Bhopal: After releasing three Hindi text books for first year students of MBBS, the Madhya Pradesh government is all set to introduce medical courses in Hindi as a pilot project in the state’s biggest medical college in Bhopal.
The MBBS courses will begin soon as the fresh academic year is set to start, and Madhya Pradesh will be the first state to introduce MBBS courses in Hindi.
Amid the debate over the introduction of MBBS courses in Hindi and also the different viewpoints of various sections of the people, IANS tried to find answers from the doctors who are part of the pilot project to be implemented in the state government-run Gandhi Medical College in Bhopal.
It has also been learnt that releasing the three three textbooks translated from English to Hindi is just the beginning of the process.
The three textbooks — Biochemistry, Anatomy, and Medical Physiology — that were translated from English to Hindi by three different writers were released in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah on October 16.
The process had been begun six months back by a team of 97 medical doctors. To start with, the medical education department of the state government set up a separate – ‘Hindi Prakoshtha’ (department) in Gandhi Medical college.
The department was named “Mandhar”, borrowed from the Hindu mythological story of “amrit manthan” by Lord Shiva. The view was that the selected team of doctors and other experts in medical education, including officials from the medical education department, with their experience would do manthan (research) to bring out a complete blueprint.
The idea of giving the name “Manthan” was the brainchild of medical education minister Vishvas Sarang, who is a Member of the Legislative Assembly from Narela in Bhopal division and is also monitoring the entire project.
“The entire Mandhar team deserves applause for their relentless efforts for over six months to make it happen. Those raising questions on introduction of Hindi in MBBS courses, should know that the system which is going to be implemented for the first time in Madhya Pradesh, is a revolutionary step.
“It did not happen overnight, but from the collective brains of doctors, who are experts in medical studies. I used to visit every day to review the preparation of translation of text books and then I could say that this effort would bear fruit one day,” Sarang said, talking to IANS exclusively on this subject.
According to a member of the 97 doctors’ panel, the first manthan was to decide whether to generate a separate content (curriculum) for subjects or to copy from multiple sources. After a lot of experiments, it was decided that the content of the books would be copied from the text books, which are more preferable and are already included in the first year’s syllabus of MBBS students.
“It was decided that the content would be copied from the text books prescribed by the National Medical Commission. The entire content has been prepared from old and new text books of English, but the main challenge was to make it easy for Hindi medium students as much as possible and keeping in mind that content should be within the existing terminology of MBBS, so that students can learn it both in Hindi and English,” said Dr. Yashveer Ksheldia, one of the key members of the ‘Mandhar’ team.
The team first took the help of Google translator and Artificial Intelligence to prepare the entire content, but it was just raw material.
“The content was given to those who have done their schooling in the Hindi medium to check whether it would be comfortable for students. After an experiment, it was learnt that it needed to be framed so that students can understand it.
“It was quite challenging to make the content. Each text book of the Hindi version carries at least 40-45 per cent more pages in comparison to the English text books of the same content because it has been prepared keeping in mind that after completing their MBBS in Hindi, students can compete with English medium medical courses also,” Yashveer added.
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