PM Modi launches 100 books in 12 Indian languages at 2-day education summit

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the second Akhil Bharatiya Shiksha Samagam at the International Convention Centre, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. During the inaugural session, PM Modi launched a collection of 100 books in 12 Indian languages, namely Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu.

The two-day education summit was organized by the education ministry in association with the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, the University Grants Commission (UGC), and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE).

This initiative highlighted the importance of regional languages and foster their use in the education sector. The Prime Minister expressed his hope and confidence that universities would play an important role in developing high-quality textbooks and teaching-learning materials in various Indian languages.

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The primary objective of the summit was to deliberate on the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The event was attended by Dharmendra Pradhan, union education minister including the union ministers of State – Annpurna Devi, Subhas Sarkar and Rajkumar Ranjan Singh.

M Jagadesh Kumar, chairman of UGC, shed light on the efforts made by the expert committee, led by Nageswar Rao, vice-chancellor of Indira Gandhi National Open University, in promoting Indian languages in higher education. He revealed that the committee's future mandate is to prepare a minimum of 150 BA, BCom, and BSc first-year subject textbooks in each Indian language to bridge the gap in the availability of educational resources.

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The UGC aims to prepare an additional 1,500 books in various Indian languages. To encourage the use of the mother tongue and Indian languages, the UGC has directed higher educational institutions to conduct teaching-learning activities through correspondence and other mediums. It has formed a team of subject experts, academicians, and translators to develop textbooks in Indian languages.

The Committee has already identified standard textbooks for translation, and comprehensive guidelines have been issued by the UGC to all universities and colleges to ensure the quality of the translation work. In response to these initiatives, central and state universities, along with colleges, have provided detailed descriptions of their efforts to promote Indian languages through a Google form titled "Promotion of Indian Languages in Higher Educational Institutions."

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, “I express hope and confidence that our universities will play a pivotal role in the development of high-quality textbooks and teaching-learning materials in Indian languages.”