UGC plans to launch world's largest language portal

The University Grants Commission, in a bid to have an inclusive and interactive education system has proposed a portal, where knowledge in all Indian languages will be collected and disseminated.

The 'all-inclusive and interactive' portal will be the largest internet language site in the world. In a letter to Vice Chancellors earlier this week, UGC Secretary Jaspal Singh Sandhu has asked all universities and colleges to share digitised and non-digitised material in various languages available with them for the ambitious 'Bharatvani' project.

"Bharatvani is a project with an objective of delivering knowledge in and about all languages in India using multimedia (ie text, audio, video, images) formats through a portal (website). This portal is proposed to be all inclusive, interactive, dynamic and moderated," Sandhu said in his letter to the VCs, dated November 24.

The government is launching this project to accommodate and strengthen the oral tradition by disseminating and presenting the unwritten vernaculars, country's classical literature in different languages, and to develop e-content and present the country's linguistic diversity in cyberspace, Sandhu said in the letter. The UGC secretary said, according to the Census of India, 2001, there are 122 scheduled and non-scheduled languages and 234 mother tongues.

Speaking about the project, he said, "It is proposed to develop as the largest language portal in the world by aggregating multimedia content from all Indian writers, government and non-governmental institutions, institutions like boards of education, textbook corporations, universities, academies, publication houses etc. The idea is to make India an Open Knowledge Society, in the era of Digital India," he added.

The UGC secretary also asked universities to share the names of institutions and individuals who could provide such material for this project. UGC is the apex body which is responsible for maintaining the quality of higher education in India.

PTI