The story so far:

In alignment with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, to impart education in the Indian languages for an improved understanding and improved teaching-learning outcome, the government has initiated technical education, including engineering and medicine in Indian languages. The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) has introduced “AICTE Technical Book Writing and Translation” in 12 scheduled Indian languages. The government is also collaborating with technical education departments to distribute one set of books in Indian languages for the libraries of each degree and diploma-level institution. The Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT) has also launched a website offering technical terms in all 22 official Indian languages for various educational subjects.

What is CSTT?

The CSTT, established on October 1, 1961, focuses on preparing standardised scientific and technical terminology in Indian languages. It regularly publishes a range of bilingual, trilingual, and multilingual glossaries, definitional dictionaries, and monographs, besides publishing quarterly journals named ‘Vigyan Garima Sindhu’ and ‘Gyan Garima Sindhu’. The CSTT also takes up the publication of university-level textbooks through its Granth Academies, textbook boards, and publication cells located in various parts of the country.

It also undertakes the publication of administrative and various departmental glossaries that are widely used by government departments, institutions, research laboratories, autonomous organisations, and public sector units besides organising workshops, seminars, symposiums, conferences, orientation, and training programmes to increase the use and popularise the standard terminology of Hindi and other Indian languages.

What is the name of the new website and how does it operate?

The CSTT glossary search website, “Shabd,” is hosted at ‘https://shabd.education.gov.in’. “Shabd” is a data server that features all the glossaries of CSTT in digital searchable mode. Other institutions or agencies preparing dictionaries can also host their work in digital form on this platform. The aim is to showcase a central repository for all the terminologies prepared in or for Indian Languages.

The platform allows users to search for scientific and technical terms in Indian languages and provide feedback on existing equivalents prepared by CSTT. The search options include language, subject, dictionary type, and language pairs. It also allows users to search specific glossaries or the entire collection.

What was the process of collating the words?

The CSTT prepares the terminologies through the Expert Advisory Committees consisting of subject and language experts, along with linguists, who are focused on finding out the equivalent terms in the specific subject areas and language. The terminology prepared by CSTT is used by Granth Academies, textbook boards, and publication cells for textbook preparation and is also used by institutions such as NTA, NCERT, NTM, AICTE, and so on. The “Shabd” website contains words taken from various definitional dictionaries, glossaries, and reference materials that have been published by the CSTT over the years.

When was the portal launched and what has been the response so far?

The site first went active in March this year and since then, it has had 1,36,968 hits from across the country and the world.

How many words drawn from how many subjects are available on the portal?

The entire collection which as of now includes about 322 glossaries has about (21,84,050 headwords). This covers disciplines in Humanities, Social Sciences, Medical Sciences, Engineering, Agricultural Sciences, and more than 60 subjects such as Journalism, Public Administration, Chemistry, Botany, Zoology, Psychology, Physics, Economics, Ayurveda, Mathematics, Civil and Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Political Science, Agriculture, Culture, Transport, Geology, Capital Market, Cell Biology, Broadcasting, Music and Finearts, CSIT, AIML, Linguistics, Forestry, Entomology, Plant Pathology, Soil Science, Nematology, Sericulture, LIS, and others.

Prof Girish Nath Jha, Chairperson of CSTT, says, “The institution is working hard to enable Indian languages as per the huge mandate given to it by our government and our constitution. We hope to progress faster by using AI and related digital technologies in future”.

New Delhi:

The political row over proposal to refer to India as “Bharat” in NCERT textbooks snowballing, the man behind the proposal told NDTV today that it was only meant for students of CBSE and in classrooms. “At home they can say whatever,” retired Professor CI Issacs told NDTV in an exclusive interview.

Mr Issacs is heading the Committee for Social Sciences, which made the recommendation that has stirred up a hornet’s nest. Amid Opposition attack, NCERT (National Council of Educational Research and Training) has said no decision has been taken regarding the recommendations, made in response to move to revise the curriculum in line with the National Education Policy 2020.  

Along with replacing the name “India” with “Bharat” in textbooks, the panel has also suggested introducing “classical history”, instead of “ancient history” and including “Indian Knowledge System” in the syllabus.

Asked why this change is needed at this point, Professor Issacs said they were not “removing” anything.   

“Our mindset is toned by colonial education. Now it is a new education system. New chapter. Something new is needed, nothing traditional,” he said, citing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for an update in the country’s education policy.  

Calling the change “essential”, he said it has the backing of a number of academicians who were not part of the committee.

Asked if the move does not open another Pandora’s box of opposition charges about politicization of education, Mr Issacs said, “We never think about election.  None of my team are involved in politics. Five are ladies. Housewives”.

On why this had to be included in textbooks, he said it was for the teachers.  

“Of course teachers will say India,” he said, pointing out that they were also products of colonial education, like himself, who also says India. The change, he said, can be effected in the textbooks of senior classes, starting from Class 8.  

India and Bharat are names mentioned in the very first article of the Constitution. Asked why, in that case, it could not be left to individual choice, he said the rule is applicable only to CBSE students.   

The Opposition has called the proposal an effort to “indoctrinate an entire generation”.  

Rashtriya Janata Dal’s Manoj Jha has called it a “panic reaction to INDIA bloc”. “Article 1 of the Constitution says “India that is Bharat”. The people who framed it, Babasaheb Ambedkar. Nehru, Azad, Patel – they thought something?” he said. Then holding up a copy of the Constitution, he said, “Will this be the next target?”

