UGC initiates Project ASMITA to promote Indian languages in education

The Ministry of Education and the University Grants Commission (UGC) have launched an initiative to produce 22,000 Indian-language books over the next five years.

The Augmenting Study Materials in Indian Languages through Translation and Academic Writing (ASMITA) project seeks to establish a healthy ecosystem for translation and original book writing in Indian languages across several fields in higher education.

ASMITA, led by UGC in collaboration with Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti, intends to generate 22,000 publications in 22 scheduled languages with the goal of promoting Indian languages in education.

“This project aims to create a robust ecosystem for translation and original book writing in Indian languages across various disciplines within higher education. The goal is to produce 1,000 books in 22 languages within five years, resulting in 22,000 books in Bharatiya bhasha,” UGC Chairman Jagadesh Kumar said.

An ambitious project to build a vast collection of multilingual dictionaries, called Bahubhasha Shabdkosh, is run by the Central Institute of Indian Languages in association with Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti.

Real-time Translation Architecture will assist in the development of a technology framework to improve Bharatiya Bhasha's real-time translation capabilities. It is spearheaded by the National Education Technology Forum (NETF) in partnership with the Bharatiya Bhasha Samiti.

Sukanta Majumdar, the Minister of State for Education, emphasized the significance of creating study materials in Indian languages for a range of higher education courses.

“Indian languages are a testament to the ancient history of the nation and the wisdom that has been passed down through generations. The young generations must be nurtured, and their belief in the rich cultural and linguistic heritage must be strengthened. The education system must reflect the vast linguistic diversity of the country and ensure that the students have access to knowledge in their mother tongues,” he said.

According to Sanjay Murthy, secretary of the Ministry of Education's Department of Higher Education, technology will play an essential role in determining the direction of all of these programs, and NETF and BBS will play a significant part in them.

The recent one-day workshop on creating textbooks in Bharatiya Bhasha for higher education was attended by around 150 vice chancellors from across the nation.

The vice chancellors were divided into 12 Manthan Satra, with the responsibility of organizing and creating textbooks in the twelve local languages. Punjabi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Bengali, Urdu, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Odia were among the initial focused languages.

They discussed what it means to create new textbooks in Bharatiya Bhasha, how to create standard vocabulary for the books in 22 Bharatiya Bhasha, and how to improve the current textbooks by highlighting Indian Knowledge Systems as one of the components and incorporating both theoretical and practical knowledge.

Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bodo, Santhali, Maithili, and Dogri are the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.