Govt plans project to show linguistic diversity in cyberspace

With an aim to showcase the country's linguistic diversity in cyberspace, the Centre is planning an ambitious 'Bharatvani Project' in which knowledge in all languages will be collected on a web portal which is intended to be the world's largest.
In a letter to Vice Chancellors of all universities seeking material for this project, UGC Secretary Jaspal Singh Sandhu said the idea behind it is to make India an open knowledge society, in the era of digital India.
"It is proposed to develop it as the largest language portal in the world by aggregating multimedia content from all Indian writers, governement and non-governmental institutions, education institutions like boards of education, textbook corporations, universities, academies, publication houses etc," Sandhu said in the letter written today.

The project also aims to disseminate classical literature and develop e-content in different languages.
The UGC Secretary asked universities to become partner institutions and contribute books and material in different languages, in digitised and non-digitised forms, for the project.
The institutions given the status of deemed university

after 5 years would be confirmed on the report of a UGC committee. After 5 years, these institutions can also start off-campus centres.
A Letter of Intent (LOI) will be provided to new institutions, who after receiving it, would set up the institution and begin academic operations in three years.
This measure would allow a degree of certainty to those entities who want to establish deemed universities, Oberoi said.

To reduce government interference and to give these institutions more autonomy, the government will only have its nominees in those deemed universities where its funding is 50 per cent or more. For other universities UGC will provide a nominee.
The new provisions, Oberoi said also contain provisions for removal of VC in case of irregular appointment or administrative or financial impropriety.
Deemed universities should also set up anti-ragging cell, anti-discrimination cell, gender sensitisation cell, internal complaint committee for prevention of sexual harassment and barrier-free access for special-abled students.
These universities would be allowed to take credits earned from other institutions under Choice Based Credit System as per UGC norms.

As per the new proposed regulations, deemed universities shall review syllabus every three years.
Oberoi was asked if the new regulations would bring an end to certain litigations regarding these issues to which he said the prime focus is to improve quality.