“This is anti-people, anti-India. This is completely wrong. I appeal to government. You can’t change the history of India,” said Congress’s DK Shivakumar.  

The Bharat-India controversy had started when the government sent out G20 invites in the name of “President of Bharat” instead of “President of India”. Later, the nameplate of PM Modi during the G20 summit in New Delhi also read “Bharat”, instead of India.

The High Court of Bombay has recently taken suo motu cognisance of the exploitation of the intra-State workforce that migrates seasonally from the drought-affected and water-scarce regions of Marathwada to the sugar-belt region of western Maharashtra. Maharashtra is one of the top sugar producers in India. According to the Maharashtra Sugar Commissioner, in 2022-23, the net area under sugar cane was 1.487 million hectares, and there were 203 crushing factories in the State that were expected to produce 138 lakh metric tons of sugar.

Sugar-belt shocker | The financial and sexual abuse of Maharashtra’s migrant workforce

Though intra-State migrant workers form the backbone of the sugar cane industry and economic growth, they have remained critically marginalised and oppressed for several decades. Considering the precarity of this migrant workforce, the High Court asked the Maharashtra government to form a committee of officers from various departments (with one nodal officer) to address their issues. Against this background, it would be critical to examine how ‘seriously’ the State develops policies and consistently implements strategic measures and existing labour laws for the effective inclusion of this precarious migrant group.

To deal with the prolonged unemployment after the sowing of rabi crops, millions of small and marginal peasant households from Beed, Jalna, Osmanabad, Latur, Nanded and Parbhani districts of the Marathwada region migrate to the sugar-belt districts such as Sangli, Kolhapur, Pune, Satara, Solapur and Ahmednagar to work in sugar cane harvesting and factories. Prolonged drought conditions, repeated crop failure, debt, and acute unemployment create an end-most situation for Marathwada’s rural labour, and, ultimately, they have to migrate seasonally. Therefore, there needs to be a long-term and comprehensive policy to address their vulnerability at both the source and destination.

The State government has to intervene in the prevalent exploitative structure of recruiting migrant workers in the sugar cane industry filed through the ‘Mukadam’ (labour contractor). The Mukadam has a contract with sugar factories to supply ‘Koytas’ (labour couples) and takes an advance to pay workers. The Mukadam system assures sugar factories a supply of a large volume of temporary, cheap, reliable, and efficient workforce (Breman, 1978). Because of eco-political reasons, the Mukadam system remains the focal point; migrant workers are very dependent on the Mukadam. Consequently, it creates adequate space to control migrant workers, violates labour laws, and is unfavourable to establish any relationship between the factory and workers.

Gaps in the data, plight of women, children

Inadequate data is the stumbling block in framing meaningful policies for seasonal migrants, especially when women migrants and children are largely invisible and un-enumerated. Hence, a periodic and time-bound enumerating exercise is critical to create a databank of seasonal migrants that is credible. A technology-aided Migration Tracking System (MTS) application was launched in 2022 by the Women and Child Development Department of the Maharashtra government, which was said to be the first-of-its-kind project in the country.

The MTS initially focused on seasonal migrants in the tribal districts to enumerate and track children, pregnant women, and lactating mothers at source and destination areas to ensure nutrition, immunisation and early childhood care, and continuity of the Integrated Child Development Services.

However, the MTS fails to create a comprehensive picture of seasonally migrating families, their current employment status, wage structure and entitlement coverage. With expanded scope, the revised MTS can be used in the State’s sugar belt and other seasonal migration corridors to enumerate migrants, understand the dynamics and clearly delineate the specific needs and interventions.

Another high priority area is addressing the plight of migrant women workers, and ensuring their health, safety and employment in the sugar cane labour market. In the sugar cane harvesting task, women workers are engaged in strenuous work such as headload cane bundles and carry heavy weight (40 kg-45 kg) on trucks or trolleys, which usually occur late in the evening, resulting in several accidents during the loading process (Oxfam India 2020). Their work adversely impacts their body, causing musculoskeletal disorders and several gynaecological issues. UNESCO noted that early and forced marriages among migrants cause problems for adolescent girls, resulting in early pregnancies (15-17 years), deliveries in the absence of a trained birth attendant, frequent childbirth, no exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and many other problems. Many studies have reported recurring violence and sexual harassment cases linked to the Mukadam and male workers. Despite multiple vulnerabilities among seasonally migrating women, the State government has not adopted any adequate long-term intervention strategy.

Though the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 emphasises equitable and inclusive education for all, the Right to Education of children who accompany their parents to sugar cane fields is violated blatantly. There are no sufficient alternative schooling models, which in turn affect their education. They are probably forced into child labour. In their joint study, the International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and UNICEF (2022) observed that despite these children being physically absent from school, school records do not acknowledge this in many cases.

Need for government interventions

There needs to be intervention to ensure that seasonal migrants have access to justice and are guaranteed safe and healthy working and living conditions. The State government must take the lead and collaborate with different Ministries and Departments to formulate targeted and time-bounded interventions. With a strong political will, it is possible to create a favourable legal environment to protect the rights of migrants by strengthening the labour administration. On the one side, it is said to be an Amrit Kaal with the vision of an empowered and inclusive economy to fulfil all its humanitarian obligations, while on the other, State functionaries constantly neglect a tribulation of the huge groups of seasonal migrants, leaving them helpless and in jeopardy. One must stop this deceit and take specific action.

S. Irudaya Rajan is Chair at the International Institute of Migration and Development, Kerala. Kuldeepsingh Rajput is Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Migration and Development, Kerala