New Delhi, July 19: If you are thinking that the monsoon session of Parliament is going to be another period of waste of tax payers' money as it started on a stormy note, then you are wrong.
Our parliamentarians do some productive work too, but unfortunately all get lost over the noises surrounding the war of words between the leaders inside the Houses.
The good news is that now parliamentarians in the Rajya Sabha can speak in 22 Indian languages as they have the access to simultaneous interpretation in all these languages. To demonstrate how parliamentarians can easily speak in their choice of language on the floor of the House, Rajya Sabha Chairperson M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday set a record of sorts when he spoke in 10 languages on the opening day of the monsoon session. Of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule, the Rajya Sabha earlier had simultaneous interpretation services for 17 languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. These services have now been made available for Rajya Sabha members to speak in five more languages -- Dogri, Kashmiri, Konkani, Santhali and Sindhi, Naidu announced. Making the announcement, Naidu spoke few words in Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Tamil and Telugu to inform the members about the simultaneous interpretation service. However, members will have to give a prior notice for the interpreter in the Upper House secretariat. Naidu said there may be some shortcoming in the beginning as translators may not be attuned to the speed of the speaker. Describing it as a wonderful gesture, Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy said efforts should be made to include Sanskrit words too in the vocabulary. Naidu said the Rajya Sabha has for the first time in 66 years signed a pact with a parliamentary institution of a foreign nation when it entered into an MoU with the Senate of Rawanda earlier this month. The MoU provides for inter-parliamentary dialogue and parliamentary exchange visits among others, he said. Till now, only the Lok Sabha used to enter into such kind of agreements with foreign parliamentary institutions. Now, next time you switch on your television set to watch the proceedings inside the Rajya Sabha, then you might end up picking up a few words from various languages of the country.