The Gujarat Technological University (GTU) announced that four undergraduate engineering programmes will be offered in Gujarati starting with the current academic year. Beginning with the academic year 2022–2023, the constituent college Gujarat Power Engineering and Research Institute (GPERI) in Mehsana will provide 30 seats in Gujarati for civil, mechanical, electronic, and computer engineering.

These four undergraduate programmes in English are offered by the institute, which has been operating since 2011.

“The decision has been taken as per National Education Policy 2020 reforms suggested to offer technical courses in mother tongue. Last year, 19 institutes of 10 states started engineering programmes in six regional languages. We also tried to but due to one or the other reasons could not but this year we are starting this initiative from Mehsana,” said GTU Vice-Chancellor Prof Navin Sheth.

The decision was taken after series of meeting and consultations with industry experts of each sector and which is still going on, added Prof Sheth.

“For instance, experts in civil engineering like builders were met and discussions were held. Similar meeting was held for mechanical engineering also.

Everyone said that they do not object to the idea of a candidate being hired by them holding an engineering degree in Gujarati. Rather, this will help the candidates as they are required to communicate with workers in mother tongue,” he added.

GTU claimed that this will offer opportunities of higher education to rural and tribal students and also increase state’s gross enrollment ratio of higher education. “Countries like Japan, China, Germany, Poland are offering programmes in their mother tongue only and students are studying these. But due to the 200 years of British rule, we are fixated towards English. This should change,” said GTU Registrar K N Kher.

The GTU will also offer diploma programmes in Gujarati medium. The medium of instruction at polytechnic institutes is English, but students are allowed to write their answer papers in Gujarati too. The translation work of textbooks and study material for first year is complete.

“A total of 20 textbooks — nine for degree and 11 for diploma — have been translated out of which three are printed too. Work for translation of nearly 90 books for second year is under process,” Prof Sarika Srivastava, co-ordinator for translation of textbooks at GTU told this paper.

Meanwhile, Gujarat Technological University for the first time in collaboration with Ahmedabad Chamber of Commerce Welfare Foundation (ACCWF), the apex body of agricultural agencies, has announced to organise an exhibition of start up projects on July 21 and 22 at GTU campus.