A postgraduate course in Marathi, just for BMC employees……Sharvari Patwa
The Shiv Sena-led Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will soon offer a tailormade MA in Marathi to promote the language among its employees. Following the BMC’s recent offer that employees who do postgraduation in Marathi will get double increment, the body is thinking of introducing a distance education course in the language.
“The administration of Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University has submitted a course module to us. The administration is currently studying the proposal,” said Rahul Shewale Standing Committee chairman. “In-principle approval for the course has been given and the modalities have to be worked out,” said Shewale.
“As the employees can’t undertake a MA course from Mumbai University due to attendance necessities, our open university and distance education course were seen as a better choice by the civic administration,” said Dr R Krishnakumar Vice-Chancellor of the Yashwantrao Chavan Maharashtra Open University Nashik.
“The module of the syllabus which has been prepared by a panel of teachers across colleges in Maharashtra will help ease the effort of understanding official paperwork in Marathi,” said Krishnakumar. “It has been observed that BMC has been instrumental in contributing to the development of Marathi literature in Maharashtra. This has also been added to the syllabus for the understanding and information of employees,” he said.
The two-year MA course in Marathi will include four papers each year. The annual course fee is expected to be around Rs 6,000.
The BMC had passed a proposal this April offering double increment for employees who become postgraduates in Marathi. The proposal, which was mooted by MNS corporator Mangesh Sangale and with support from the Shiv Sena, is applicable to 1.25 lakh employees of the BMC.
“It is imperative that employees know and understand official Marathi and not just spoken Marathi to do the necessary paperwork. Many a times there are mistakes while translating something from English to Marathi which change the meaning of the word,” said Sangale. The distance education Marathi course will only help the functioning of the BMC,” he added.
Eyeing the civic elections scheduled to held in February 2012, both Shiv Sena and MNS are leaving no stone unturned to fuel their pro-Marathi campaign. Last week, Shiv Sena corporator and Standing Committee Chairman Rahul Shewale has urged Municipal Commissioner Swadheen Kshatriya to waive 50 per cent property tax and water bills for properties which run Marathi-medium schools. Another proposal to provide two Marathi dailies for students in BMC schools was approved by Sena-run BMC.