The faculty members of Uttar Pradesh's Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial (LLRM) Medical College in Meerut started giving lectures in classes and orientation of the new batch of MBBS students in Hinglish, a mix of Hindi and English. English medical terminologies are used in the lectures but the instructions are in Hindi, as stated in a report by PTI.
Giving more details, Principal of LLRM Medical College, RC Gupta, said, "We have already started teaching MBBS students in the bilingual medium, a first in our state. The state government had given its nod for it over a month ago." Similarly, the Head of the Department of Endocrinology at LLRM, Pankaj Agarwal said, "As the New Education Policy lays emphasis on education in native language, we have prepared content for various topics of MBBS curriculum in Hindi. It is being compiled in books."
It was Agarwal who started the process with a campaign Medical concepts in Hindi (MCH) in 2017. Disclosing more information, he said, "We have prepared study materials of different topics, all part of various subjects of the MBBS course. It is available for free at MCH website and app. There are 300 videos and nearly 1,000 articles."
Does Hindi reduce the importance of English? Denying this Agarwal said, "The beauty of the content is that medical terminology is written in Hindi. For instance, thyroid gland has been written in Hindi but is not translated. Our effort is to teach medical science and develop a parallel content of all subjects of medical science so that Hindi medium students may understand the subject well and not lag behind English-speaking classmates."
"We used to deliver lectures in English. Now, Hinglish is being used in the orientation of the new batch of MBBS students. Topics will be explained in Hindi though the medical terminology will remain in English," another faculty member said.
