The University Grants Commission (UGC) has not yet produced even 3 per cent of the 22,000 textbooks in Indian languages that it had targeted to bring out within five years under a project launched in July 2024.
Several academics associated with the project accused the higher education regulator of delaying the implementation of ASMITA, which aims to produce 1,000 undergraduate textbooks in each of the 22 scheduled languages within five years, totalling 22,000 books.
ASMITA is the acronym for Augmenting Study Materials in Indian Languages through Translation and Academic Writing.
Responding to an RTI query by The Telegraph seeking details about the progress made in preparing the textbooks, the UGC on December 23 stated that it had collaborated with the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti (BBS) and identified 23 nodal universities that would select authors to prepare the textbooks.
The BBS is a panel that promotes Indian languages.
“The nodal universities so far have prepared 597 books in 22 Bharatiya Bhasha for undergraduate-level courses. The projected plan is to produce 1,000 textbooks each in 22 languages, altogether 22,000 books in five years,” the UGC said.
The UGC listed 23 universities working on the translation and preparation of books. Among them, two universities — Vikram University in Ujjain and Lucknow University — are working on the production of textbooks in Hindi. The remaining 21 are preparing books in one language each.
A faculty member from a nodal university said the UGC would take at least 10 years to produce 22,000 books at this pace.
“The UGC sat on the project for nearly a year after its launch, deciding on the nodal universities. The nodal universities initially tried to use machine translation, which was often inaccurate. Correcting the errors required more effort than manual translation. Later, many universities ditched the machine-translation system,” the faculty member said.
He said faculty members engaged with the project had to simultaneously shoulder teaching, research and administrative responsibilities, and recommended a reduction in workload.
A professor of a central university said Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya (MGAHV), Wardha, was a leading institution specialising in teaching and research in Hindi. Ideally, the MGAHV should have been given the task to prepare textbooks in Hindi, he said, requesting anonymity.
“It is surprising that the MGAHV has been ignored while selecting the nodal institutions for the preparation of books in Hindi. The UGC and the BBS must explain how the MGAHV was ignored,” he added.