Bhasha Certifiate Selfie campaign

Context: Recently, Ministry of Education launched a campaign ‘Bhasha Certificate Selfie to encourage cultural diversity and promote mulitlinguism and to foster the spirit of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat.
Key Points

• Bhasha Certificate Selfie initiative aims to promote Bhasha Sangam mobile app, developed by Ministry of Education and MyGov India.
• Using the app, people can learn 100+ sentences of daily use in as many as 22 scheduled Indian languages.
• The initiative, under the aegis of Ek Bharat Shreshtha Bharat will aim to ensure that people acquire basic conversational skills in Indian languages.
• To achieve this, a target of 75 lakh people acquiring basic conversational skills has been set.
• Bhasha Sangam mobile app was launched by Minister of Education while commemorating Rashtriya Ekta Diwas which is celebrated on October 31 every year to mark the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
• The ‘Bhasha Certificate Selfie’ initiative is encouraging people to upload their selfie with the certificate from their social media accounts using the hashtag #BhashaCertificateSelfie.

About Bhasha Sangam Initiative

• It is an initiative to teach basic sentences of everyday usage in 22 Indian languages (Eighth Schedule languages).
• It is developed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT).
• The idea is that people should acquire basic conversational skills in an Indian language other than their mother tongue.

Additional Information
Eighth Schedule of the Constitution

• The Constitutional provisions relating to the Eighth Schedule occur in article 344(1) and 351 of the Constitution.
• The Eight Schedule consists of the 22 languages namely (1) Assamese, (2) Bengali, (3) Gujarati, (4) Hindi, (5) Kannada, (6) Kashmiri, (7) Konkani, (8) Malayalam, (9) Manipuri, (10) Marathi, (11) Nepali, (12) Oriya, (13) Punjabi, (14) Sanskrit, (15) Sindhi, (16) Tamil, (17) Telugu, (18) Urdu (19) Bodo, (20) Santhali, (21) Maithili and (22) Dogri.
• Of these languages,14 were initially included in the Constitution.Sindhi language was added by the 21st Amendment Act of 1967.
• Konkani, Manipuri, and Nepali were included by the 71st Amendment Act of 1992.
• Bodo, Dogri, Maithili, and Santhali were added by the 92nd Amendment Act of 2003.

Additional information
Article 344(1)

• It provides for the establishment of a Commission by the President on the expiration of 5 years and then after 10 years from the commencement of the Constitution.
• The commission should have members which should represent the various languages specified in the 8th Schedule.They should make recommendations to the President for the dynamic use of Hindi for official purposes of the Government of India among others.

Article 351

• It provides for the spread of the Hindi language to develop so that it may serve as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of India without interfering with the other languages of India specified in the 8th Schedule.