The Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Awards for 2002-03 announced
Thru PIB

"The Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Awards for 2002-03 have been announced. The awards which have been instituted by the Department of Official Language in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs are given every year to the Ministries and Departments of the Government of India, Nationalised Banks and Financial Institutions, Public Sector Undertakings and Town Official Language Implementation Committees for promoting the use of Hindi in their official work. Cash Awards are given to the employees of the Central Government for writing original books in Hindi on the subjects relating to their official work."
[...]
"The Central Bank of India Ltd. has bagged the first prize among the National Banks and Financial Institutions. The second and third positions have gone to Union Bank of India and the Bank of Maharashtra respectively. Besides, three consolations prizes have been awarded to the Punjab National Bank, the Canara Bank and the Small Scale Industrial Development Bank of India.

"For the Town Official Language Implementation Committees, the awards have gone to the Committee of Delhi (PSUs) from ‘A’ region, Mumbai (Banks) from ‘B’ region and Bangalore (Offices) from ‘C’ region.

"The Indira Gandhi Rajbhasha Awards are also given for writing original books in Hindi on various subjects pertaining to administrative domain. The first prize carries a sum of Rs.20,000/-, the second Prize Rs. 16,000/-, and the third prize Rs.10,000/-. In this category, the first prize has gone to Shri Mahendra Pandey for his book ‘Taapman Main Vridhi aur Jalwayu Parivartan’. Shri Bimal Srivastava has been adjudged for the second prize for his book ‘Adhunic Hawai Adde Aur Unki Nirman Yojana’ and Shri Shivakant Bajpayee has been adjudged for third prize for his book ‘Prarambhik Bodh Dharma- Sangh and Samaj’."

Bhartendu Harishchandra Awards-2002 announced - Webindia123.com

"New Delhi, Sep 7 Prof Ram Mohan Pathak has been awarded the first prize in Bhartendu Harishchandra Awards-2002 for his manuscript 'Jan Madhyamon Ki Bhasha'.

Dr Om Prakash Singh bagged the second prize for his book 'Sanchar Ke Mool Sidhant'. The third prize went to Ms Ruchi Kashyap for her manusript 'Mayamrig-Bachon Par TV Vigyapanon Ka Prabhav'.

The Bhartendu Harishchandra awards are given by Information and Broadcasting Ministry to promote original writings in Hindi on journalism and mass communication. The awards will be presented by the I and B Minister S Jaipal Reddy on September 27.

Five consolation prizes go to Dr Amar Bahadur Singh and Dr Amarnath Singh for their jointly- written book 'Hindi Patrakarita aur Bhartendu Harishchandra', Mr Narendra Singh Yadav for his book 'Vigyapan Takneek Evam Siddhant', Mr Suresh Kumar for his manuscript 'Internet Patrakarita', Mr Shivanand Kamde for his manuscript 'Chhatisgarh Mein Patrakarita Ka Udbhav Evam Vikas' and Dr Deven Chandra Das for his manuscript 'Assam Ke Samachar Patra Aur Patrakarita'."

Uniform science terms - The Telegraph

"New Delhi, Sept. 6 (PTI): The Supreme Court today directed all governmental bodies, including the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), to ensure uniformity in scientific terminology used in textbooks, as recommended by a standing committee.

A bench comprising Justices Ruma Pal and Arun Kumar, while disposing of a public interest litigation filed by Matribhasha Vikas Parishad, directed all governmental education bodies to follow the terminology suggested by the standing committee on scientific and technical terminology.

The bench noted that the petitioner had brought on record several instances, which showed different Hindi translations of the same scientific expression used in textbooks.

The court said the object behind setting up of the standing committee was to avoid confusion among students by adopting a uniform scientific terminology. It was mandatory on the part of the governmental education bodies to follow the recommendations of the committee, the court added."

Dr. Meghnad Saha award for Hindi writing presented - Webindia123.com

"Ten authors of books on different disciplines of science have received the Meghnad Saha Award for original writing in Hindi for the year 2000 to 2002. The awards were presented by Shri V.S. Ramamurthy, Secretary, Department of Science and Technology.

Congratulating the authors, Shri Ramamurthy emphasized the need for producing more qualitative books on different streams of science and technology. He said that country like India needs more and more authors for writing books on science in Hindi and other regional languages so that scientific knowledge could be extended to the young minds living in the rural areas as well.

The recipients of the Awards are: Dr. Yatish Aggarwal and Smt. Rekha Aggarwal for ‘Khile Matritwa, Gunje Kilkarian (first prize); Dr. Shiv Chandra Dubey and Dr. Ramesh Somvanshi for ‘Bher Bakriyon ke Rog Aur unka Upchar’ (Second Prize); Dr. Prem Chandra Swarankar for ‘Rogon Se Kaise Bachain’, (Third Prize); Dr. Rajnikant Tewari and Sh. Vishwamohan Tewari for ‘Upgrah Ke Bahar-Bheeter Bharat Ke Hastakshar’ (Second Prize); Shri Laxman Prasad and Sh. Vinod Kumar Mishra for ‘Sadharan Awiskaron Ki Asadharan Safaltain’ (Consolation Prize) and Shri Subhash Chandra for ‘Bharat Main Computer Kranti’ (Consolation Prize).

