Working group plans national repository for tribal languages
The ministry of tribal affairs on Wednesday convened the first meeting of the Working Group on Tribal Languages to draw up a roadmap for documenting, digitally preserving and promoting India’s indigenous languages, with experts calling for a national repository that puts tribal communities at the centre of preservation efforts.
Chaired by Ranjana Chopra, secretary, ministry of tribal affairs (MoTA), the meeting brought together 18 eminent linguists, academics, researchers and community language practitioners. Among those who participated were Padma Shri awardee Chamu Krishna Shastry, chairman of Bhasha Samiti, and K Sreenivasa Rao, former secretary of the Sahitya Akademi.
The ministry plans to position Adi Vaani as the National Tribal Language Repository, bringing together linguistic research, dictionaries, primers, speech datasets, recordings and community stories on a common platform. The initiative is intended to consolidate work scattered across institutions, reduce duplication and improve access to resources for researchers, educators and tribal communities.
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Adi Vaani’s resources and the scale of language loss
Addressing the meeting, Chopra said language was an important means of improving the reach and effectiveness of welfare initiatives among tribal communities. She also underlined the importance of mother-tongue-based multilingual education in addressing learning gaps during the early years. Resources created with communities, she stressed, should continue to be owned by them.
A presentation to the working group estimated that more than 400 of India’s approximately 780 spoken languages are tribal and indigenous tongues. It also flagged the loss of around 220 languages over five decades and noted that 123 of the 197 endangered languages listed by UNESCO are tribal languages.
Adi Vaani, developed by IIT Delhi in collaboration with the ministry, currently supports text translation in nine tribal languages and offers speech-related, optical character recognition (OCR) and video-subtitling features. More than 300 primers prepared by Tribal Research Institutes (TRIs) are available through its searchable platform. State TRIs have contributed about 13.9 lakh text sentences across 10 languages and nearly 300 hours of speech data. The platform has recorded more than 48,000 Android downloads and around 6,500 monthly users, according to the ministry’s presentation.
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IIT Delhi sought the working group’s support in validating linguistic datasets, standardising spellings and scripts, and developing specialised vocabulary for different domains.
Experts call for community-led preservation
Shastry outlined seven pillars for developing an Indian language, including retaining speakers’ proficiency, using the language in education and administration, creating contemporary literature, developing new vocabulary, adopting technology, producing teaching materials and securing wider institutional and social support. He emphasised that speakers must remain at the heart of preservation efforts.
Rao proposed searchable state-wise and language-wise directories of writers, scholars and resources, district-level community resource groups involving trained tribal youth, community digital archives and a two-year action plan with quarterly reviews.
Other experts suggested creating a national atlas of tribal languages, establishing regional teams and adopting common standards for digital archives. Participants also stressed the need to develop technical vocabulary for school subjects and train community members in language documentation.
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Next steps for the tribal language roadmap
The National Education Society for Tribal Students said more than 525 Eklavya Model Residential Schools, serving over 1.7 lakh students, could use Adi Vaani in classrooms. Students, teachers and parents could also contribute stories, poems and other material to enrich the repository.
The ministry will seek details of languages and resources available with working group members before preparing a roadmap in coordination with IIT Delhi. The proposed effort will focus on research, digital documentation, community participation and multilingual education to keep tribal languages in everyday use.