Professor Prashanta K. Tripura presented his work entitled “Politics of Language Planning” as part of the ESS brown bag seminar series on October 23. Language has been at the core of the mainstream nationalism that led to the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation state. Yet, after seven decades since the language movement of 1952, Bangla is yet to be established as the main medium of communication in various spheres of the state and society. Given this scenario, Professor Prashanta started the discussion by talking about what is meant by language planning, and its relevance for a country like Bangladesh and explained the implications of the absence of language planning in the education sector. Looking at current govt. attempts to take ‘mother tongues’ of ethnic minorities into account at the level of pre-primary and primary education, it was argued that such initiatives are not likely to bring positive results. There is need for a coherent and comprehensive language planning before such measures can prove beneficial in the long run. Professor Tripura is a part-time faculty teaching Anthropology at ESS.