Aadhaar is Oxford’s first Hindi word of the year

EP Web Desk

Oxford Dictionaries has announced ‘Aadhaar’ as its Hindi Word of the Year for 2017 in the Jaipur Literary festival on Saturday. The new Hindi World of the Year has attracted a great deal of attention and has further reflected the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the past year. ‘Aadhaar’ is a word long established in the Hindi language but has gained a new sense in 2010.

The shorthand name for the Aadhaar Card i.e. Unique Identification Numbers (UIN) was introduced by the then previous Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh.

This new sense of the word has been at the centre of the national conversation in 2017 as moves to mandate expansion of the programme to bank accounts and phone numbers which have resulted in significant debates around the merits and risks of the programme.

Oxford University Press stated that, regardless of individual views on ‘Aadhaar’, 2017 has certainly been the year where the word has become a focus of conversations across the country and that makes it Oxford Dictionaries Hindi Word of the Year.