More Democracy, Less Hypocrisy - A Prescription To Fix The Tragicomedy Of India's Language Policy

Prologue - What makes a sitcom funny?

One of the recurring tropes in situational comedy is ignorance. The audience is aware of something that the characters themselves aren't. The result is a series of humorous situations, as the characters, who make logical deductions and decisions based on their incorrect understanding of the situation, end up making blunder after hilarious blunder.

A related trope is deception. Some of the characters have a secret that they hide from other characters. The audience is in on the secret of course, and this results in another sequence of situations where the ignorant characters make their comical blunders because of their ignorance, while the guilty ones are put into equally hilarious situations as they attempt to keep up their deception.

A third related trope is miscommunication. The audience is aware of what a character is trying to convey, often in desperation, but the message is either not received, or is misread by other characters, and this miscommunication provides the resulting comedy.

The Great Indian Sitcom

The Great Indian Sitcom of language policy - now in its 73rd year

An observer of India's language policies over the past 73 years since the country's independence, especially in education, could be forgiven for believing they were watching an extended situational comedy, given the existence of all of the above tropes. Unfortunately, the serious impact of such policies on the poorest and most disadvantaged sections of Indian society makes this less a comedy and more a farce or a tragedy. For the purpose of this post, I will refer to it as a tragicomedy because it has elements of both.

Ignorance has been displayed on numerous occasions when decision makers have presumed to know what is best for their constituents, and issued edicts with complete moral certainty.

Deception is equally on display as elites piously prescribe a certain course of action for the masses, then quietly pursue the opposite course themselves.

Miscommunication has also been frequently seen, as leaders pretend not to hear what people are struggling to tell them, and policy experts remain deaf to popular demand.

In Tonight's Episode 

This blog post has been prompted by yet another episode in the Great Indian Sitcom, i.e., the release of India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.

While the NEP contains a number of common sense reforms that are long overdue, an element in it that has stirred up controversy is a seemingly innocuous clause:

Wherever possible, the medium of instruction until at least Grade 5, but preferably till Grade 8 and beyond, will be the home language/mother tongue/local language/regional language. Thereafter, the home/local language shall continue to be taught as a language wherever possible. This will be followed by both public and private schools.

Now, many politically neutral authority figures with experience working at the grassroots level support a policy of providing initial education in a child's home language in order to ease learning. They believe that once a child is comfortable in the school environment and develops the ability to learn, they can be taught additional languages and can even handle a switch to a different medium of instruction later on. This is not a purely Indian view. There is even a UNESCO document that recommends such an approach, and it needs to be carefully considered.

What raises suspicions about such a policy in the Indian context is that there is a strong ideological lobby within the country that supports this approach for an ulterior reason. India has a politically significant constituency opposed to the English language, and the primary drivers for such antipathy range from envy (an inability to communicate in English, and hence a desire to ensure that the language does not play an important role within the country) to a belief that the use of English is a vestige of colonialism, and that the country will never become truly free until the minds of Indians are completely de-colonised. A third ideological driver is the belief that India is a "civilisational state", that language and culture cannot be separated, and that the prevalence and power of the English language ultimately threatens Indian civilisation itself. This anti-English constituency supports the education of children in their mother-tongue, not out of concern for the child's ease of learning, but because it is a blow against English. A number of these people do not in fact support the change in medium of instruction to English at any stage.

Discerning the tropes

Trope 1 - Ignorance

Something has been changing in the background over the years, which a hypothetical audience can now see, but not all the characters on the Indian stage are aware of or are willing to acknowledge yet.

Knowledge of the English language is fast becoming a fundamental life skill worldwide, on par with basic literacy and numeracy.  Proficiency in English, perhaps more than gender or ethnicity, is the new glass ceiling that keeps people from rising above a certain socio-economic level. This is true worldwide, not just in India.

