Union Consumer Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi on Thursday, 18 June 2026, highlighted the ongoing preparation of over 22,000 textbooks in 22 Indian languages under the Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Yojana and the ASMITA (Accelerated Scheme for Mother-tongue based Instruction and Teaching Advancement) Yojana, calling it a successful fulfilment of the vision embedded in the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The minister shared the update on X with the hashtag #12YearsOfVikasBhiVirasatBhi, framing the initiative as part of a broader development-with-heritage agenda.

Context

Posting in Kannada, Joshi stated that the two schemes are 'creating a golden opportunity for students to receive education in their mother tongues, which are intertwined with their unique cultural heritage.' He added that the initiative aims to 'simplify knowledge acquisition and make it accessible to every individual.' The post is notable coming from a minister whose portfolio spans consumer affairs and renewable energy — underscoring the BJP's broader communication strategy of amplifying NEP milestones across the cabinet.

Policy Backdrop

NEP 2020, approved by the Union Cabinet in July 2020, explicitly mandates instruction in the mother tongue or home language up to at least Class 5, and preferably until Class 8. This replaced the framework in place since 1986 and built upon the three-language formula first introduced under the National Policy on Education 1968. To operationalise these provisions, the Ministry of Education launched coordinated textbook translation and development projects through NCERT and UGC beginning in the 2021-22 academic year.

The Bharatiya Bhasha Pustak Yojana is a central scheme specifically designed to develop learning resources across all 22 scheduled Indian languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution. The ASMITA Yojana, run under the Ministry of Education, targets the production and translation of high-quality study materials to support multilingual higher education across the country.

Stakeholders and Impact

The primary beneficiaries of these schemes are school and college students — particularly those from linguistic communities where English or Hindi has historically been the default medium of instruction, creating barriers to comprehension and academic performance. State education boards are key implementation partners, as the new multilingual textbooks must be integrated into their curricula for the initiatives to reach students at scale.

Proponents argue that mother-tongue instruction improves conceptual clarity and reduces dropout rates at the foundational level. Critics and education researchers have pointed to the challenge of ensuring quality and uniformity across such a large volume of translated materials in diverse languages.

What's Next

Attention will now turn to state-level adoption of the new multilingual textbooks for the 2026-27 academic session and further disclosures from the Ministry of Education on the pace and quality of ASMITA deliverables. The government's ability to move from textbook production to classroom deployment — and to train teachers in multilingual pedagogy — will determine whether the NEP's language vision translates into measurable learning outcomes.