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The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has completed the Mother Tongue Survey of India (MTSI) with field videography of the country’s 576 languages.
- The Mother Tongue Survey of India (MTSI), which included field recordings in all 576 of the nation’s official languages, has been completed by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
- The Mother Tongue Survey of India is an initiative that collects data on the mother languages that have been regularly reported for at least two census decades.
- The linguistic characteristics of the chosen languages are also documented.
- The term “mother language” is one that the respondent has provided, but not needs to be the same as the actual linguistic medium.
- The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) and the NIC will record and preserve the linguistic information of the mother tongues surveyed in audio-video files.
- For the sake of archiving, videotaped Mother Tongue speech data will also be uploaded to the NIC survey.
‘Mother Tongues’ in India
- More than 19,500 dialects are spoken in India as mother tongues, according to an examination of census data from the linguistic group conducted in 2011.
- Each of them belongs to one of 121 mother tongues.
- Hindi is the language used as the mother tongue by the most people, accounting for 52.8 crore people or 43.6% of the population, according to the 2011 Linguistic Census.
- Bengali, which is the mother language of 9.7 crore people and is spoken by 8% of the population, comes in second.
Role of mother tongue in the education of children
- Mother tongue shall be the major medium of teaching in schools for children up to the age of eight, according to the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF).
- The advantages of using your mother tongue as your major language of teaching are emphasised by the new NCF, which covers pre-school and schools I through II.
- According to this, kids have a good grasp of their “home language” by the time they start preschool.
- This push came after the PM and Home Minister repeatedly argued for it in terms of policy.
Why emphasize more on mother tongue?
- The NCF asserts that research evidence supports the significance of teaching children in their mother tongue throughout the early years and beyond.
- In their native tongue, children grasp topics most quickly and thoroughly.
- Therefore, in the Foundational Stage, the child’s mother tongue, native language, or preferred language should serve as the primary medium of learning.
Status of the population census
- The upcoming decennial census will be the 16th to be conducted since the first exercise in 1872.
- The seventh census since independence will take place.
- The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak caused the census to be delayed from its original 2021 date.
Updates in the new census
- The Home Ministry has implemented new efforts, including as digital data processing and the use of geospatial technology, to enable efficient processing and prompt dissemination of data.
- The study states that pre-census mapping operations would be carried out, including the creation and updating of maps that display administrative units.
- Interactive web-based maps will be used to distribute the results of the census.