The book Language endangerment and language revitalisation: Policies, planning and practices' is an outcome of the assurance and the cooperation of the authors who presented papers in the 6" International Conference on Endangered and Lesser- Known Languages' (ELKL-6). The book includes various titles ranging from findings on endangered language research, language attitude, the impact of goverriment policies on languages, factors causing language endangerment, multilingual education, language documentation & description and so on.

Sujoy Sarkar, a Lecturer-cum-Junior Research Officer, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru is the Officer-in-Charge of Scheme for Protection and Preservation of Endangered Languages (SPPEL), CIII., Mysuru and the Principal i/c of Eastern Regional Language Centre, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. He did his MA and MPhil in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His core research areas include language policy, linguistic human rights, tribal education, language documentation and multilingual education.

Nagaraju 5. is currently working as a Senior Resource Person at SPPEL, He did his MA and PhD in Linguistics from University of Mysore, Mysuru. His areas of interest include lexicography, field linguistics and descriptive linguistics. He has been working on the Hakkipikki language for the last few years. He has published one book and several research articles.

Parman Singh is presently the Regional Director of Central Institute of Hindi, Mysuru Regional Centre. He did his MA and PhD in Linguistics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi and PDF in Cognitive Linguistics from DST. His areas of interest include cognitive linguistics, phonetics, lexicography and language documentation. He has published three books and several articles.

ELKL-6 was the 6th International Conference on Endangered and Lesser-known Languages held at the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) from February 21-23, 2018. The Endangered and Lesser-known Languages (ELKL) conferences provide a wide-scope forum for academicians, researchers and members of speech communities to deliberate issues relevant to language endangerment and share their latest findings. These annual conferences aim to create interest in lesser-known languages and train young scholars in language documentation.

Efforts towards language revitalisation are inevitable for numerous languages that are on the verge of extinction. Therefore, the theme of ELKL-6 was "Language Endangerment and Language Revitalisation: Policies, Planning and Practices". Abstracts were invited for oral and poster presentations on original, unpublished and substantial research relevant to the theme of the conference. Apart from that abstracts related to the main theme such as Documentation of Endangered and Lesser-known Languages, Language Ecology, Language Endangerment, Language Policy and Language Planning, Language Revitalisation, Community's Participation in Language Revitalisation Process, Development of Script and Orthography, Mother Tongue-based Multilingual Education, Technologies for Endangered and Lesser-known Languages, Field Ethics and Case studies, Language Archiving, Language Contact, Maintenance and Shift, Linguistic Human rights were also invited.

We also assured that an edited volume of the papers, keynote address and plenary sessions will be published by CIIL and the concerned authors will have to modify their papers by incorporating the feedback, observations, comments and suggestions that come out during the presentation. Today this book is an outcome of the assurance and the co-operation of the authors who presented papers in the conference.

In ELKL-6 we were honoured by the presence of our keynote speaker, Julia Sallabank, plenary speakers Peter Austin and B. Ramakrishna Reddy who delivered excellent extended lectures and organised stimulating discussions.

The Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL) celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 2019 after completing 50 years of excellence. The Institute was established on July 17, 1969 by the Government of India in Mysuru to help in evolving and implementing the language policy of the Government and to coordinate the development of Indian Languages by conducting research in the areas of language analysis, language pedagogy, language technology and language use in the society.

It began its journey with several units of research such as Tribal and Border Languages, Sociolinguistics, Phonetics, Psycholinguistics, Material Production and Training, Testing and Evaluation, Educational Technology, Lexicography and Translation, Cartography, Folklore and Computer Applications. In addition to this, seven Regional Language Centres were set up at Mysuru, Patiala, Bhubaneswar, Pune, Lucknow, Solan and Guwahati with a goal of implementing the three-language formula and thereby contribute to national integration. These Centres offer a 10-month Diploma in Language Education in second languages and teach 20 Indian languages to non-native speakers mainly to in-service teachers, prospective teachers, research scholars and general public. CIIL was one of the few institutions that initiated work on natural language processing in the early 1990s. It has interdisciplinary academic collaborations with various institutions at both national and international levels. The Institute is well-recognised by the academic fraternity across the globe for the quality of its wide-ranging linguistic research and language studies.