The Yogi Adityanath government has decided to teach engineering courses at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Hindi as well from the next academic session.
BHU will now be the first institute in the country to offer engineering courses in Hindi. This landmark decision is designed to remove the barrier of language in pursuing technical studies as well as boosting national pride among the youth of Uttar Pradesh. According to the government spokesman, initially, the option of Hindi will be restricted to the first year B-Tech students, but in the coming years it will be introduced at higher stages as well. All the necessary preparations have been made in this regard.
A list of experts who can teach engineering in Hindi has been prepared. There is a provision to call experts from outside also to teach engineering courses in Hindi as per requirement. Meanwhile, the BHU is engaged in arranging Hindi books for first year B-Tech courses. Prof Pramod Kumar Jain, Director of IIT BHU and Chairman of Official Language Committee, has confirmed the introduction of engineering courses in Hindi for first year students. He said that the decision to launch engineering courses in Hindi along with English has been taken under the new Education Policy, which has a provision for making mother tongue, the medium of instruction.
Prof Jain said that use of regional languages will only expand the scope of engineering with talented youths from a cross section of society coming forward to pursue technical studies. It is worth noting that under the new Education Policy, the central government had announced last year, its plan to introduce engineering courses in Hindi at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Subsequently, the BHU started working on it, but had to shelve its plan due to the pandemic. However, with Covid on the decline, the state government is gearing up to implement it from the next academic session.
