Better grasp, but lack of ecosystem: Gujarati language tech students

Providing students with technical education in their mother tongue has been one of the talking points of the National Education Policy 2020, and Vidyapith’s survey provides a glimpse of what such an initiative could accomplish.

The Gujarati language MCA course has had 666 graduates so far. Out of the 322 who participated in the survey, 244 believed that Gujarati medium allowed them to better understand the subjects; 211 said it made them grasp theoretical concepts and practical application better; and 131 said that learning in Gujarati made them sensitive towards the problems of the common people. Around 55 per cent of the alumni surveyed said writing exams in Gujarati had reduced their mental stress.

At least one student from every batch of the programme participated in the survey.

Gujarat Vidyapith is the only university in the country to offer an MCA in the students’ mother tongue, said Ajay Parikh, head of the Computer Science department at the university.

The survey was conducted to assess the MCA programme before introducing a Gujarati-medium Bachelors in Computer Administration (BCA) course in the 2022-23 academic session.

Mantavya Gajjar, 40, a student from the 2006 batch, was hired by Belgium-based IT firm Odoo as its first Asian employee a day after he graduated from the course. He is now the director of operations in India and leads 260 employees.

Prior to joining Vidyapith, he did his BCA from an English-medium college. Speaking of the difference between the two, he said, “I failed in C language (a computer language subject) in my first year (of BCA) only because of English medium. We would not understand what was being taught in class. Only with the efforts of one of the teachers, who took extra classes, could I clear the subject”.

“I completely support higher education in the mother tongue if you want to understand the core fundamentals… I can tell the difference, because at Gujarat Vidyapith, our classes were easy to understand,” Gajjar added.

His thoughts were echoed by the majority of the survey’s respondents. Piyush Govani, who is from the 1996-99 batch and now runs an IT company, said: “If your technical knowledge is strong and you have basic knowledge of your subject, expressing it and communicating comes automatically.” Govani studied at a Gujarati-medium school in a village in Jamnagar and at an English-medium BSc Computer Science before joining the MCA programme at Vidyapith.

Asked if he would choose English over technical knowledge while hiring prospective employees, Govani said, “I will see how technically strong they are, though to some extent, speaking in English is required too.”

Availability of reading material in Gujarati, problems in writing answers in Gujarati in exams, and problems in understanding and reading English books as classroom teaching was in Gujarati were identified as the difficulties faced by students of the course.

Mukesh Patel, 45, from the 2000 batch, has been living in the United States since 2004 and works at Deutsche Bank. He believes that technical knowledge cannot be compromised upon, but that “English, or any other language, can be learnt”.

“Technical skills are important. Otherwise, you cannot survive,” he said, adding that a “gradual transition” from one job to the other in various Indian cities before moving to the US helped him learn English. He, however, feels that there should be a way to “fill the gaps in communication skills”, while teaching a programme in the mother tongue.

Others also think this is where the catch lies. “With the credibility and name, barely anyone doubts your technical knowledge when you tell them that you have studied at Gujarat Vidyapith. The only thing that was lacking was our confidence while speaking English and, so, our body language (also suffered),” said Gajjar, recollecting the time he was applying for jobs.

Bhairavi Shah, 44, from the batch of 2001, said: “Whenever a person studies in her mother tongue, their grasp of the subject is higher than when it is studied in any foreign language. However, at present, in the absence of an ecosystem for the mother tongue, a person becomes good neither in English, Gujarati nor Hindi. Today, students cannot write in Gujarati. We are losing our mother tongue not because of TV or social media, but due to an absence of an ecosystem.”

“If there was an ecosystem, I would have taught my kids in Gujarati medium,” she added.

Department head Parikh said the situation was more difficult in the past. “Most of the subject books were in English medium, but the medium of instruction (at the Vidyapith MCA course) was Gujarati. We would translate the content and prepare notes before teaching in class. Also, no publisher was ready to publish books for only 35 students (the strength of the batch at the time).”

However, he added that at present, “10 of the 15 papers, across theory and programming, are available in Gujarati.”

Questions about negative experiences of learning in Gujarati saw 100 out of 322 respondents choosing not to reply, 92 saying that they could not perform well during job interviews, 87 saying that they had an inferiority complex when compared with English medium students and 71 saying they had difficulty in using English reference books.

Meera Kansara, 42, from the 2004 batch, worked as an IT professional in Pune, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru, before returning to Gujarat Vidyapith in 2018 as a PhD student. She works on artificial intelligence to study medicinal plants. For her, it is the values that she learnt at the institute that guide her life. The Vidyapith was established by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920.

“Students here can perform in any circumstance as they imbibe the culture and values throughout,” she said.

Discipline, simplicity and community life were ranked high — at 172, 169, 140, respectively — by respondents to questions about the reasons for joining the course.

More than 93 per cent of the participants did their schooling in Gujarati medium. At their undergraduate level, it dropped down to 50 per cent. Around 34 per cent of the respondents said they went to school in rural areas.

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Only around 28 per cent women participated in the survey. While the earlier batches had a low intake of women students — around 10 per cent in the initial batches — the ratio is now equal, authorities said. The size of a single batch has also grown from 35 to 60.

Among the responses, 265 are settled in India, 33 in the US, 14 in Canada, three in Australia, two in Singapore, and one each in Kenya, Denmark, the UAE and the UK.