Learning Hindi will enable youths to get job outside the state: Ranoj Pegu

April 10: In a statement issued by the Home ministry on Friday, it was stated that Home Minister Amit Shah has said that 22,000 Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the North East. Also, nine tribal communities of the North East have converted their dialects’ scripts to Devanagari. Apart from this, all the eight states of the North East have agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class X. Reacting to this on Saturday, Assam Education Minister Dr Ranoj Pegu said that due to the lack of endorsement of the Hindi language in the state, job seekers from Assam face challenges in finding conducive jobs in Hindi speaking states.

“Learning a language is a skill and it is equally important as getting a degree or certificate. Job seekers from Assam are lacking in this skill; thus, they are unable to find a conducive job market engagement in states like Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, Gujarat etc. Only opting for fourth-grade jobs in South India will not make our youths successful,” said State Education Minister Ranoj Pegu.

“It is not that the people here in Assam will have to work here only. Moving out of the state can sometimes bring in better opportunities as well”, he added. The state education minister informed that the Government of Assam is also planning to urge the Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya to open a campus in Assam.

Expressing his views on this issue, Assam Chief Minister, Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma stated that the Union Government has not given any direction to the state to make Hindi compulsory in the schools. The Chief Minister said, “We have received no letter from the centre to make Hindi not only compulsory but even optional in Assam.”

“Amit Shah ji has only told that the students should learn Hindi. Even I too hold the view that they should learn Hindi, English. But the Home Minister has not said that the students should start learning Hindi in lieu of Assamese. A wrong interpretation of the statement of the Home Minister is doing the rounds since early morning. He said that after learning one’s own mother tongue, a student should learn Hindi so that he/she could get jobs in both government as well as private sector in Delhi, UP, Maharasthra etc or can also find easy to pursue educational activities. In many public programmes, I too lay stress on the fact that after learning mother tongue, boys and girls should learn English to move ahead in life,” added the Chief Minister.

Also Read: Criticism pours in for Amit Shah after his comment ‘People of different states should communicate in Hindi’