Of late, the state government’s efforts to seek a classical language status for Odia have been making headlines. It has prepared a report supporting its claim, which would soon be presented to the culture ministry for consideration. I am hopeful that Odia will get the coveted tag, but I cannot ignore the fact that the popularity and use of the language among its own people and the state administration has been consistently waning.

Odisha was the first state in the country to be created on linguistic considerations, but we have failed to retain its glory. Three former chief ministers —Nabakrushna Choudhury, Janaki Ballabh Patnaik and Biju Patnaik — were not successful in their attempt to make Odia the official language of the state. Their successors have hardly done anything to promote Odia as the official administrative language.

The state government’s own notification effective since March 29, 1985, declaring Odia as the official language is not followed in most offices. A reminder was sent in January 2012 to all departments, directorates and district collectors to start official correspondence in Odia. However, the situation hardly changed, forcing the general administration department to issue a fresh notification on June 12 this year.

Let me share an interesting experience with you. As founder-director of the Mysore-based Central Institute of Indian Languages, I was requested by the chief minister to help make Kannada the official language of Karnataka in the 70s. But before that happened, the then chief minister of Karnataka, D. Devaraj Urs, invited me for a discussion. “Can it be possible Mr. Pattanayak?” he asked me. In reply, I requested him for the services of the middle ranking secretariat officials. I took the officials to places of tourist importance such as Ooty and Brindavan Gardens in several batches. There, I asked them to channelise all their energy in writing official communiqués in Kannada instead of English.

I gathered the entire collection of official terminology in Kannada and in a month, the Karnataka secretariat had a lexicon of all official communication in Kannada. Later, I also took similar sessions with senior bureaucrats and was successful in my attempt of making them Kannada-friendly.

I would also like to recall the establishment of Institute of Kannada Language and Culture in late 60s. When asked by the Karnataka government to suggest somebody’s name for the director’s post, I had said that it should be made equivalent to that of a minister’s status. But in Odisha, the state-run Odia Bhasa Pratisthan (OBP) is a toothless tiger. The OBP director’s post is equivalent to the rank of a reader in a government college. How can you expect senior bureaucrats and officials to respond to the circulars and letters of the OBP director if the post is not elevated to a much higher rank?

We should have a well-defined language policy. The United Nations linguistic studies have already made it clear that primary-level learning through mother tongue should be the norm. We should follow that and have language learning for all, including tribal people, in mother tongue. When one is sound in his or her mother tongue, it becomes easy to learn other languages.

I advocate inclusive schools for the poor and the rich where primary education is imparted only in Odia. I have graduated from a school in Odia medium, but that never came in my way of carving my niche as a linguist. Rather, I always hope that learning in the mother tongue helps students grasp other languages in a better way. If a small country like Papua New Guinea can manage 860 languages for better education and social development, can we not manage less than 100 languages in Odisha including the tribal languages?

Not only is enrolment in Odia medium schools on the decline, but the treatment meted out to Odia literature in English medium schools is also a cause of worry. These institutions are continuing alphabet learning only with English from the entry-level classes. There is a provision as per a government resolution issued on June 11, 2004, that English medium schools must have a compulsory subject in Odia language up to Class VII.

Odia medium schools, on the other hand, have separate posts for Hindi and Sanskrit teachers, who teach the two subjects exclusively. However, Odia language teachers are compelled to teach other subjects like history and geography in many schools.

Odisha was the first state in the country to allow students to choose Sanskrit as an alternative language in school, apparently leading to a decreased interest in Odia language. Sanskrit is preferred as it is largely a mark-fetching subject.

There are scholarships after Class X for Sanskrit and Hindi, but there is no such incentive for students who wish to study Odia literature. In 2011, authorities of an English medium school at Champua in Keonjhar district had reportedly punished a student for uttering Odia words on the campus. Stringent actions should be initiated against such authorities.

If apathy wasn’t enough, hypocrisy of people has dealt a major blow to the language. Quite a few politicians and activists advocating for the promotion and popularisation of the language are known to send their wards to English medium schools. The state commercial tax department has asked traders to use Odia on billboards, but its implementation is far from visible.

We have seen a sudden rise in number of universities in the state, but the standard of education has declined. The proposed Odia University, however, will be a different institution, which will have interest in history, geography, art, meditation, healing, phonology, grammar, human emotions and stylistics, other nuances of poetics, aesthetics, archaeology, architecture, epigraphy, computer applications and knowledge development, human mind, creativity and growth of ideas subjects to be taught and researched in Odia. Efforts will be made to use media for literary, mass communication and higher education primarily aimed at rural tribal populations. We are exploring establishment of a museum, arts and architecture campus in Konark and an agriculture campus near Kendrapara.

The much-debated classical status for the Odia language that is about receiving a one-time grant of Rs 100 crore for research and development of the language and subsequently, Rs 5 crore grant per year, if handed over to the Odia University, will go a long way in developing research in Odia.The status will also help in popularising Odia among the Generation Next, which hardly have any interest in their mother tongue.