Anna University has allowed two of its affiliated colleges, Erode Sengunthar College and Rathinam Technical campus to begin engineering courses in Tamil. While Erode Sengunthar College will offer mechanical engineering in Tamil, Rathinam Technical College will teach computer science engineering in the regional language.

The university had first introduced BTech courses in Tamil-medium across 11 constituent colleges in two departments — civil engineering and mechanical engineering. While the two are new additions after the centre’s push for regional education.

Not just state universities but the premium IITs will also offer courses in the local language. IITs had earlier shown hesitation towards offering education in regional languages claiming that they have only top-notch quality in tech regardless of language, now the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) BHU, Varanasi is also offering its engineering courses in the regional language — Hindi.

This comes following suggestions under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 to offer courses in regional languages. The All India Council for Technology Education (AICTE) has allowed 14 engineering colleges to offer BTech programmes in 11 regional languages including Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam, Marathi, Assamese, Punjabi, and Oriya.

Among the 14 colleges which have expressed interest in offering BTech in regional languages — four from Uttar Pradesh, two from Rajasthan, and one each from Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand. These colleges will be the courses in Hindi. While the remaining colleges which are from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu will offer the programme in their regional languages, that is, Telugu, Marathi, Bengali, and Tamil.

The implementation of regional languages across engineering colleges will take place in a phased manner. In the first phase, courses will be offered in Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali. The other languages will follow later on.

The council is translating courses and creating both online and offline content in the 11 languages mentioned above. A tool has been created for the same. The aim is to make children from rural and tribal areas join these courses as they are more adept at regional languages rather than English.

The courses that will be offered in mother tongue are B Tech in computer science, IT, mechanical, civil, electrical, and electronics, AICTE said.

In a survey conducted by AICTE, about 43.79 per cent of UG students said they want to study in regional languages. The council said it will conduct faculty development programmes (FDPs) for the institutes willing to offer multilingual engineering education.

Meanwhile, English will still be a mandatory subject. “Students shall have to take a mandatory English course in all four years so that they are able to acquire necessary skills in the English language and are capable of getting employment in any part of the world,” AICTE told News18.com.

Further, commonly used scientific and technical terms will not be translated into regional languages to maintain uniformity. To be eligible to offer a course in regional languages, the college will have to have a valid NBA accreditation in the programme.

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