The researchers of the State will now shoulder the responsibility of popularising the tribal languages and culture of Jharkhand, via the internet. Courtesy: Vikaspedia (www.vikaspedia.in), an online portal developed by Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) of Union Government to share information on various topics.
An orientation-cum-online training programme for the scholars of Department of Tribal and Regional languages under Ranchi University was organised by the Xavier Institute of Social Sciences (XISS), with support from DeitY and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), grooming them as content contributors for the web portal.
The researchers can voluntarily upload their works based on tribal languages of Jharkhand, their origin, communities using them, language family, history of the language, its existence in Jharkhand and other states and related subjects on this website. Apart from language, Vikaspedia also offers information on agriculture, health, education, social welfare, energy and e-governance.
Speaking on the occasion, XISS Assistant Director Ranjit Toppo stated, “In this age of information technology, there is a need to compile the available knowledge and make it easily available to others. Knowledge has been democratised today; voluntary exchange is very crucial and is happening too. Challenge is to represent our language and culture on the global platform.”
He further added, “Opportunities to exhibit them before the world have grown in number in recent times and such opportunities should be used. Vikaspedia is one of them. The contribution made by the scholars will remain there for others to benefit from permanently.”
“There are several provisions and regulations that our scholars are still unaware of and should be taught about. The previous dearth of appropriate forums has been solved to some extent by Vikaspedia. The researchers should contribute to the field of IT too,” stated Ganesh Murmu of Department of Tribal and Regional languages.