UGC to bring undergraduate textbooks in English in other Indian languages

Vibha Sharma

New Delhi, December 9

UGC Chairman M Jagadesh Kumar is in talks with international book publishers to discuss the possibilities of bringing out undergraduate textbooks in English in Indian languages in higher education institutions across the country 

The UGC intends to translate a large number of textbooks in Indian languages in the coming six to 12 months and will also encourage Indian authors/academicians to write textbooks in various Indian languages and will involve publishers in bringing those out, Kumar said.

The UGC has also formed an apex committee to prepare a roadmap and work towards bringing out textbooks in Indian languages used in undergraduate programmes such as BA, BCom and BSc, he added.

The discussion with foreign publishers laid stress upon bringing out translation of textbooks in Indian languages such as Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Odiya, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, Hindi, and Urdu.

Representatives from Wiley India, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Cambridge University Press India, Cengage India and McGraw-Hill India participated in the interaction and expressed their willingness to be partners in this national mission, he said.

The UGC will provide handholding to the publishers regarding identification of textbooks, translation tools and experts for editing.

“A model will be worked out with publishers to provide textbooks at affordable prices in a digital format. Initial focus will be on translation of existing textbooks in BA, BSc and BCom programmes which will later be expanded to postgraduate programmes as well,” Kumar said.

“The UGC is also in talks with the Indian publishers who publish books in English to discuss the possibility of bringing these books in Indian languages. Students’ learning should happen through their mother tongue to understand the subject and improve their learning outcomes. 

“At the same time, students should also become proficient in English as a tool for communication since they also need to connect with people across the globe,” the UGC chairman said.