This year too, there is no admission to the regional language courses being run by the Linguistic Department of Rashtrasant Tukadoji Maharaj Nagpur University (RTMNU). The courses have remained without response from students for over a decade now. At the same time, the Linguistic Department’s foreign language courses have been consistently drawing learners over the years. However, RTMNU has no full-time faculty for these courses. The students are being taught by contributory faculty. Admitting the fact, Dr D M Shende, in-charge of the Department said, “I have taken charge of this department recently, so I am not aware of what happened in the past. One thing is clear that the department is getting a lot of students for the foreign language courses such as Russian, German and French.” The foreign language courses have an intake of 60 students and all seats get filled every year. Still, the faculties are contributory. No appointment of full time teachers have been made since long. Even Dr Shende, who is the Professor of Post Graduate Teaching Department of English, has the additional charge of the Department of Linguistics.

 

The University argues that English is one of the foreign languages, so giving charge of the Linguistics Department to Dr Shende is justified. ‘The Hitavada’ reader G Srinivas Natarajan pointed out, “This department has been catering to the teaching of foreign languages since 1966 mainly dedicated to French, German and Russian apart from the English Language. Over the years the enrollment in the Department has fallen from the 100% to 40% and if sufficient steps are not taken it would go down still further. Almost all the disciplines have no regular teachers and the Department has been depending on Contributory Teachers who are slowly becoming increasingly taxed and are getting old with time. University should therefore take steps to induct regular teachers in the disciplines mentioned to make the Department to be of some use to Society. At present the posts of teachers in French, German, Russian and some disciplines in Indian languages namely Bengali, Telugu are vacant for over a decade. Now atleast 40% of the vacant posts could be filled so that the Department is vitalised.

 

With one single man in Linguistics holding charge there is no justice to the teaching of the foreign languages. Will the University now take proper steps to bring in some life in the Department?” The blame of non-appointment of teachers does not come on university as it is the policy decision by Government that has stopped the recruitment long ago. Nobody from university talks about it and they can’t. But the problem of non-recruitment is being faced by even the affiliated colleges, said a former Vice Chancellor on condition of anonymity. Vice Chancellor Dr Subhash Chaudhari said, “As far as foreign languages courses are concerned we are getting good response. But to the courses of regional languages like Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, students are not approaching the department for admissions. Of course, the efforts from our side should have been taken earlier and now also to promote regional language courses. I can assure that I would ask the people related to Linguistics department to take steps in that direction.”