How Hindi-medium students struggle to crack competitive exams

Be it UPSC CSE aspirants or any other recruitment exams, students rue lack of preparation books in Hindi.

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Hindi Medium students struggle to crack competitive exams. Here's why (Representative image)

4 min readNew Delhi IJan 11, 2023 09:22 AM IST First published on: Jan 10, 2023 at 01:45 PM IST

As we celebrate World Hindi Day today, Indian students preparing for competitive exams in Hindi medium struggle to crack the test. Lack of study materials, bi-lingual coaching, and translated notes are some of the major factors that these students have to either switch to attempting the exam in the English language or spend an enormous amount of time in translating the notes and important books.

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We talk to students and tutors of various competitive exams on their struggles of preparing in Hindi medium

Pratyush Mani Tripathi, UPSC Civil Service aspirant

I am a teacher at a school in Gorakhpur and simultaneously preparing for the UPSC Civil Services exam in Hindi medium. However, this has not been easy especially because of the lack of guidance in Hindi. There are NCERT books available but for other subjects, I have to suffice with translated notes. Over the years, I have observed that students want to opt for the Hindi language but even the marking scheme seems biased towards the English medium which makes students opt out. There are hardly any toppers in the Hindi language.

Vishal Gupta, UPSC Aspirant

I have been preparing for UPSC Civil Services for the last four years. I have studied in Hindi medium throughout my academic career and hence took up Hindi as my main language medium for UPSC preparation. But within six months of preparation, I realised that this decision will not land me success in any way possible. Lack of study material, proper coachings, badly translated books, and no peers for discussions, were some of the major factors that kept me on my toes for arranging the right study material in Hindi medium. After much deliberation, I decided to switch my medium of study English. It has been difficult for me to understand some terminologies but at least I am not wasting my time in collecting relevant study material.

Shweta Srivastava, ASP UP, UPPSC 2007 batch officer

I was preparing for UPPSC State Services and UPSC Civil Services simultaneously at Lucknow. The major challenge during the preparation was finding good study material in Hindi for some subjects. For UPPSC I had chosen Public Administration and Accountancy as optional given my academic background in commerce. However, I had to later change the accountancy optional to History due to the lack of availability of study material in the Hindi language.

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Chances are qualifying for a state PCS exam is relatively better for a Hindi medium student in Uttar Pradesh given the entire working system is in the Hindi language. For exams like UPSC Civil Services, where for subjects like environment and ecology, science and technology one has to refer to foreign authored books, it is hard to find exact translations.

Akshay Gaur, Banking exam tutor at Utkarsh Classes

For a banking aspirant from Hindi, English is the toughest nut to crack in the IBPS exams. Maths, general knowledge, and current affairs are relatively easy to prepare for as they are not dependent on the knowledge of a particular language, plus the paper is bilingual in nature. If one has studied in Hindi medium through school and college, attempting a paper in English is a tough task. A shift to a new language of instruction can impact scores. Hence, Hindi medium students have to relatively put in extra effort in preparation and understanding of concepts.