English off the curriculum in India
If you have made a customer service call in the last few years from the UK or the US, your call may have been answered in one of the many call centres in Indian cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai, which handle customer service enquiries for a large number of UK and US companies.
Bangalore has gained a reputation as the “world’s back office”, an “information-technology outsourcing champion”, says the Toronto Star. But it is a reputation which could be in jeopardy if state government plans to close schools which continue to teach in English, rather than the local language Kannada, go ahead.
You only have to look at the changing names of Indian cities (Calcutta to Kolkata, Bombay to Mumbai) to see the success of movements to promote indigenous languages and shake off colonial-era legacies. But the move to change the language of education in Karnataka state (of which Bangalore is the capital) has sparked criticism from educators, parents and, of course business leaders who say that Bangalore could”lose its competitive edge if it shuns one of its greatest assets”.
What do you think? Is English indispensable for India to continue its economic rise? Or should the trend to promote indigenous languages over English continue? Post a comment below…
by RSS
by email
February 19th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
This is an interesting issue - maybe especially so because I think for a lot of people English (as opposed to Hindi) is the “neutral” option. People would rather learn English, a “second” language for mostly everyone, than be compelled to speak Hindi, a first language for many in India.
I spent five months in India in 2005, and the linguistic diversity is really amazing. But the languages are different enough that, as far as I understand, they are really not (all) mutually intelligible, as, for example, many Slavic languages are.
I guess I don’t see English “going away” completely in part because of the economic angle, but in part because I still think non-Hindi speakers prefer it to Hindi…and without one of those languages, people within India will not be able to communicate with each other. If some schools (the older ones, the article implies) are allowed to continue, English may become more expensive and exclusive…but I don’t think the demand will vanish.