The award for writing books on science subjects in Hindi was initially introduced by the Department of Science & Technology in 1987 under the scheme ‘Vigyan Aur Prodyogiki Puraskar Yojana’ in the disciplines of Engineering, Physics, Chemistry and Life Science. In 1990, the scheme was renamed as “Dr. Meghnad Saha Puraskar Yojana”. "

Reliance Infocomm launches Worlds Slimmest CDMA handset at just Rs 2,999 with Hindi interface

"Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City, Navi Mumbai, India, September 7, (Xtvworld) -- Setting the handset market afire, India’s largest mobile service provider Reliance Infocomm has rolled out the world’s thinnest CDMA black and white handset – Samsung Slim – at an equally slim price of Rs 2,999.

Samsung Slim weighs just 80 grams has a four-line display and incorporates 30 ring tones, including 15 Indian tunes and five bells and 16 polyphonic (CMX) ring tones. The sleek phone’s dimensions are: 105x43x13 mm.

Initially presented in stunning black matt finish, the handset has a striking backlight that makes it even more attractive at nighttime. Priced at an affordable Rs 2,999, this is by far the most stylish handset available at entry level. It has English and Hindi User interface with facility to send or receive SMS in Hindi as well as store Phone Book entries, Schedules and Memos in the national language."

Hindi Morphological Tagger Written by Vasu Renganathan

IBM Research: Hindi Audio Visual Speech Recognition

"At the IBM India Research Lab (IRL), we are extending the IBM ViaVoiceTM recognition technology to build a speech recognition system for the Hindi language. We have identified a phone set consisting of 61 phonemes for Hindi. A mapping from the English phone set to Hindi phone set was used to bootstrap the English acoustic model to build the initial phone models for HindiP2. Using these models, we have built an acoustic model for Hindi by training it on a large sample of Hindi acoustic data. We have the setup to collect and transcribe speech samples that are used to train the acoustic models.

"We have built a statistical language model for Hindi, which captures the language statistics from a huge amount of text data. Currently we are working on increasing the accuracy of our Hindi speech recognition system by enhancing the Acoustic and Language models. The recognition system performs well over a trained context and we have a demo of a large vocabulary continuous speech Hindi recognition system at the Lab. Our goal is to cover more Indian languages and then to build a multilingual speech recognizor for the Indian languages based on a multilingual phone set."

Office suite for PCs at Rs 1995
Thru Rediff

"C K Technologies on Tuesday launched 'Shakti Office 1.72,' the latest version of its office suite software for personal computers, priced one-tenth of Microsoft's Office suite.

'We have priced Shakti Office 1.72 at Rs 1,995 compared to Microsoft office 2003 suite's Rs 30,000 plus,' Manoj R Annadurai, managing director, CK Technologies, told reporters in Chennai.
He said Shakti Office 1.72 was tailor-made for Indian market with bilingual capabilities.

'The bilingual feature allows users of the suite to switch over to either Hindi or Tamil, while using English,' he said."

From The Dominance of Angreziyat in Our Education by Madhu Kishwar on Sulekha (old article)

"I came to understand the full implications of the great harm being done by the dominating position of English in India as I went through the process of acquiring proficiency in it. For all my English-based education, I find myself a linguistic cripple. Even today, despite years of working in it, writing or even speaking in English does not come easily to me. I make all kinds of silly mistakes and find myself groping for words, unable to fully express my ideas and thoughts in English. I rarely make such mistakes when I write or speak in Hindi or Punjabi. English has not become the language of my dreams, my prayers or even humour. I find it really hard to crack a joke in English. At the same time it has seriously impaired my ability to write in Hindi or my mother tongue, Punjabi because most of the information giving material on important issues as well as literary writings from other languages are available only in English. Hindi and regional languages starve for want of such material. "

The farmer who provides food for the mind
Thru India News Online

"In an age when libraries have all but disappeared from even the biggest Indian cities giving way to corner shops lending out the latest film instead, a farmer here works hard to keep the reading habit alive and kicking.

"And Vishwa Pratap Singh of Chaukheri village does it all with his own funds.

"From a few books in 1955, the library started by Singh's grandfather has grown to 5,000 volumes, including rare manuscripts dating back 300 years.

"Think of any remarkable work in Hindi and chances are that you will find it in Singh's library. So whether the reader is looking for novels by doyens of Hindi literature like Bharatendu Harishchandra, Munshi Premchand or Mahadevi Verma or works from contemporary writers like Nirmal Verma and Dharamvir Bharti, it's all here in Singh's treasure trove."
[...]

