A senior officer in the Medical Science University (MSU), Jabalpur, on Thursday indicated to this newspaper that ‘almost all’ students in these medical colleges have been found to have written their semester examinations in English and hardly any medico has chosen the Hindi language to write the exams.
However, it is yet to be officially declared as to how many medical students have written their semester exams in Hindi language, the officer said, requesting not to be quoted.
“The university has not gathered data on how many MBBS students have written their semester examinations in Hindi language. There was no option in the forms, filled up by the students for appearing the semester exams, to mention in which language, whether Hindi or English, they prefer to write their semester exams”, MSU vice chancellor Dr. Ashok Khandelwal told this newspaper on Thursday.
“We are trying to gather data in this regard”, he added.
Madhya Pradesh is the first state in the country to have introduced the MBBS course in Hindi language under the National Education Policy (NEP) in 2022.
The books for the MBBS courses have been translated from English to Hindi and made available to the medical colleges for the students, keen to pursue the MBBS study in Hindi.
Around Rs 10 crore has been spent for the purpose, official sources said.
A faculty member in the state government-run Gandhi Medical College here said the MBBS students are taught in ‘Hinglish’ (Hindi and English languages) and the MBBS books translated into Hindi from English have also many English terms written in Hindi alphabets.
“It is not feasible to translate all the English terms of MBBS study into Hindi language”, the vice chancellor said.
“We are continuously making efforts to sort out problems in the implementation of the MBBS course in Hindi language”, he added.
The university is going to organize a workshop on July 22 in which the students and the faculty members in the medical colleges will be encouraged to highlight their problems they are facing relating to the MBBS course in Hindi and they will be sorted out, he said.
The university has recently announced that incentives such as reduction of examination by 50 percent will be given to the students who will pursue MBBS courses in Hindi.