state policy on multilingual education in odisha 2014
Multilingual Education Odisha is a multilingual state having more than 40 ethnic language among the 62 scheduled tribes, along with the  Modern Indian Languages like Hindi, Bengali and Telugu. To  address the language- education of ethnic minorities children in schools, Odisha government started Multilingual Education programme,ten tribal languages. Led by Dr MAhendra Kumar Mishra, as the Director of Multilingual Education and  guided by Prof. D P Pattanayak and Prof Khageswar Mahapatra, the eminent multilingual Experts, the state  government started MLE programme in te tribal languages in 547 schools. 10 tribal languages were adopted. These are Santali, Saora, Kui, Kuvi, Koya, Kishan, Oroam, Juang, Bonda and  Ho. Culturally responsive curriculum and text books were prepared for class i to  Class V to maintain mother tongue based multilingual education to  educate the tribal children. State government appointed teachers from the same language community in the schools to teach the tribal children.A language policy was also formulated. The programme was also supported by Summer Institute of Linguistics led by Mr Steve Simpson and Vicky Simpson, Pamela Mackenzie. The curriculum and text books were prepared by the  tribal teachers guided by the MLE resource groups. It was initiated in 2005 and isnow running in  2250 schools with majority tribal children. This is a sustained MLE programme in Asian countries.About 7 Asian countries have visited the MLE schools.
Multilingualism Multilingual speakers have acquired and maintained at least one language during childhood, the so-called first language (L1). The first language (sometimes also referred to as the mother tongue) is acquired without formal education, by mechanisms heavily disputed. Children acquiring two languages in this way are called simultaneous bilinguals. Even in the case of simultaneous bilinguals, one language usually dominates the other. People who know more than one language have been reported to be more adept at language learning compared to monolinguals.[5] Additionally, bilinguals often have important economic advantages over monolingual individuals as bilingual people are able to carry out duties that monolinguals cannot, such as interacting with customers who only speak a minority language.