M Venkaiah Naidu stresses on regional languages

Days after drawing flak over his reference to Hindi as the Rashtra Bhasha at an Ahmedabad event – where he also insisted that Indians should learn the language – Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday emphasised the importance of regional languages, calling them the "universal voice".

Addressing regional news unit (RNU) heads of Doordarshan at a workshop, Naidu said news units play a critical role in news dissemination in a linguistic and culturally diverse country like India and brings synergy in government communication.

Officials present at the meeting told DNA that Naidu in his speech stated that the voice of the nation should be scaled up and made stronger and louder to ensure it is heard by the nation, emphasising that "without region, there is no nation."

Contrary to his earlier address, the minister in an address to the RNUs ruled out imposing a language (Hindi) in any region, adding that the government has only proposed learning other languages in their mother tongue.

He further said there should be focus on Indian languages as well as the mother tongue as they can convey information better, adding that RNUs takes national news, government stories and schemes to local platforms.

At present, the RNUs telecast a total of about 146 daily news bulletins in 23 languages for a cumulative duration of more than 30 hours daily. The government is also in the process of setting up a RNU in Sikkim.

DNA had earlier reported about the government's plans of empowering regional media by giving them more government advertisements.