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Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday will launch medical education in Hindi in Madhya Pradesh' Gwalior and will unveil translated versions of first-year textbooks.

Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government has decided to provide MBBS courses in Hindi also as part of the state government's ambitious "ease of education" initiative.



The state government decided to start providing options of the Hindi language for the first-year students of the fresh academic batch of five-year MBBS course as a pilot project in Gandhi Medical college in Bhopal, the biggest state-run medical college in Madhya Pradesh. There are around 200-250 seats for the first-year students in Gandhi Medical college, and the Hindi version (translated) textbooks of three MBBS subjects -- anatomy, physiology and biochemistry -- will be taught to first-year students, as "ease of education" initiative of the state government.

The unveiling by Shah comes with a political message that the Hindi heartland -- Madhya Pradesh -- becomes the first state to provide the Hindi option for the medical students. Notably, the project is set to take off with around 12 months left for the Assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.



However, how the pilot project will be implemented and whether Hindi would be optional or mandatory, etc., the department was yet to release a complete blueprint. "A separate Hindi Prakoshtha (cell) has been set up to execute this pilot project of MBBS in Hindi, but how would it be executed? It is still a question mark. The fresh batch of MBBS is set to begin soon. There are around 200-250 seats for MBBS students for the first year," said Dr. Akash Soni, an alumni of Gandhi Medical college in Bhopal.

Madhya Pradesh has around 3,500-4,000 seats for MBBS, out of which, around 2,300 seats are reserved for 13 government-run medical colleges, while the rest are allotted to the private colleges. Out of approximately 2,300 total seats reserved for the government-run medical colleges, nearly 40-45 per cent seats of first year are reserved for the students from across the country. While, in postgraduate (PG) degree of MBBS, around 50 per cent seats are reserved for all states.



Citing this particular reason that around 35-40 per cent MBBS students are from outside of Madhya Pradesh, even from non-Hindi speaking states (southern part of the country), several medical experts have raised doubts on this much-talked about Hindi version of MBBS course.

"See, it would be easy to provide a translated version of the MBBS syllabus, but it won't be easy to provide each and every book the students need. Suppose, a batch of 50 MBBS students completed a five-year degree in Hindi and after that these students would need to access more books during their research study for daily practices. Will it be easy to provide the Hindi version textbooks then?" said a senior doctor in Gandhi Medical College requesting not to be named.



State Education Minister Vishwas Sarang said that the BJP-led Madhya Pradesh government is trying its best to take forward Hindi. "Under this, we have translated the course material into Hindi. We have included three first-year courses in the first phase, after that, we are going to include some second-year systems," he said.

If the pilot project finds success in Gandhi Medical college, Hindi versions of the books will be also introduced in all 13 state medical colleges. Once the students clear the exams, they will be awarded a degree, however, there would be no mention of the medium of education, as per the National Medical Commission Act, a second government official said.

"They (MP) have prepared textbooks for the first-year MBBS students. They are working on preparing the rest of the medical course books. The main aim is to bring medical textbooks in Hindi and other regional languages," said another doctor associated with a government medical institute in Bhopal.

Strongly pitching for Hindi textbooks for the MBBS students, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said on Saturday that the government was not against English but awareness about the national language is necessary. "Who speaks English in Russia, Japan, China and Germany? We have become slaves. When I went to the US, I gave a speech in Hindi and received more appreciation than people who were speaking in English."