The Hindu Business Line : Cos may have to speak with Govt only in Hindi

COMPANIES in India, including multinationals, beware! The Government might soon engage you all in a new conversation, and this time the pleasantries could seriously test your skills in the national language - Hindi.

A quiet move is on to make it compulsory for all companies — domestic or MNCs — that take recourse to Hindi as the language medium to sell or promote their products, to correspond with the Union Government only in Hindi.

In that event, such a compulsion is thrust upon the corporate sector, the Government on its part would also volunteer that it would use no other language but Hindi when it comes to communicating with these companies.

The move is being piloted by the Ministry of Home Affairs that has initiated a wide debate on the need to make the use of Hindi compulsory for companies that derive financial gains or capture the mind-space of consumers by using the national language for marketing and advertising purposes.

The Ministry's move comes in the wake of a recent report of the Parliamentary Committee on National Language, headed by the Home Minister, Mr Shivraj Patil, that had made a recommendation in this regard. The panel's mandate included reviewing the progress of the use of Hindi in matters relating to the governance of the union and to provide its recommendations to the President.

The committee has suggested that "MNCs along with domestic companies, that use Hindi as the language medium to sell or promote their goods must be compelled to use Hindi as the language to communicate with the Government. Along with this, the Government should also ensure that from its side the correspondence is in Hindi."

On the face of it, the sweep of such an order, if ever it sees the light of the day, would not leave out any entity in the corporate sector since there would hardly be any company worth its name that would not have used Hindi to sell or advertise its wares.

Taking the recommendation of the Parliamentary Committee further, the Home Ministry has now sought the views of the various stakeholders including leading industry chambers of commerce such as Assocham and Ficci.

The Ministry has asked the various stakeholders that could be impacted by the order to have a "constructive debate" on the issue and to communicate their views at the earliest.

The communication from the Department of Official Languages of the Ministry has reminded the various stakeholders that the debate is being generated since Hindi is the national language of the union as per the Section 343 of the Constitution.

"Keeping this (Hindi being the national language) in mind the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on National Language assumes importance in itself," the official communication (incidentally, also in Hindi) has said.