Context: Recently, Union Education Minister sets up a task force for preparing a roadmap on imparting technical education in Mother Tongue.
Key Highlights

• The task force set up under the chairmanship of Secretary, Higher Education will take into consideration the suggestions made by various stakeholders.
• The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the National Institutes of Technology (NITs) will start offering engineering courses in mother tongue from next academic year.
• The task force is part of the National Education Policy (NEP) which suggests teaching in regional language till class 8 and enabling teaching the curriculum in a language which a student is comfortable in.

Challenges: Providing technical education in regional languages requires teachers proficient in undertaking classes in the vernacular medium along with English, textbooks and reference materials in regional languages, besides technological assistance such as audio translation aids.

Govt. major initiatives

• The Government of India is running a scheme known as “Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages” for conservation of threatened languages.
• The University Grants Commission (UGC) also promotes regional languages in higher education courses in the country and supports nine Central Universities under the scheme “Establishment of Centre for Endangered Languages in Central Universities”.
• Recently, an initiative Namath Basai by Kerala State Government has proved to be very beneficial in educating children from tribal areas by adopting vernacular languages as medium of instruction.

Constitutional Provisions on use of Language

Article 29 Protection of interests of minorities

• Any section of the citizens residing in the territory of India or any part thereof having a distinct language, script or culture of its own shall have the right to conserve the same.
• No citizen shall be denied admission into any educational institution maintained by the State or receiving aid out of State funds on grounds only of religion, race, caste, language or any of them.

Article 30 Right of minorities to establish and administer educational institutions

• All minorities, whether based on religion or language, shall have the right to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice.
• The State shall not, in granting aid to educational institutions, discriminate against any educational institution on the ground that it is under the management of a minority, whether based on religion or language.

Article 120 Language to be used in Parliament

• Notwithstanding anything in Part XVII, but subject to the provisions of Article 348 i.e. business in Parliament shall be transacted in Hindi or in English.

Article 343 Official language of the Union

• The official language of the Union shall be Hindi in Devanagari script.

Article 344 Commission and Committee of Parliament on official language

It shall be the duty of the Commission to make recommendations to the President as to

• The progressive use of the Hindi language for the official purposes of the Union;
• Restrictions on the use of the English language for all or any of the official purposes of the Union;

The language to be used for all or any of the purposes mentioned in article 348; and

• The form of numerals to be used for any one or more specified purposes of the Union.

Article 350A Facilities for instruction in mother-tongue at primary stage

• It shall be the endeavour of every State and of every local authority within the State to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother-tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to linguistic minority groups.