The biennial Language and Development Conference will next be held in New Delhi, India on 18-20 November 2015. The first page of the call for papers is displayed below – note 26 June deadline extended to July 12. For some discussion about the conference see post on Beyond Niamey.

One “deliberately provocative statement” by Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, founder and former director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, which is featured on page 2 of the CFP, deserves quoting:

In the developed world … two languages are considered a nuisance, three languages uneconomic and many languages absurd. In multilingual countries, many languages are facts of life; any restriction in the choice of language is a nuisance; and one language is not only uneconomic, it is absurd. – D.P. Pattanayak, 1984