Finance
In the next three years, all major higher educational institutes and schools will have to make available learning material in Indian languages, the Centre announced on Friday.
All schools, higher education regulators such as UGC, AICTE, NCERT, NIOS, and IGNOU, as well as the leaders of key educational institutions including IITs, central universities, and NITs, would be required by government directive to provide study materials for all courses in Indian languages in the next three years.
As per the Centre’s direction, school and higher education textbooks will be printed in all regional languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The decision is in line with National Education Policy 2020’s major recommendation that envisions all educational institutions to provide learning opportunities in vernacular languages. The NEP 2020 states that studying in mother tongue can provide students “natural space to think innovatively without any language barrier”.
“The NEP-2020 strongly conveys the idea that multilingual nature of Bharat is its huge asset and strength which needs to be utilized efficiently for the socio-cultural, economic and educational development of the nation. Content creation in local languages will boost this multilingual asset and pave way for its better contribution to ‘Viksit Bharat’ to make our country as developed nation by 2047,” a statement from the education ministry said.
The government has been translating and uploading course materials on the eKumbh portal to promote the study of regional languages.
The official statement went on to say that additional undergraduate and graduate books, as well as books in the fields of law, medicine, engineering, and skill-related course material, had been uploaded. More than thirty regional languages are available on the DIKSHA portal’s educational materials for students.
Major entrance exams such as JEE, NEET and CUET are also being conducted in 13 different regional languages.
Source:IE
