Textbooks for UG programme to be available in Punjabi, Gujarati and Marathi by June next year

Textbooks for UG Programme: By June 2024, textbooks for undergraduate courses in science, commerce, and the arts will be available in Gujarati, Punjabi, and Marathi. The University Grants Commission (UGC) will choose the authors of these textbooks from state universities in each of the three states. The textbooks will subsequently be made available digitally.

The creation of regional language course textbooks in the higher education system is by the 2020 National Education Policy (NEP), which places a strong emphasis on teaching and learning in local languages. In December of last year, the UGC declared that a panel had been formed to publish textbooks in multiple languages in the next six to twelve months.

Three states have been chosen, according to a senior official, for the first phase of regional language textbook development for BA, B.Com., and BSc programs: Gujarat, Punjab, and Maharashtra. Savitribai Phule Pune University, Punjab University, and Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda are among the state universities assigned to the project.

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“The vice chancellors of these universities have been appointed as the nodal officers for the task. The nodal officers in each of the states will be responsible for suggesting the names of 10 V-Cs of other institutions, which could be central, state, private, or deemed to be universities. The selected members in each of the states will form a committee by December 6 to identify prospective authors to write the textbooks,” stated a letter on November 29 from the higher education regulator to one of the universities.

The prefix of the respective state appears before the committee’s name, “Bhasha Samvardhan Samiti.” Every panel will be working directly with the UGC, which plans to discuss the project by mid-December with the nodal officers and other state education representatives.

The respective committees will select about 100 writers in each state, who may be active or retired academics, to write the textbooks in the languages, according to Prof. M Jagadesh Kumar, the chairperson of the UGC.