A Hindi-to-English app for UP ministers

Some of the newly sworn-in ministers in the Uttar Pradesh government are having a tough time. The state bureaucracy uses Hindi for all official work. But the Hindi used is so pedantic that several ministers find it difficult to comprehend press statements, official correspondence, etc. The use of such difficult Hindi makes senior clerical staff, who have spent years honing the art of writing this obscure Hindi, indispensable not only to ministers but also to Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers. One of the new ministers struggled to read and explain a press statement to the media and realised that some of his ministerial colleagues were also at a loss. An experienced IAS officer guided them to a Hindi-to-English translation mobile app. “Life has become a tad easier now that I can look up the app for the meaning of a difficult word,” a minister admitted.