Bangla course for bureaucrats

Updated on: Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Ever thought that there could be a large community living in Bengal who would be interested in taking a crash course in Bangla? If you think that is surprising, here is a news for you. The state government has been plagued by the problem because at least 50% of its officers are not Bengali and have little or no working knowledge of Bangla, which makes it extremely difficult to work in a state where the influence of the vernacular is extremely strong.

Finally, a six-month crash course in Bangla — planned by the Netaji Subhash Open University (NSOU) - promises to solve the long-standing problem. What's more, at the end of the course, candidates will be given certificates according to their proficiency level.

The NSOU is the state's only open university and about a year ago the state higher education department had apprised it of the problem, seeking a solution. The department had in turn received repeated requests from IAS and IPS associations for such a course, because in order to get promotions even non-Bengali officers have to appear for an exam which includes a paper in Bangla.

"We have also receive requests from central government offices like excise, customs, income tax and different banks, who often transfer officers from outside to Bengal and for whom a basic knowledge of Bengali is essential. We have designed the two courses, keeping them in mind," said a senior spokesperson of the university.

Actually two courses have been planned. While one is a course based on printed study material, the other is an online course, the first of its kind for teaching Bengali, claims the university. The former course is being called Bengali Certificate Course, while the online course is being named, "Bangla Shekho". Both are certificate courses of a six-month duration, and the whole study period will be punctuated with examinations.

The university had received requests for the online course from Bengali Associations of Nagpur, Mumbai, Delhi and Benaras. "Probashi Bengalis occasionally write to us to say that they want their children to learn Bengali through a short-time scientific course. Even Bengalis staying abroad can become subscribers to the online course. Even the exams in this course will be online after which we will send the certificates through post," the official added.

The material for the first course has been prepared by a team of experts in Bengali that includes names like Pabitra Sarkar, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, linguist Krishna Bhattacharya, professors of the linguistics department of the Calcutta University and from the Indian Association of American Studies.

Alongside the certificate courses an online course will also be run. The online material has been designed by Central Institute of Indian Languages Mysore for NSOU. (TNN)

Bangla course for bureaucrats

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