Kannada Development Authority (KDA) has expressed serious concern over the fall in the number of people speaking Kannada.
While arresting this fall is a tough job, the authority is planning to intensify the implementation of Kannada in Bangalore,
“Protecting day-to-day usage of Kannada has become a tough job in Bangalore. The city and its people are losing Kannada at an alarming speed and perhaps that’s why we have to intensify the implementation of Kannada in Bangalore,” said Mukhymantri Chandru, chairman of KDA.
He admitted that KDA faced the accusation of concentrating on pro-Kannada movement in Bangalore. According to a study, the city has 68% of its 1.2 crore population speaking languages other than Kannada. Another 20% population speak less Kannada and more other languages.
The city has over 50 languages actively spoken, written and practised by its people. There are people speaking Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Punjabi, Gujarati, Bengali, Parsi and some foreign languages.
“In places like Shivajinagar, over 70% of population speak Urdu and 20% speak Tamil and Malayalam. I do not know how many people there speak Kannada, but I guess it may not be more than 2 per cent,” Chandru said.
More and more people are migrating to Bangalore due to its good name and living conditions.
“Also, migrants feel they won’t have any communication problem here as people are multi-lingual,” he said.
He said KDA was also concerned about the recently promulgated State Official Language Act in the border areas with Kerala, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu as every state government was trying to close Kannada schools there and giving impetus to learn their own official languages, he added.
