Rs 5-cr Hindi mela planned in Surinam

NEW DELHI: After the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in January, it''s time for the government''s next mega junket — the World Hindi Conference. This time, the diaspora is not coming to India but India intends to go out to them — Latin America to be precise. The conference will be held in Paramaribo, Surinam from June 5 to 9 at an estimated cost of Rs 4.7 crore.
One of the major costs incurred on the conference will be on travel. Though participants are expected to pay their own airfare, the government may pick up the tab of some invitees. As there''s no direct flight, the government will have to fund stopovers in either Amsterdam or New York.
Five hundred scholars and experts are expected to attend the conference in the South American country, which has a Hindi-speaking population of more than 150,000, around 30 per cent of its total population.
Sources say the decision to hold the conference in Surinam — which won in a close contest with the other country under consideration, Holland —was taken on the urging of the Indian diaspora based there, the descendants of indentured labourers.

Earlier conference venues (they are held once in three years): Mauritius (twice), London, Trinidad and Tobago, and India twice.
The expenditure incurred on the conference will account for nearly 75 per cent of the ministry''s annual budget under the head of "propagation of Hindi through missions abroad". The expenditure under this head has been hiked by nearly 400 per cent — from the budgeted estimate of Rs 70 lakh last year to Rs 270 lakh in the current financial year — to accommodate increased expense.

Of the total, Rs 200 lakh has been earmarked for the conference in Surinam and the rest for other Hindi propagation activities, including financing of Hindi classes for students from other countries in the Kendriya Hindi Sanshtan, Agra, appointment of Hindi teachers in Indian missions abroad and providing missions with Hindi-learning material and literature.

In addition, the government also provides learning material to temples, educational institutions and voluntary organisations.