7th Anniversary Essay VI

Time to liberalise language policy The recent turn of events in Karnataka state involving closure of 1,416 schools needs to concern all conscientious citizens. The schools were ordered to be closed for contravening their licences, which were supposedly granted to the schools to teach only in the vernacular. According to the state‚s education minister, it is this contravention of the original licence which prompted him to come down hard on the schools, not because the state is anti-English. Laudable indeed. I wish every minister in the country was as conscientious in going about penalising wrong doers. The only problem is, those running liquor and gambling dens without any licences; operating travel, tourism and trucking businesses without proper licences; constructing huge commercial complexes on main roads with dubious licences; operating cinema halls in flagrant violation of all licences and thousands of others running all kinds of rackets with no licences at all, seldom attract the zealous persecution displayed by the minister for infringement of the law.The popular belief is that India has an edge over the Far East in general and China in particular with its strong grounding in English ‚ a big advantage in a world of services outsourcing and IT. It is in this context that in the past few years we‚ve made a 180-degree turnabout and have begun regarding our huge population as a competitive advantage rather than a millstone around our neck in the march towards development. It is a recent revelation that our population is among the youngest in the world (in fact one should have been surprised had this not been so, given that we have more babies being born here every moment than anywhere else in the world), which our leadership now tells us is a great advantage in the era of IT, call centres and BPOs. So all is supposedly well with shining India.Rather than consolidate this advantage, if it truly is an advantage, by ensuring that each and every child in the country is educated in English (together with the mother tongue), why do our politicians continue to insist on the vernacular as a medium of education at the elementary and primary level for the masses, even as they continue to send their own children abroad, mostly the US? Clearly, for our politicians, what is sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander. To them, a populace exposed only to the vernacular and hence with limited exposure, is the vote bank. Not you and me ‚ readers of this column.Today, a youth who is a class X dropout with strong communication skills in English is more employable in India, say in a call centre or a five-star hotel, than an engineer who has studied throughout in the verna-cular and has trouble coming to grips even with basic technical terminology in English, because for 12 years in his high school, velocity was vega or gamanam and acceleration was vegotkarsha or gamanavegamu respectively depending on whether he is a Kannadiga or a Telugu. Are we then surprised if most such graduates don‚t measure up to the expectations of employers in the country? The fact is that 70-80 percent of our engineering graduates cannot fluently speak a language other than their mother tongue (of which there are 16 major ones) and hence cannot be effectively employed beyond their own state boundaries. So how do our politicians plan to make these youngsters global or even integrate them into the national mainstream? Of course by reservation both in education and if possible in private sector industry as well ‚ the creamy layer included! Often naƒ¯ve comparisons are made with other countries. If Germany, France, Japan and Russia get by without English, why not India? Well, in Germany, France, Japan and Russia, the language does not divide people into haves and have-nots. Besides, these countries have the strength of their intrinsic science and technology that has been indigenously developed in their own respective languages to a great extent. In India, not only do we not have an indigenously developed base of science and technology in the vernacular (or in any language for that matter), English is typically the language of haves against the have-nots. For example typically, urban Indians speak English; the rural do not. The rich speak English; the poor don‚t. The educated speak English; the illiterate cannot. The upper castes speak English; other castes can‚t. India‚s IT, BPO, call centres, tourism and travel firms will soon need millions of qualified manpower fluent in English in the coming years. Of what use will our huge population of youth be, if they cannot communicate in English?It is time we recognise that what is true of industry is also true of languages. We wasted over four decades trying to manage our industrial policy and then learnt that free market forces work best. Why should that not be true of language policy as well? We have tried managing the language policy for six decades. It‚s time we tried free market forces in languages as well. If a growing number of schools and colleges are teaching in English, it‚s obviously because that‚s what the market needs. The objective of language policy cannot be left to the petty politics of politicians. Let people and markets decide. (V. Raghunathan is a former professor of IIM-A and currently chief executive, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation)