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Balancing Linguistic Identity and Global Competitiveness
Context:
India finds itself at a crucial crossroads, caught between the forces of technological advancement and cultural nationalism.
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- While the Union government advocates for economic independence and global technological leadership—exemplified by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s co-chairing of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Summit in Paris in February—its linguistic policies risk undermining these aspirations.
- Recent calls from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) leaders to reject English, Western attire, and customs, coupled with Maharashtra’s push for mandatory Marathi in government offices, expose a deep ideological contradiction.
Human Capital in the 21st Century
- While India debates language as an identity marker, Asian peers treat English as an economic necessity.
- Countries such as Israel, often admired by cultural nationalists for its cohesive identity, provide an instructive counterexample.
- Its technological success stems not from cultural insularity but from a strategic embrace of global knowledge systems.
- By mandating English fluency alongside science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, Israel ensures that all its citizens can participate in innovation-driven industries.
- India must recognise that empowering its citizens with English proficiency is not a cultural compromise but a strategic imperative.
Striking a Balance Between Equality and Pragmatism
- A nation’s language policy must balance social equity with economic pragmatism.
- Countries such as China, South Korea, and Vietnam have recognised this, moving beyond elite-centric English education models and making English proficiency a mass skill.
- The Gaokao, China’s national college entrance examination, treats English as equally important as Chinese and mathematics, ensuring students across the country acquire a foundational level of proficiency.
- This focus on English aligns with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), where English fluency facilitates diplomacy, infrastructure projects, and business expansion across 140+ partner nations.
- Similarly, South Korea’s Suneung (college entrance test) dedicates 25% of its mandatory section to English, modeled on global proficiency standards such as TOEFL.
- This strategic emphasis ensures that workers in firms like Samsung and Hyundai can operate effectively in global markets.
- Even K-pop’s global dominance benefits from this policy, with artists frequently releasing English tracks to capture Western audiences.
- South Korea proves that cultural pride and linguistic pragmatism are not mutually exclusive.
- Vietnam, too, has embraced English as an economic tool.
- Its National Foreign Language Project (NFLP), launched in 2008 and extended to 2030, aims to ensure 70% of high school graduates and 100% of civil servants achieve English proficiency.
English and the AI Era
- English, one of India’s official languages and the primary medium for higher education, law, healthcare, and aspirational jobs, remains accessible to only 10% of Indians.
- This disparity is not accidental but a direct result of political choices that have created two divergent educational tracks: privileged private-school students who benefit from globalisation and the 65% of children in government schools restricted by linguistic nationalism.
- As AI reshapes the future of work, India’s hesitation to democratise English risks entrenching a linguistic divide with serious implications for equity and economic mobility.
- A recent NITI Aayog report highlights English proficiency as a major employment barrier in India.
- The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 reinforces this, noting that 86% of employers identify AI and data analytics as primary growth drivers—fields where English dominates research, patents, and collaboration.
- Just as coal fueled industrialisation in the 19th century, technical literacy and linguistic agility are now essential for economic progress.
Bridging India’s Linguistic Divide
- Despite constitutional parity between Hindi and English, India’s linguistic policies have created an uneven playing field.
- The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 advocates for multilingualism but leaves room for interpretation, allowing non-Hindi states like Kerala and Tamil Nadu to emphasise English, resulting in better STEM enrollment and job mobility.
- Conversely, states prioritising Hindi often lag in educational outcomes.
- With 93% of global technical courses offered in English, states that sideline the language restrict their youth from accessing national and global opportunities.
- By 2050, India will account for 23% of the global workforce.
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- Without English proficiency, however, this demographic advantage could turn into an economic liability.
- Kerala’s model, which teaches both Malayalam and English from the first grade, demonstrates that linguistic pride and global competitiveness can coexist.
Asia’s recent economic rise provides a clear lesson: nations that use language as a political tool stagnate, while those that harness it for skill development thrive. India must recognise English as an essential infrastructure for its future workforce, not as a threat to cultural identity.
