Evaluation of Plan Schemes of the Department of Official Language

TRAINING
The training courses for working in Hindi on computers need to be
revamped to improve learning. The software that are taught, mainly MS
Office, can be taught by non-technical agencies, with requisite infrastructure
and faculty, in addition to the existing technical institutes like C-DAC, NIC,
NPTI. In fact, the DOL itself can organize these programmes and/or
outsource them. The C-DAC, Pune, particularly, can run courses only on
the software developed by it. These can be, to begin with, training of
trainer programmes. It is advisable also to launch specific programmes,
may be of shorter duration (i.e. 2 to 3 days or weekend programmes),
separately for Word, PowerPoint etc. through Hindi. The course fee may
need to be increased to cover costs.
The part-time language courses are an useful innovation and covers a
fairly large number of employees at a small cost and minimal disturbance to
work. The scheme, however, needs to be strengthened. More funds need
to be allotted to cover the cost of tea for trainees and transport for the
faculty. The additional payments to the staff are absurdly low and the limit of
honorarium to a faculty member is counter-productive. This is one reason
why there have been shortfalls in expenditure while the physical targets
were achieved. The regular faculty also needs to be paid better (at least
college Lecturer and Reader’s grade, although some institutes like the
LBSNAA also has the post of Professor) so that the DOL is able to recruit
and retain good and dedicated faculty. The faculty may also be provided,
initially possibly on a sharing basis, laptops to enable them to teach the
usage of LILA to trainees. Needless to say, they also need prior training in
the usage of LILA.
The ‘Translation’ courses, examined under this evaluation study, are
useful and aim at quality. But officials expecting them to be training courses
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