Hindustan Times: New Delhi: Wednesday, May 08, 2013.
Delhi
University wants to make Hindi and other modern Indian languages compulsory
under its new four-year undergraduate course. But it is not aware of the number
of teachers required to teach these languages in the colleges affiliated to the
university.
In a reply to
questions posed in an RTI application, the university said it has no
information about the number of staff teaching modern Indian languages in Delhi
University.
Suhas Chakma,
director of Asian Centre for Human Rights, had filed an RTI application,
seeking information on number of language teachers in the university affiliated
colleges, who would be running the four-year course.
The deputy
registrar of the university said no such information is maintained at the
university level. He instead asked Chakma to seek information from colleges, a
violation of the RTI Act. As per law, the RTI application has to be forwarded
to the government department which holds the information sought.
Chakma said
that the response of the university shows that it has not even conducted the
basic assessment about faculty strength before introducing compulsory modern
Indian languages.
He also
claimed that the proposal to conduct centralised modern Indian language courses
to address the shortages of faculty is a policy under which non-Hindi speakers
will be discriminated against. This is because that the university has adequate
staff in the Hindi department only.
The centre
has also urged the UGC to halt Delhi University’s plan to implement the
four-year course from the coming academic session.
It also
sought to bar the introduction of modern Indian languages without proper
assessment of faculty strength and need of the students coming from non-Hindi
speaking regions.
“DU must not
be allowed to introduce compulsory languages which, by any definition, is
discriminatory,” Chakma said.
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