NEW DELHI: The Education Ministry on Wednesday held a high-level meeting to review the dissemination of higher education materials in Indian languages and strategies to strengthen teaching across all 22 scheduled languages under the Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Scheme (BBPS).
Chaired by Higher Education Secretary Vineet Joshi, the meeting brought together over 200 participants, including university vice-chancellors, state representatives, and senior ministry officials.
The consultation aimed to gather feedback from stakeholders to fine-tune the implementation of BBPS, which is an initiative announced in the Union Budget to make digital textbooks and study materials available in multiple Indian languages, breaking the long-standing language barrier in higher education.
“The BBPS aims to digitalise every single course offered in higher education across the country. This is a mega project proposed in January 2024, which has commenced this year and will take up to 2028 to be fully implemented,” a senior official told.
“The objective is to finalise the scheme at the earliest and to get all the stakeholders on board for the same,” the official added.
According to an official statement, the meeting focused on promoting multilingualism, enhancing the creation and accessibility of higher education materials, and strengthening faculty capacity for multilingual teaching and learning.
Inputs were also sought from both government and private stakeholders, as well as States and Union Territories.
The Ministry underlined that the BBPS follows a “Whole-of-Government” and “Whole-of-Society” approach, encouraging collective participation from academia, industry, and civil society to advance linguistic inclusivity in higher education — one of the key goals of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.