BHOPAL: City-based Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hindi Vishwavidyalaya has demanded from the Medical Council of India (MCI) to avail students an option to write MBBS course papers in Hindi.
"We have asked the MCI to give an option to student pursuing MBBS degree course to write their exams in Hindi as long as it is not possible for it to have Hindi as another medium of instruction." When candidates have an option to take Pre-Medical Test (PMT) in Hindi, they should also be given a similar facility in MBBS exams," university Vice-Chancellor Mohanlal Cheepa told PTI today.
Set up in 2011, the university has been batting for the issue of inclusion of Hindi as a medium of language in MBBS course at medical institutes and has discussed the matter with MCI in the recent past. When asked why MCI was not permitting to conduct MBBS course in Hindi despite the Rajbhasha Samiti giving its nod on the issue way back in 1991, Cheepa said, MCI cites reason as paucity of medical books in Hindi.
"MCI states that they don't have relevant books in Hindi. Therefore, on the occasion of 10th World Hindi Sammelan (held here last week), we along with Hindi Granth Academy collected and displayed 250-300 books (in medical science) to prove that MBBS course can also be taught in Hindi," he said.
The VC said he had suggested to the MCI that it can teach MBBS in English as long as it is not possible in Hindi, but an option should be provided to candidates to write papers in Hindi. Citing figures from a World Health Organisation (WHO) report, he said among students who passed out from prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), 54 per cent go abroad for better future prospects and never return.
The report also stated that bright students from Hindi medium, who are selected for institutes like AIIMS, majority of them lag due to the language constraint while some even take extreme step of committing suicide for failing to cope with pressure due to the change in medium of instruction, he said.
To a query, he said that out of nearly 400 medical colleges in the country, 115 are located in the Hindi belt, and added that he is planning to hold a dialogue with vice chancellors on the issue. He also said that beside MCI, the country has to also change its mindset on the issue that MBBS syllabus can only be taught in Hindi. Cheepa said he also enquired with the MCI if there is any legal modalities involved in the process or if anything in the MCI Act prevents it from allowing Hindi to be used as medium of writing MBBS course papers, to which MCI had no appropriate answers.
He said books available in Hindi on MBBS subjects are in no way inferior in terms of quality as compared to English editions and added, many professors in medical colleges are even willing to teach students in Hindi. The university has engaged such teachers to write books in Hindi.
In the university's committee on preparing MBBS books in Hindi, in the last one year, include MS and MD doctors like Munishwar Gupta (Agra), Manohar Bhandari (Indore), Suryakant and Avinash Paliwal (Lucknow), Rajkumar Gupta (Bareli) and Surya Prakash (Raipur). The committee while retaining the basics of medical language tried to make the course more interesting in Hindi.
The vice chancellor said Canada conducts the course in English and French, while many of the developed countries prefers to train medicos in their respective mother-tongue.