‘Aatmanirbharta’ implying self-reliance has been named by Oxford Languages as its Hindi word of the year 2020 as it validates the day-to-day achievements of the countless Indians who dealt with and survived the perils of a pandemic.
India has seen massive increase in the usage of ‘aatmanirbharta’ following the PM Narendra Modi’s addresses, highlighting it as a prominent concept in the public lexicon of India.
The word was chosen by an advisory panel of language experts Kritika Agrawal, Poonam Nigam Sahay and Imogen Foxell.
One of the standout successes of the entire ‘Aatmanirbhar’ Bharat or self-reliant India campaign is the large-scale manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccine in India.
Every year a word is chosen to reflect the ethos, mood, or preoccupations of the passing year, and have lasting potential as a term of cultural significance. Previous Hindi words of the year are Aadhaar (2017), Nari Shakti (2018) and Samvidhaan (2019).