The Government of India has directed all school and higher education institutions across the country to make available digital study material in Indian languages for every academic course within 3 years. This policy aims to enable students to learn in their native tongues aligned to India’s linguistic diversity.
Background
The National Education Policy 2020 has prioritised education in native languages and has also recommended a three-language formula for school education till Class X. The National Curriculum Framework 2023 for school education stated that till Class X a student need to study three languages of which two should be native Indian language and in Classes XI and XII where study of two languages have been recommended, one of which should be native Indian language.
Coverage of Initiative
The digital study materials access mandate applies to both government and private institutions and covers all courses from school textbooks to specialized university texts spanning sciences, humanities, engineering, medicine, law etc.
Anuvadini- the AI Tool
‘Anuvadini’, an Artificial Intelligence-based multilingual translation application developed indigenously, will facilitate swift conversion of existing English materials into multiple languages through machine learning as the bedrock, followed by expert manual reviews for accuracy.
Significant headway has already been achieved over past 2 years with thousands of textbooks translated across domains and curated on the online portal Ekumbh under the initiative. 12 regional languages textual options also exist for national entrance examinations now.
UGC Guidelines
The University Grants Commission (UGC) also issued rules for higher education institutions to provide courses in Indian languages. The UGC said that the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology has made standard glossaries that can be used to translate. These glossaries cover a wide range of topics. According to the rules, technical terms that are hard for students to understand may be given in English between quotes after their Indian language counterparts.
Intended Benefits
Removing language barriers in accessing high quality pedagogical resources would democratize quality education for the masses while preventing drop outs. It would also promote usage of native tongues in higher academia and professional domains instead of English.
Uses in other arena
More than five thousand judgments of the Kerala High Court and District Courts have been recently translated into Malayalam with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The judgments are translated using the AI tool ‘Anuvadini’ prepared by AICTE under the Union Ministry of Education.
Digital Ecosystem
In school education, study material is being made available in multiple Indian languages including over 30 languages on DIKSHA portal and competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CUET are being delivered in 12 Indian languages and English.
For the past two years, the translation of engineering, medical, law, UG, PG and skill books are also being done.
In a decision aimed at providing students with the opportunity to study in their own language, Centre has decided that study material for all courses under school and higher education will be made available digitally in Indian languages included in the 8th Schedule of the Constitution.
