Nitin and his actor-sister Neetu Chandra produce films that address social issues under the Champaran Talkies banner

Last month, linguist Ganesh Devy, also founder director of the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Vadodara, released 11 volumes of the People's Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), touted to be the world's largest linguistic survey. Despite some of the grim findings -- 4,000 of the world's 6,000 languages face potential threat of extinction, 10 per cent of which are spoken in India -- there emerged a glimmer of hope. Among Samtali (Odisha), Bheli (Rajasthan), Mizo (Mizoram) and other Indian languages, that had shown an upward trend, Bhojpuri topped the list. "In the 21st century, communication is the primary vehicle for survival and growth of a language," says Devy, who did not go about doing a "door to door" data collection for the survey that was taken up in 2010. "For that we required extensive manpower, which we did not have," he says. Devy's analysis is, however, based on examining the dynamics of the language. "In technical terms, we call it domain or individual components. We analysed aspects of folklore, terminology, syntax, economy, social interaction, entertainment and literature," he says. Which brings us to the question: What is it that the Biharis are doing right, making Bhojpuri a rapidly developing language?