By Brij Khandelwal, IANS
Agra : A dozen Hindi experts have just returned here after attending the World Hindi conference in New York, but their own city is showing greater enthusiasm to learn English, which many youngsters consider a passport to greener pastures.
The Kendriya Hindi Sansthan (KHS), an institution of the union human resource development ministry headquartered in Agra, sent a team of half a dozen specialists to promote Hindi in the UN and at various other world forums.
But in Agra the standard of Hindi is going down, as is evident from the results of the courses run by the KHS.
"As many as 18 journalism students out of 60 failed the Hindi test. The failure rate in other Hindi courses was as high as 28 percent. They are making efforts to popularise Hindi in the US, but not a single American has been a student here in the last four decades, though there are many from European and Asian countries," said an official of KHS.
While the organisations promoting Hindi have been spending millions of rupees every year on popularising the language, the IT savvy generation wonders about the benefit of promoting a Sanskritised version of Hindi as some overzealous patrons are doing.
The Nagri Pracharni Sabha, the Kendriya Hindi Sansthan and several similar organisations are popularising a version of Hindi that is not too popular with the young generation.
Many strongly feel that the media and in particular the Hindi film industry has done more substantial work to popularise the language the world over than the official agencies.
At a recent discussion in the university here, a speaker went out of his way to speak in English to stress on the need for popularising Hindi.
But the ever-lengthening queues of anxious parents seeking admission for their wards at the convents and other English medium schools give one the impression that this ancient city is firmly on its way to embracing English.
The circulation of English newspapers and magazines has also seen a dramatic rise. The city of the Taj Mahal will soon have a new English morninger.
The city has witnessed a sudden mushrooming of English coaching centres in every locality. Even middle-aged people including homemakers are learning English at 28 centres here in addition to the regular classes in the colleges and other institutes.
Among the nearby towns, Mathura has half a dozen English coaching centres, while five centres have come up in Firozabad. In other places like Fatehabad, Khairagarh or Jalesar, teachers offering private tuitions in English are minting money.
The reasons for this newfound love for the queen's language are many, explains Poonam Saraswat, an instructor at an English coaching centre here.
"A number of students joining English classes are focused on travelling abroad and to facilitate their absorption in foreign markets, English comes as a handy tool. A discernible number of girls join our classes because their parents insist they acquire fluency in English to get a good match," she said.
A large number of management and IT students are coming to learn English because placement companies are regularly coming for campus interviews.
A director of an institute said homemakers wanted to acquire proficiency in English to be able to participate effectively in the parent-teacher meetings in the English medium schools. He also spoke of a new trend among Muslim girls – expressing interest in taking English classes.
While the English coaching centres promise the moon in their advertisements with statements such as "English can do miracles to your life and career", many teachers feel these centres are not teaching the necessary basics of the language.
"What they do there is to make students cram a set number of sentences. But they do not train them in fundamentals of grammar or in the written forms" of the language, a university teacher said.