eGovWatch: UGC plans portal containing knowledge in all Indian languages
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.
The UGC, the apex body tasked with maintenance of standards in higher education, has proposed an “all inclusive and interactive” portal, the largest internet language site in the world, where knowledge in all Indian languages will be collected and disseminated.
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),” Sandhu said in his letter to the VCs dated November 24. “This portal is proposed to be all inclusive, interactive, dynamic and moderated,” he added.
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, 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 it 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.
