Terming the Centre’s move to impart medical education in Hindi as a futile exercise, Chhattisgarh Health Minister TS Singh Deo on Monday said that the decision won’t serve any purpose except creating unnecessary controversy.

Asked about his government’s preparedness to introduce Hindi as a medium of instruction in medical education, Singh Deo said: “I really failed to understand the actual motive behind the move. I think it is an agenda which doesn’t serve any purpose except creating unnecessary controversy.”

Singh Deo said that the BJP leaders are caught in a time warp and still think that the country needs freedom from English, which is the language of Britishers, who oppressed us, whereas everyone knows that in reality we have been free for more than 75 years.

Today India has moved on and we are a bigger economy and more powerful as a nation than Britain. Then why these people are still stuck to an age old mentality, he asked.

“If we accept their logic, for a moment, what will be the fate of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Kodagu, Urdu, Manipuri or Assamese speaking students? Will they ever be able to adopt and accommodate Hindi as the medium of instruction? And how far will we be able to provide error-free, easy to understand translation of such a highly technical subject,” he further questioned.

Veteran ENT specialist and social activist Dr Ajit Degwekar said that the translation of medical terminology will be an uphill task and if at all we succeed in translating all relevant materials, students will find it difficult to sail through the new terminology, mostly of Sanskrit origin. Barring a few countries such as China and Russia, medical education curriculum across the globe is designed in English only, he said.

However, BJP leader Nishchay Vajpayee said the move is being implemented by the Central government after long-research and homework. “It will not only boost the chances of students from rural and poor households with difficulties in learning English but it will also prove a tectonic shift in India’s thrust for imparting global knowledge in Indian languages,”  he said.

Health Minister Singh Deo claimed that he has spoken to several Indian students in Ukraine about the medium of instruction in medical colleges there. The students told him that they are instructed in English, he added.

Citing a similar project in West Bengal where Bengali was made a medium of instruction in the schools, the Minister said that authorities scrapped the move when they realised that their children were lagging behind in overall competence, and hence English was reintroduced with the help of the British Council.

He suggested that the students who are not well versed or comfortable in English can be given the option of attempting their answers in their mother tongues.