In the past, members of the anti-English lobby in India would point to advanced countries, even the former Axis countries of Japan, Germany and Italy, arguing that if these countries could recover from defeat and re-establish themselves as advanced nations while providing pride of place to their own national languages in preference to English, India could very well do the same.

Of course, they conveniently tended to neglect the major complication in India's case, which is that India does not have a single language that it can call its national language, but literally hundreds of authentically native languages, and that emphasising one language over all others would be perpetrating a new colonialism within the country's borders.

The problem with the "Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan" ideology is that Hindustan is pluralistic to the extreme, and represents far more than the Hindi language or the Hindu religion. This majoritarian ideology lacks the vision and the empathy to deliver what such a diverse society requires.

Even overlooking that complication, the idea of a supreme "national language" is now passé. Those very same advanced countries that the anti-English lobby in India used as examples, have now adopted English with vigour. A recent study of 55 countries, including Japan, Germany, and Italy, and surprising examples like China, shows that over 50% of public schools in these countries have adopted English as the medium of instruction at the primary level. For private schools, the figure is over 85%! Those numbers are only growing.

Further underlining the importance of English in education is the fact that English-Taught Programs (ETPs) in universities have been growing at dramatic rates even in traditionally non-English speaking countries. This is a study providing examples from Europe, China and Korea.

About half of Europe's population of 750 million people can reportedly hold a conversation in English. How does India fare by that measure?

In today's world, a National Education Policy that does not talk about how it proposes to provide Indian children with the essential life skill of English language proficiency is failing in a fundamental responsibility to its citizens.

Trope 2 - Deception

It is not as if the importance of English to an individual's social advancement has gone entirely unrecognised in India. Government-run schools providing free public education have always tended to use regional languages as their medium of instruction, but it is telling that the elites of the country, including the very politicians making a career out of their anti-English polemic, have invariably sent their own children not to these public schools, but to private schools with English as the medium of instruction. This is a phenomenon as old as the republic itself.

Without access to English skills, India's poor will be perpetually outside looking in. Wilfully ignoring this reality is criminal.

The sheer hypocrisy is staggering. The pious, patriotic posturing and exhortations to be true to one's culture are aimed at entrenching privilege and keeping the masses from competing with the progeny of the elite classes. So many scions of prominent anti-English public figures are not only fluent in English, many of them work for multinational corporations and live in the West.

Needless to say, such hypocrisy and perpetuation of privilege are indefensible, especially in a putative democracy where everyone is meant to have equal rights.

Trope 3 - Miscommunication

Again, it is not as if the masses in India are oblivious to the importance of English or to the fact that a lack of English skills is what keeps them from competing on equal terms with their elites. They have been voting with their feet, scraping together their meagre earnings in a bid to send their children to English-medium private schools of whatever quality.

The thirst to learn English is real, and no responsive government can ignore it

In some cases, governments have listened and responded, and the popular reception to these measures has confirmed that the demand was no chimera.

When the government of Karnataka announced in 2019 that one section of Year 1 in some government schools would be taught in the medium of English, there was a virtual stampede, resulting in the government being forced to consider opening many more.

It was especially surprising that the government of Uttar Pradesh, headed by a member of an organisation not known for its sympathy towards English, decided to introduce English into government-run schools right from kindergarten. If such is the demand for English in the Hindi heartland, which is the relative beneficiary at a national level from having Hindi as the lingua franca, one can imagine what it must be in the rest of the country.

The most dramatic example has come from Andhra Pradesh, where the state government has made English the only medium of instruction in public schools, and even the state language (Telugu) is only a compulsory subject, not the medium of instruction. It is nothing short of revolutionary, and the measure's popularity suggests the policy cannot be reversed by future governments of any ideological stripe.

"In order to eradicate poverty, students should get jobs, and English as the medium of instruction is required for that" - Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy

If policymakers and political leaders remain deaf to the demands of their constituencies even after these examples have shown them what those demands are, it suggests wilful denial, which is an abrogation of trust that voters have placed in their elected representatives.

