Vishwas Sarang, one of the most powerful ministers in the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, is certain that the saffron party will emerge victorious in the Assembly elections scheduled to be held in the state by the end of the year, primarily because of its work and the welfare schemes launched for all sections of society.

Sarang, who is the Medical Education Minister, is also credited with making Madhya Pradesh the first state in India to successfully introduce MBBS studies in Hindi too in all government medical colleges. Gaurav Chandra spoke to Sarang in Bhopal on a variety of issues. Excerpts:

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Q. How successful is the decision to introduce Hindi in MBBS courses and what is the response from students?

A: I am extremely happy that what had not been done in the past 75 years, we have achieved. All three subject books for the MBBS first year have already been published in Hindi and are being used for teaching, while books for the second year are also almost ready. We have introduced Hindi as a medium of study for MBBS courses predominantly on the concept of ‘transliteration’ and not ‘translation’. In the Hindi medium books, the medical terminology has been kept the same, only written in the Devanagari script. We are now planning to launch the system simultaneously for all four years of the MBBS course. The response from students can be gauged by the fact that in the Rewa Medical College, where we had supplied 78 books in Hindi, we received a demand from all 150 students of the first year for these books.

Q: What about the future prospects of going for foreign studies and jobs abroad for the students who opt for the Hindi MBBS course?

A: There will be no problem whatsoever, as we have only provided a parallel option for students to learn in Hindi too. The course is the same and the batch is the same. There is no separate batch for Hindi students. For example, the book on Anatomy in Hindi uses the English medical terms in the Devanagari script, along with the English terms given in brackets. Similarly, we have not tried to find Hindi translations for terms like ‘angioplasty’ and have written them as they are in English, but in the Devanagari script. We researched and found that there are about 16 countries in the world which conduct medical studies in their mother tongues. Only after that, we chose the best way to introduce Hindi in our MBBS course.

Q. What are the plans for improving and enhancing the medical education stream?

A: We are the first state in the country to have started medical incubation centres and provide In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) facilities in the hospitals affiliated with our government medical colleges. We are working on a variety of programmes. We have set up a knowledge-sharing mission under which we have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with an American university. We are doing a lot of work on technology, like Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI). We are going to sign an MoU with the Sankara Nethralaya and Google on Retinopathy. We have started a foundation course in MBBS, in which we are teaching about the lives of Dr Hedgewar, Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar and Swami Vivekananda so that our students not only become eminent doctors but also value-oriented good humans.

Q. What are the party’s preparations for the Assembly polls this year?

A: The BJP is always prepared and ready to face elections because elections mean going to the public and our party and its leaders and workers are always amongst the public. We are always armed with the success of our policies, our plans and our welfare schemes for the people. The ‘doubleengine’ government system, with PM Narendra Modi at the centre and CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan in MP, has been extremely successful. The BJP state government’s report card has been highly appreciated and accepted by the people of the state. We will again form the government in MP with a thumping majority this year and in the centre next year.

Q. Given the original result of the 2018 Assembly polls, where the Congress got more seats than the BJP, how tough do you think the polls will be this year?

A: See, in 2018 no party got a clear majority. Congress only got a few seats more than us, but they still did not manage a clear majority on their own and had to take the help of others to form the government. Although we got a higher percentage of the overall votes polled, still we decided on ethics that Congress should be given the first chance to form the government. However, they could not run it for long, mainly due to the blatant corruption, misgovernance and overall failure of the Kamal Nath-led Congress government on all fronts. There was a parallel economy of corruption operating at all levels of the Congress government. Congress shut down all the ongoing welfare schemes of our government. While we are making a provision in our budget to send poor people on pilgrimage by air, the Kamal Nath government was only interested in making the provision for buying a jet aircraft for the CM.

Q. Do you think other political parties, like the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Samajwadi Party (SP) or Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), could also pose a fight this year in MP?

A: We are not concerned about who our opponent is. The BJP always focuses on taking to the people its agenda, its works, welfare schemes and the mission of development through a committed, effective and corruption-free government