a geographical issue. People in one region were getting water and other were not. And it caused the biggest flight of people from one region to another post independence. Aren't Tamils settled in Bangalore local enough? Kannadas in TN were needing water as much as Tamils in TN. why were they chased off?

This is completely unrelated to Hindi and to your argument that we need a link language in addition to English. Even if the government had forcibly taught them Hindi, it wouldn't have made a difference to that problem. (If you are not convinced look up Uzbek-Kirghiz riots last year in Kirghizstan.)

R2D2 wrote:you are arguing for English as a link language and they will learn english? from whom, missionaries?

No, I am arguing that the Telugu laborers will do fine in Karnataka by picking up rudimentary Kannada. And that Hindi laborers should do the same. They would have had to do the same, if not for the government's preferential treatment towards Hindi, with my tax money.

R2D2 wrote:That is the idea of link language. If you learn it, you have lots of opportunites everywhere.

You are missing the point. Laborers who do not know how to read or write their own language are not in a position to take advantage of government spending on Hindi promotion.

artood2 wrote:Are you saying Telugu did not have Sanskrit words and if there are those words are not present in Hindi?

No I am not saying that.

artood2 wrote:What I am saying is that resources are adequate and you cannot make it any faster. The population lagging in literacy is in the old age group. those guys are not keen on learning anything and money spent there would not improve anything.

How do you know that? Do you have any data to prove your assertions?

logic has never been a strong suit of the hindi pushing gang. their entire rationale for hindi pushing has been upended many times by reasoned argument over at sulekha and now here; but they will not go away, for theirs is a mission fueled by a strong conviction that india is hindia. in that sense they and kayal vizhi are of one mind.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:logic has never been a strong suit of the hindi pushing gang. their entire rationale for hindi pushing has been upended many times by reasoned argument over at sulekha and now here; but they will not go away, for theirs is a mission fueled by a strong conviction that india is hindia. in that sense they and kayal vizhi are of one mind.

is that why subramanya bharathi wanted tamilians to learn hindi? Was Bharathi a Hindian?

Rashmun wrote:is that why subramanya bharathi wanted tamilians to learn hindi? Was Bharathi a Hindian?

Subbiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii! Welcome to this thread. I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Subramanya Bharathi on this thread.

PS: Yes, I hero-worship him.

charvaka wrote:We have reached a point where we are merely repeating our arguments. Without any budget numbers, you declare that literacy programs are optimally funded. And you also declare that wasting crores of taxpayer money is fine, as long as it is a small chunk of the overall budget. We will not reach agreement on those points. I will merely respond to the new points you made.

No I am making the point on the basis of improvement in literacy rate from 2001 census to 2011 census. India is near 74%. all the bimaru states have made significant progress. And as I mentioned, literate folks are not going to let their offsprings go illiterate so the current funding levels are adequate.

R2D2 wrote:The formation of linguistic states only reinforced tribalism. A clear example were the Tamil-Kannada riots over Cauvery water. It was a geographical issue. People in one region were getting water and other were not. And it caused the biggest flight of people from one region to another post independence. Aren't Tamils settled in Bangalore local enough? Kannadas in TN were needing water as much as Tamils in TN. why were they chased off?

C wrote:This is completely unrelated to Hindi and to your argument that we need a link language in addition to English. Even if the government had forcibly taught them Hindi, it wouldn't have made a difference to that problem. (If you are not convinced look up Uzbek-Kirghiz riots last year in Kirghizstan.)

This is toally related. A better link langauge allows for better assimilation (or cross pollination). You connect better and they are your neighbours and not "people from Karnataka". Better bonding makes people treat them as one of their own. they figure that these guys suffer as much from water problems as them. I am not going to look up "Uzbek-Kirgiz". Has there ever been a time in history when there have been no fights in central asia/middle east?

R2D2 wrote:you are arguing for English as a link language and they will learn english? from whom, missionaries?

No, I am arguing that the Telugu laborers will do fine in Karnataka by picking up rudimentary Kannada. And that Hindi laborers should do the same. They would have had to do the same, if not for the government's preferential treatment towards Hindi, with my tax money.

So the Telugu labourers will pick up a few words of Kannada to compete against hindi labourers and Kannada laboures. so he picked one language. Now he goes to Gujrat and picks up a few words of gujrati to compete against gujrati lbaourers, Tamil labourers and Hindi labourers and so on. In the end if there was a common link language, the Telugu labourer would have still had to pick up only one extra lnaguage (rudimentary0 and it would help him in all parts of India.

R2D2 wrote:That is the idea of link language. If you learn it, you have lots of opportunites everywhere.

C wrote:You are missing the point. Laborers who do not know how to read or write their own language are not in a position to take advantage of government spending on Hindi promotion.

So what you are saying is that a link language is necessary and govt needs to spend the money better on economic lower strata in non-Hindi belt?

artood2 wrote:Are you saying Telugu did not have Sanskrit words and if there are those words are not present in Hindi?

No I am not saying that.

so will it be easier to pick hindi or english?

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:logic has never been a strong suit of the hindi pushing gang. their entire rationale for hindi pushing has been upended many times by reasoned argument over at sulekha and now here; but they will not go away, for theirs is a mission fueled by a strong conviction that india is hindia. in that sense they and kayal vizhi are of one mind.

Sir, please avoid the rhetoric and comeback with better arguments. you have more similarity with KV on thsi POV. i am yet to see any conincing argument which has been made. And sir you cna not judge on logic when you are seriously lacking in that department.

charvaka wrote:

artood2 wrote:What I am saying is that resources are adequate and you cannot make it any faster. The population lagging in literacy is in the old age group. those guys are not keen on learning anything and money spent there would not improve anything.

How do you know that? Do you have any data to prove your assertions?

I posted the literacy data. I have not seen data against it.

artood2 wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:logic has never been a strong suit of the hindi pushing gang. their entire rationale for hindi pushing has been upended many times by reasoned argument over at sulekha and now here; but they will not go away, for theirs is a mission fueled by a strong conviction that india is hindia. in that sense they and kayal vizhi are of one mind.

Sir, please avoid the rhetoric and comeback with better arguments. you have more similarity with KV on thsi POV. i am yet to see any conincing argument which has been made. And sir you cna not judge on logic when you are seriously lacking in that department.

i have already given all the reasoned arguments i can possibly give. so has carvaka as is evident reading this thread. it is impossible to say anything more, other than that you have no case.

the reason for your similarity with KV is this -- she claims that india is already hindia. you on the other hand don't think it is, yet that is, but would like to push in that direction. i OTOH don't think india is hindia at least at this point in time, and want to maintain status quo forever.

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:

artood2 wrote:

MaxEntropy_Man wrote:logic has never been a strong suit of the hindi pushing gang. their entire rationale for hindi pushing has been upended many times by reasoned argument over at sulekha and now here; but they will not go away, for theirs is a mission fueled by a strong conviction that india is hindia. in that sense they and kayal vizhi are of one mind.

Sir, please avoid the rhetoric and comeback with better arguments. you have more similarity with KV on thsi POV. i am yet to see any conincing argument which has been made. And sir you cna not judge on logic when you are seriously lacking in that department.

i have already given all the reasoned arguments i can possibly give. so has carvaka as is evident reading this thread. it is impossible to say anything more, other than that you have no case.

the reason for your similarity with KV is this -- she claims that india is already hindia. you on the other hand don't think it is, yet that is, but would like to push in that direction. i OTOH don't think india is hindia at least at this point in time, and want to maintain status quo forever.

--> why the silence on Bharathi's views on hindi?