What needs to be done?

This is a no-brainer, but let me spell it out anyway. Indian governments, whether central or state, should simply do what they are supposed to as democratically elected executive bodies.

To break it down into two simple steps:

1. Ask the people what they want

2. Give it to them

Specifically,

1. Find out what people want as the medium of instruction for their children, whether through surveys, referenda, or other feedback methods

2. Do whatever is necessary in practical terms to ensure that this is provided, anticipating and solving the many logistical and infrastructural problems that would constrain its rollout

I cannot understand what is controversial about this. I guess we all know what the result of such a study of citizen wants is going to be. Yes, it's going to be an overwhelming vote in favour of English. (Cue boos from the "nationalist" lobby.) The reluctance to go down this obvious path is purely because the anticipated popular choice is not to the liking of the decision-making elite.

Let us be very clear on this. If someone opposes giving the people what they want, they are being undemocratic, period. Such opposition is simply unconscionable and nothing less than a crime.

I have heard educated people argue against this conclusion on a variety of grounds, some of which are:

1. "People don't really want an English-language education for their kids, even if it seems that way. They're really just asking for better-run schools, regardless of language of instruction."

2. "At the grassroots level, English is not important. The local language is more important, and hence children should be instructed in the local language."

3. "Any survey or referendum organised for the purpose of gathering data to determine language policy will be influenced by politics, so we shouldn't conduct one."

4. "Look at what happened with the Brexit referendum. It shows that it's very dangerous to ask people what they want. People don't understand complex issues, and can shoot themselves in the foot."

5. "Even if you want to provide English-medium education, there are no skilled teachers, so how are you going to do it?"

I'm frankly astonished at these weasel words. The very same arguments can equally be used to argue against holding elections and respecting an electoral mandate, yet nobody dares to do that. Why do these lame excuses become respectable arguments outside the context of elections?

Brave New World

The good news, if Indian decision-makers show the courage to do what their constituents are crying out for them to do, is that it is easier today than ever before to carry this out.

Researcher Sugata Mitra's 1999 "hole in the wall" experiment involving slum children and their unaided discovery and exploration of computers was simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming. There is tremendous thirst for knowledge among India's disadvantaged. Governments must respond!

For one, when people want a policy measure to succeed, they will extend their utmost cooperation to make that happen. The will of the people is not just a rhetorical device. It can be the difference between failure and overwhelming success.

Second, the finding that children learn best through their native language is not an automatic argument against the early introduction of English. This is a false choice. Any number of tailored approaches will work to familiarise children with the English language in a given cultural context. When the target audience is so strongly receptive, they will pull out all the stops required to make this work.

Third, the post-Covid world has clearly demonstrated that remote working and remote learning are eminently practical. Local teachers can use online resources to educate themselves even as they educate their pupils. They can be co-learners and facilitators rather than teachers in the strict sense of the word.

Fourth, since the infrastructure required for online learning requires investments in electrification and telecommunications, this policy provides an additional impetus for these needed infrastructural developments. Far from infrastructure gaps providing an excuse not to adopt a high-tech approach to education, the requirement for online learning should be seen as a critical driver for delivering infrastructure.

Fifth, innovations in online education, even for severely disadvantaged sections, have been around for a long time, e.g., Prof. Brij Kothari's SLS (Same Language Subtitling) for broadcast programs.

Conclusion

In short, it is high time the curtain was brought down on the tragicomedy of India's self-inflicted handicaps to social advancement.

The people are speaking loud and clear, and only the most cynical still refuse to acknowledge it. Indians want their children to reach their full potential, and to enjoy everything the modern world has to offer. They clearly recognise that the key to opening the door to that Utopia is English language proficiency. It is the duty of government at every level to step up and deliver to that demand.

There will no doubt be some obstacles in the path to achieving that dream, but the correct attitude is to look for ways to remove those obstacles, not to use them as excuses for inaction.

Enough is enough!