Linguistic Diversity and the Challenge of Building Sustainable Knowledge Society in Maharashtra

In today’s knowledge-driven world sustainable value and competitive advantages flow from the most precious resource – “Knowledge”. There is a global race for knowledge and knowledge workers. A country’s ability to produce new knowledge and put it to creative use decides its growth, development and prosperity. The Internet has made knowledge more liberated and accessible. Some barriers create “knowledge disparity” putting people at a serious economic disadvantage. These factors are linguistic diversity, income disparity, disparity in stages of development, modernity, level of education, etc. This paper studies the linguistic diversity, its place and role in building a knowledge society in India. India is a land of extraordinary linguistic diversity and regional languages with various dialects are repositories of traditional knowledge and ancient wisdom. Many languages are dying in India as inevitably happening all over the world resulting in loss of vital knowledge. We need a standard language which can serve as the official unifying language for governance and conducting business, and sociocultural activities. Language is a highly charged inflammatory issue in India as language is a source of culture and identity. We live in a global village. The forces of globalisation have erased the barriers to political boundaries, capital, human resource, knowledge and innovation. Social sciences need to focus on building a productive sustainable knowledge society in India by leveraging the creative strength of the linguistic diversity in India. This conceptual and perceptual paper takes the overview of the grand vision of Knowledge Society Maharashtra and critically studies the linguistic diversity in Maharashtra, and the challenge of building the “Knowledge Society”. It proposes linguistic solutions for making Marathi a “Knowledge language” and an instrument of development