"सच्चा लेखक विचारधारा का दास नहीं होता" - निर्मल वर्मा

दैनिक जागरण से प्रख्यात लेखक निर्मल वर्मा का एक साक्षात्कार (सम्भवतः पुराना)

बिना अंग्रेज़ी इंटरनेट के इस्तेमाल पर विचार
(बीबीसी हिंदी से)

"इंटरनेट को उनके लिए फ़ायदेमंद कैसे बनाएँ जो अंग्रेज़ी या किसी पश्चिमी भाषा का इस्तेमाल नहीं करते?

"इंटरनेट युग में ये एक अहम सवाल है जिसपर विचार करने लिए मलेशिया की राजधानी कुआलालंपुर में दुनिया के तमाम देशों से आए इंटरनेट के जानकारों की बैठक चल रही है.
[...]
"मलेशिया में ये बैठक ऐसे वक़्त हो रही है जब ये अनुमान व्यक्त किया जा रहा है कि कुछ ही वर्षों के भीतर इंटरनेट इस्तेमाल करनेवालों में सर्वाधिक आबादी एशियाई लोगों की होगी.

"ऐसी सूरत में विशेषज्ञ ये विचार कर रहे हैं कि इंटरनेट के लिए उन भाषाओं या लिपियों के मानक कैसे तय हों.

"साथ ही डॉट कॉम, डॉट ऑर्ग या डॉट नेट की तर्ज़ पर इंटरनेट के कुछ नए पते बनाने पर भी बात होगी."

भारतीय लिपियों के लिए यूनिकोड में प्रस्तावित परिवर्तन

"बहुभाषी साफ़्टवेयर के विकास के लिए यूनीकोड मानकों का अद्योग द्वारा व्यापक प्रयोग किया जा रहा है। यूनीकोड स्टैंडर्ड 3.0 में ISC II-1988 पर आधारित भारतीय लिपियों के लिए मानक कोड सैट शामिल होते हैं (भारतीय लिपि कोड सूचना आदान-प्रदान के लिए ISC II-IS 13194:1991)। भारतीय लिपियों के पर्याप्त निरूपण के लिए यूनीकोड स्टैंडर्ड में कुछ रूपांतरण शामिल किए जाने जरूरी हैं। सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी विभाग संचार एवं सूचना टेक्नालोजी मंत्रालय यूनीकोड संसोरटियम का वोटिंग सदस्य है। सूचना टेक्नालॉजी विभाग ने संबंधित राज्य सरकारों, भारतीय आई टी उद्योग और भाषाविदों के परार्मा से वर्तमान यूनीकोड स्टैंडर्ड में प्रस्तावित परिवर्तनों को अंतिम रूप दिया गया है। इन्हें हाल ही में TDIL न्यूज़लेटर विश्वभारत@tdil अंक 4 (देवनागरी आधारित भाषाएं संस्कृत, हिन्दी, मराठी, नेपाली, कोंकणी, सिन्धी), अंक 5 (गुजराती, मलयालम तेलगू, गुरूमुखी, उड़िया), अंक 6 (बंगला, मनीपुरी और असमी), अंक 7-प्रिंट में (तामिल, कनाडा, उर्दू, सिन्धी, कमीरी)।" [sic]

(भारतीय भाषाओं के लिए प्रौद्योगिकी विकास (टीडीआईएल) साइट से)

हिंदी की महत्ता के सम्बन्ध में विद्वानों के मत
(नागरीप्रचारिणी सभा से)

वी.ओ.ए. हिन्दी की पचासवीं वर्षगांठ
Thru VOA

"The Voice of America Hindi Service celebrates its 50th birthday Thursday.

The service began broadcasting in 1954 with 30 minutes of service per day. It has since expanded its daily programming to 90 minutes, and added television reporting, call-in programs and an Internet website.

Hindi programing includes shows on science, health, environment, business, music, women and many other subjects.

The service, which employs more than two dozen reporters and corespondents worldwide, has won more than 100 awards over the years from both within VOA and from outside institutions."

"पहली जुलाई को वी.ओ.ए. हिन्दी प्रसारण के पचास वर्ष पूरे हुए । इस अवसर पर हमारी दोनों सभाओं में विशेष कार्यक्रम सुनियेगा ।

"वी.ओ.ए. हिन्दी का पहला प्रसारण पहली जुलाई 1954 को हुआ था । तब से अब तक हमने बहुत सी मंज़िलें पार की हैं । पग पग पर हमें श्रोताओ का सहयोग मिलता रहा ।

"अपनी पचासवीं वर्षगांठ के अवसर पर हम पूरे वर्ष विशेष कार्यक्रम प्रसारित करते रहेंगे । हमें सुनना जारी रखियेगा ।"