By Navjeevan Gopal | The Indian Express |
“Punjabiye zabane ni rakane mere des diye, fiki pai gayi chehre di nuhaar ni, meedhian khilaari phiren Bulleh diye kaafiye ni, kiney tera laah leya shingaar ni (O the sophisticated Punjabi language of my state, the charm of your face has diminished. A literary piece of Bulleh Shah, you are roaming with messed up hair. Who has stripped you of your beauty?)”
This cult song of Gurdas Maan rings true in a sense in Punjab, where getting an Act and its rules translated into Punjabi, the official language, has become a herculean task for government officials. This is despite the fact that Punjab has three state-run universities and a dedicated language department.
Punjab’s labour department and the Building and Other Construction Workers (BOCW) Welfare Board are finding it quite difficult to get BOCW Act 1996 and related rules translated into Punjabi as demanded by a labour rights activist under the Right to Information Act around 20 months ago.
When Patiala-based activist Vijay Walia approached the board with an RTI application in August 2022, he did not expect the wait to be endless.
While Walia is yet to get the information he sought, incidentally, the higher education and language departments issued as many as four orders between February 2020 and December 2022 directing that Punjabi be given “more importance” by mentioning the names of all government offices, departments, institutions, boards, road names, milestones in the official language at the top.
An analysis of the correspondences, replies and orders involving the Punjab State Information Commission, the board, the labour department, Punjabi University in Patiala and Walia by The Indian Express reveals that even the Estimates Committee of the state Assembly had sought the translated copies of the Acts and the rules, but the labour department had found itself unable to arrange them.
Walia said that while translation of various labour Acts and rules into Punjabi would entail a much larger exercise, the copies of pages of specific sections and rules he sought did not exceed 25.
When contacted, Manvesh Singh Sidhu, secretary at the labour department, said, “It (the Act and the rules) has been sent to the language department. They are still working on it. We don’t have the expertise to translate into Punjab. We have also sent reminders to the language department. In one of the replies we received, they asked us to get it translated from a legal luminary. But we told them that they can get that done from a legal luminary.”
Sidhu added, “Once we receive the translation, we will circulate it.”
In a response sent to board on April 20 last year, a copy of which is with The Indian Express, the Punjab language department turned down the request to translate the Punjab BOCW Rules 2008 citing “shortage of translators” and “already pending works”.
The labour department said it had also approached three universities, which also expressed inability to translate the Act and the rules into Punjabi.
Read the full article here.
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