The Government of India has initiated a Scheme known as “Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages of India” (SPPEL) informed the Minister of Culture and Tourism.

About SPPEL

• The Scheme was instituted by Ministry of Human Resource Development in 2013.
• The sole objective of the Scheme is to document and archive the country’s languages that have become endangered or likely to be endangered in the near future.
• The scheme is monitored by the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) located in Mysuru, Karnataka.
• The CIIL has collaborated with various universities and institutes across India for this mission.
• University Grants Commission (UGC) is also providing financial assistance for the creation of centres for endangered languages at Central and State Universities.

What are Endangered Languages?

• At the moment, the languages which are spoken by less than 10,000 speakers or languages that are not been linguistically studied earlier are considered endangered language.

Present status of the scheme

• Presently, 117 languages have been listed for the documentation.
• Documentation in the form of grammar, dictionary and ethno-linguistic profiles of about 500 lesser known languages are estimated to be accomplished in the coming years.

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