India's Mother Tongue Survey

• The Ministry of Home Affairs recently completed the Mother Tongue Survey of India (MTSI), which included a field video of all 576 languages in the country.
• The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIC) and the National Film Development Corporation (NFDC) will document and preserve the linguistic data of the surveyed mother tongues in audio-video files.

About the MTSI:

• The Mother Tongue Survey of India is a project that surveys the mother tongues that are consistently reported during two or more Census decades.
• It also documents the linguistic characteristics of the languages chosen.
• The respondent provided the category "mother tongue," which does not have to be the same as the actual linguistic medium.

In India, how many mother tongues are spoken?

• According to the 2011 linguistic census data, which was released in 2018, India has over 19,500 languages and dialects spoken as mother tongues.
• Following linguistic scrutiny and rationalization, these 19,500 languages were further classified into 121 mother tongue categories.
• According to the 2011 linguistic census, Hindi is the most widely spoken mother tongue, with 52.8 crore people, or 43.6 percent of the population, declaring it as such.
• Following that, Bengali was spoken by 8% of the population, making it the country's second most popular mother tongue.

What is the India Linguistic Survey?

• Since the Sixth Five Year Plan, the Linguistic Survey of India (LSI) has been a regular research activity in the country.
• The primary goal of this Linguistic Survey of India is to present an up-to-date linguistic scenario.
• It also aims to provide necessary inputs to social/educational planners in respective states so that they can plan to achieve the envisioned goals.

Where does the mother tongue fit into children's education?

• The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 prioritizes the promotion of mother tongue and regional languages.
• Mother tongue should be the primary medium of instruction in schools for children up to the age of eight, according to the new National Curriculum Framework (NCF) for the foundational stages of education.
• Because children learn concepts more quickly and deeply in their native language, the primary medium of instruction in the Foundational Stage should be the child's mother tongue.

The current state of the population census:

• The upcoming decennial population census will be the 16th since the first attempt in 1872.
• It will be the eighth census since the country's independence.
• The census was scheduled to take place in 2021, but it was pushed back due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
• The Home Ministry has launched several new initiatives, including the use of digital data processing and geospatial technology.
• Pre-census mapping activities will be carried out, such as the creation and updating of maps depicting administrative units.
• Web-based interactive maps will be used to disseminate census results.

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