We looked at the plight of Indian languages in an earlier piece and briefly touched upon the quality of English education at the primary level.

One of the readers responded pointing me to Kancha Ilaih’s argument that if rich kids go to English schools, the poor ones should not be stopped. It was never intended that only the poor kids should be confined to mother tongue education; on the other hand, it was remarked that because of the trickle down effect and what the sociologists call reference groups, the elite sets the rules of the game.

If any change in the situation has to come about, it has to come about top down: in terms of ensuring that children don’t lose touch with their mother tongue in acquiring the other tongue. In the meantime, indeed, as the Andhra Pradesh government did – English education should be provided to all, including in government schools.
But the question that begs itself is: what kind of English education?

It is alright if the quality of English education available in most (even private) schools is reasonable. It is not. In such a scenario, what can one expect from a government school, where even blackboards were not installed until recently; and where single-teachers were being deployed on war footing?

Doesn’t it take the have (English) – have not (English) divide to a different plane: have good, or OK English vs. have poor English? Does the government school empower the child with enough confidence to face competition from kids from Chirec and Eurokids?

Even in middle-class households, parents try to supplement the poor English with some of their own inputs; they cannot speak well either. In the process, children are exposed to a two-pronged poor quality English.

Ye Jeena Bhi Koi Jeena Hai Re Lalloo

In a famous Hindi song, Amitabh Bachchan is narrating a story where he is going in the jungle and a lion chases and catches up, and eats him up. One of the kids says: But you are alive. Bachchan says: Ye Jeena Bhi Koi Jeena Hai Re Lalloo. You could say that about the English we are able to provide in our schools: ye bhi koi angrezi hain?
On the other hand, given the emphasis placed on English, they develop an attitude toward their mother tongues. Later in life, even if they can speak their mother tongue, it ends up being littered with English.

Beyond school, they forget to first write and then even read: as a consequence, the writers in Indian languages do not have educated readership and our literatures suffer. In that context, we can say about the survival of our languages: yeh jeena bhi koi jeena hain?

Even the Central Institute of Indian Languages, set up to promote Indian languages, resorts to a magazine called Muse - which publishes translations from Indian languages into English. The quality of translation, talking from my knowledge of Telugu, is poor.

Bilingualism is the answer

A strong bilingual society is the alternative to the language issue: promoting mother tongue up to the primary level, and then switching to English; on the other hand, building a healthy attitude toward Indian languages. While Indian languages cannot be compared to English in terms of science and technology literature, there is so much Indian literature lying unexplored by today’s generation.

It is not considered fashionable to quote from Indian texts, but a wee bit of French gets flashed around all over the place.