Uniquely among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China & South Africa) countries, India has a competitive advantage. Not only in the education sector, but also in the world of employment, with a potentially beneficial fallout for India’s balance of payments. Every nation across the world is stronger, more vibrant and attractive if it is able to communicate with, trade with, and learn from best practices happening everywhere. The best way to develop advanced communication skills and competencies is to become fluent in the international language of business and education — English. English is an associate, not the national, language of India. But most professionals know and speak it, and it is theoretically the language of instruction in much of secondary and tertiary education. English is where it’s at. Yet is India maximising and exploiting this potential advantage? The answer to this question requires focus on three areas — the impact of English on the education sector; the impact which the education sector has on the future of Indian youth; and the impact greater engagement with education overseas might have on the Indian economy, including the country’s balance of payments. The value of English to global education is very straightforward, and is to do with engagement. According to Unesco, English is now emerging as the language of academic communication to an extent not witnessed “since Latin dominated the academy in medieval Europe”. Academic conferences, research papers, and communication of knowledge, are all mostly happening in English. Inadequate English language skills of educators inevitably translate into risky academic research, which fails to fully engage with the international cutting edge of thinking and development. The second focus area is the added value which would accrue to the Indian economy from improved communication skills of its graduate population. Indian students attend secondary schools and then universities in which all or much of their tuition is supposed to be in English. In practice, even where instruction is given in perfect English, an education setting in which students are passive receivers of knowledge won’t develop their interactive communication skills in international English, and workplace (aka soft) skills which they will need in later life. The fallout of inadequately developed English language skills is the so-called ‘employability crisis’ in India. ‘Less than 10 percent of Indian MBA graduates are employable!’ screams a Wall Street Journal headline. ‘75 percent of technical graduates and more than 85 percent of general graduates are unemployable,’ says another WSJ headline. No one is saying India isn’t producing technically competent graduates in IT, engineering, and other professional vocations. But current structures aren’t equipping young people with the interactive communication skills needed to engage fully with modern workplaces. With over 400 million youth under age 25, the need to adequately educate this massive cohort is more pressing than ever. Quite rightly, most Indians regard English competency as a necessary skill to succeed in business — as evidenced by the reality that people with good English communication skills already enjoy a 25 percent premium in…
