IIM-Ahmedabad's BIRD Team Offers Help To Strengthen Arunachal Languages

CORRESPONDENT

ITANAGAR: IIM-Ahmedabad has come forward to support the promotion of Arunachalee languages according to state Investment & Planning commissioner Prashant Lokhande.

Lokhande was addressing the IIM-Ahmedabad's Billion Readers (BIRD) team here, who is on a three-day visit to the state capital to explore the possibility of implementing the BIRD initiative in Arunachal Pradesh.

The BIRD initiative aims to ensure that every Indian becomes a fluent reader and a lifelong learner in his/her mother tongue.

Lokhande informed that the Department of Indigenous Affairs will be the lead state partner of the BIRD initiative.

Indigenous Affairs Director Sokhep Kri briefed the team about the various language groups and the progress achieved so far by the government and community-based organizations (CBOs) in developing and promoting standardized indigenous scripts.

Prof Brij Kothari, founder-leader of the initiative, elaborated on the BIRD initiative and its Same Language Subtitling (SLS) innovation.

SLS is a scientifically proven solution to support reading and language learning. It adds subtitles in the same language as the audio to audio-visual content that people love to watch, like folk songs, folk tales, and films on TV, streaming (OTT) and online videos.

"What you hear is what you read," explained Kothari.

The BIRD team had elaborate discussions with CBO representatives from the Galo, Adi, Idu-Mishmi, Kaman (Miju), Khamti, and Singpho language groups. Sathyanarayanan Mundayoor, Coordinator, Lohit Youth Library Network and a well-respected leader in the library movement in Arunachal Pradesh, also participated in the discussions and commented, "SLS has the potential to encourage a wider use of Arunachali languages and scripts creating a society of fluent readers." The BIRD team has offered to create SLS-powered content in indigenous languages by drawing on Arunachali folk songs and folk tales. The content would then be distributed on TV and social media platforms to encourage the usage of and reading in indigenous languages.

"I am deeply touched by the warm welcome and proactive response of the state leadership and CBOs," said Kothari at the conclusion of their visit. "Arunachal Pradesh could well be the first state to scale BIRD's SLS innovation in India and the world, for language learning and literacy," he added.

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