All section Close
Image Credits: Malayalam Samayam
Love For 'Hindi' Language Turns Rajasthan Carpenter Into Wikipedia Editor, Curator
Writer: Palak Agrawal
Palak a journalism graduate believes in simplifying the complicated and writing about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. She calls herself a " hodophile" or in layman words- a person who loves to travel.
Rajasthan, 15 Jan 2021 4:15 AM GMT
Editor : Prateek Gautam |
A free soul who believes that journalism, apart from politics, should stand for social cause and the environment.
Creatives : Rajath
A free spirit who find meaning in life with the virtue of creativity and doing job par its excellence, animal lover and traveller by heart.
22-year-old Raju Jangid has his entire family engaged in the profession of carpentry. However, when Jangid could not find anything informative about his village in Hindi on Wikipedia, he decided to do something about it.
"Sometimes, not getting what you want can be a wonderful stroke of luck"— the quote has assumed a new meaning with the story of a 22-year-old carpenter-turned Wikipedia editor from a small village in Rajasthan's Jodhpur.
Raju Jangid hails from Thadiya village and has his entire family engaged in the profession of carpentry. However, when Jangid could not find anything informative about his village in Hindi on Wikipedia, he decided to do something about it.
He turned his love for his mother-tongue 'Hindi' into a mission and started writing and editing content on Hindi Wikipedia with his phone, a basic model whose keypad had both English and Hindi letters.
"The only reason I typed these articles on Wikipedia was that I could not find anything informative about my village in Hindi on its website," Jangid said, reported Times Now.
Jangid had dropped out of school in Class 12, and it was in 2015 when he began writing for Wikipedia along with appearing for his BA exams. He has written 1,800 articles for the website and edited around 57,000 of them.
"The purpose of contributing on Hindi Wikipedia was to help those people who were searching for something of their use in the Hindi language. There are many pages on Wikipedia in other languages, however, not many articles are available on Hindi Wikipedia as it should have been," he explained.
Speaking about the challenges he faced in his endeavour, Jangid said that he faced difficulties in typing the content with his basic phone but he did not give up since he wanted to share information about his village with the world.
The website recognised his hard work and gifted him a laptop as well as a free internet connection. Currently, he is working on 'Wiki Swastha', a project in which is putting health-related articles. He has also launched another project where he has added articles about his favourite game - cricket.
Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia, created and edited by volunteers around the world and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. The website, mainly due to its English and other better-established language versions, is the sixth most visited site in the world.
Also Read: Toycathon: Government's Desi Way To Promote Indian Toys
Must Reads
We are an independent and public-spirited digital media platform for Indian millennials. We report news and issues that matter as well as give you the opportunity to take action.
