Directions for the following 03 (three) items: Read the following extracts from the National Education Policy, 2020 and answer the items that follow. Your answers to these items should be based on the extracts only.
Extracts
Para 22.5: "Unfortunately, Indian languages have not received their due attention and care, with the country losing over 220 languages in the last 50 years alone. UNESCO has declared 197 Indian languages as 'endangered'. Various unscripted languages are particularly in danger of becoming extinct."
Para 22.14: "India will also urgently expand its translation and interpretation efforts in order to make high-quality learning materials and other important written and spoken material available to the public in various Indian and foreign languages. For this, an Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation (IITI) will be established. … The IITI could naturally grow with time, and be housed in multiple locations including in HEIs …"
Para 22.16: "… Classical language institutes will aim to be merged with universities, while maintaining their autonomy … National Institute (or Institutes) for Pali, Persian and Prakrit will also be set up within a university campus."
Para 22.18: "For each of the languages mentioned in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, Academies will be established consisting of some of the greatest scholars and native speakers to determine simple yet accurate vocabulary for the latest concepts, and to release the latest dictionaries on a regular basis … These Academies for Eighth Schedule languages will be established by the Central Government in consultation or collaboration with State Governments. Academies for other highly spoken Indian languages may also be similarly established by the Centre and/or States."
On the extracts alone, which one of the following does the Policy commit to?
- (a) Academies for each Eighth Schedule language, to be set up by the State Governments acting on their own
- (b) Merging the classical language institutes into universities, with their autonomy ending on the merger
- (c) An Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation, for learning material in Indian and foreign languages
- (d) A national drive to record every unscripted language before the last of its speakers passes away
(c) is correct. Para 22.14 is a firm commitment: "For this, an Indian Institute of Translation and Interpretation (IITI) will be established", and "this" is the expansion of translation and interpretation so that learning material and other written and spoken material reach the public "in various Indian and foreign languages". (a) is wrong on who acts. Para 22.18 says the Academies for Eighth Schedule languages "will be established by the Central Government in consultation or collaboration with State Governments" — not by the States alone. (b) is wrong because it drops the qualifying clause. Para 22.16 has the classical language institutes aim to join universities "while maintaining their autonomy"; the merger is meant to put their faculty and students inside multidisciplinary programmes, not to end their autonomy. (d) is wrong on the extracts. Para 22.5 says unscripted languages are particularly in danger of becoming extinct, but none of these extracts commits to recording them — their remedies are translation, the classical-language institutes and the Academies. (The policy does turn to documenting languages, endangered ones included, in Para 22.19, which the extracts leave out; the directions confine the answer to the extracts, and an option true of the wider policy but absent from the passage is the classic reading trap.) Trap: ch17 J.3 — read who does what in each sentence of a policy paragraph; the answer usually sits in a clause the eye skips ("in consultation or collaboration with", "while maintaining their autonomy").