Bhopal: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday released textbooks in Hindi of three subjects for MBBS students as part of an ambitious project of the Madhya Pradesh government to impart medical education in the Hindi language.
Terming it an important day in history, Shah said Madhya Pradesh has become the first state in the country to start the MBBS (Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery) course in Hindi.
"This day will be written in the history in golden letters, he said while unveiling the textbooks of medical biochemistry, anatomy and medical physiology subjects in Hindi for the MBBS students at a function in Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal.
MP Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Medical Education Minister Vishvas Sarang were present on the occasion.
Shah said the work is on to start technical and medical education in eight other languages of the country.
The MBBS course in Hindi was launched as part of the National Education Policy and soon it will be started in other languages also, he said.
Now, the students of the country will not have any inferiority complex about not knowing the English language and they can study with pride in their own language, the Union minister said.
He said earlier there were 387 medical colleges in the country having a total of 51,000 seats. Now, the nation under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has 596 medical colleges with an additional 89,000 seats.
The country had 16 Indian Institutes of Technology earlier, and the number has now gone up to 23, the number of Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) has increased from 13 to 20, the number of universities from 723 to 1,043 and that of the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT) from nine to 25, he said.
Similarly, the number of other national-level institutes has also increased substantially, he said.
Shah praised CM Chouhan and minister Sarang for taking the lead in the country in starting the MBBS course in Hindi and said now the students will be able to learn medical education in their language.
Sarang, the driving force behind the move, said on the occasion that a team of 97 doctors prepared these textbooks in a mission mode to start the course in Hindi.
Chouhan said these textbooks have technical terms written in Hindi the way they are pronounced in English like 'kidney' is written as kidney only.
The chief minister also said that students from rural areas who were unable to get medical education because of a lack of knowledge of English will not lag and will be able to pursue the MBBS course in Hindi.