NEW DELHI, Mar 26: Government departments use Google Translate for English to Hindi translation, Panchayati Raj Minister Rajiv Ranjan Singh ‘Lalan’ told Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, triggering a protest from the Opposition benches who said there were discrepancies in the Hindi version of a response by his ministry.
While asking a supplementary during the Question Hour, Congress MP Akhilesh Prasad Singh said the Hindi word ‘Vyay’ (expenditure) has been used for both ‘outlay’ and ‘utilisation’ in a written response to his question related to milk production in the country.
“The carelessness in the Hindi reply does not end here. The English answer has two lines, which are missing in the Hindi reply. The minister himself comes from a Hindi speaking state (Bihar), and is an educated person. Your Ministry is being so careless with replies to Parliament,” the Congress MP said.
There are “serious mistakes” in the Hindi reply and the minister should fix accountability for the “discrepancies”, he added.
In his response, Lalan Singh, the MP from Bihar’s Munger Lok Sabha seat, said the translation was done using Google Translate, a free service provided by the tech giant.
“Since he (Akhilesh Prasad Singh) has been a minister, he should know. Under the Government of India, the translation from English to Hindi is done by Google Translate. He has been a minister so he should know,” Singh said, triggering a brief uproar from the opposition benches.
But the minister, who also holds the Panchayati Raj portfolio, doubled down on his criticism of the Opposition. “If I start narrating things that used to happen when you were in power, it will take hours (to finish).”
In response to the supplementary on milk production asked by the Congress MP, Lalan Singh said India is number one in milk production, but it cannot export as many nations, especially European countries, do not allow it due to the prevalence of the foot and mouth disease in cows in India.
In the written reply to the original question on the details of fund allocated and utilised under the National Dairy Plan I (NDP-I) during the last three years, the minister said the NDP-I was implemented between 2011-12 to 2018-19.
The Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying is implementing the Rashtriya Gokul Mission (RGM) from December 2014 for enhancing milk production, he said.
The implementation of the RGM and other initiatives has resulted in a significant 63.5 percent increase in milk production over the past decade, rising from 146.31 million tonnes in 2014-15 to 239.3 million tonnes in 2023- 24, he said.
“We are number one in milk production. But we cannot export because foot and mouth disease is prevalent in India,” he said.
He also said the per capita milk availability in India has increased from 319 grams per day in 2014-15 to 471 grams in 2023-24, showing a growth of 47.64 percent. (PTI)
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