Ignore English at your own peril

English is increasingly becoming the most preferred language of communication in the corporate world today. Over the last couple of days, I have been trying to evaluate the consequences of such a development.

English as a language has been learnt and taught in India ever since the British ruled us. So there is roughly a history of 400 years to this, though more formally, education in English would have started only in the last century. But the rate at which English education has grown in India is very poor. Today, only 11% of the population in India are English literate (know to read and write in English). With the world becoming flatter and opportunities opening up everywhere in the world, it becomes very important for us Indians to know English and be competent enough to converse well in the language in order to cash in on the opportunities. One advantage we Indians have today over the Chinese is that we can better communicate in English than the Chinese (Remember that China and India are the fastest growing economies in the world today). We need to ensure that we leverage this to the maximum.

If the trends of people getting admissions into the elite management or engineering institutes across the country are followed, a clear pattern of a majority of people hailing from the metros can be derived. Barring the four metros and some state capitals, there is hardly anybody from the Tier 2 or Tier 3 cities. This is not because there is dearth of talent in the rural pockets in India. Dhirubhai Ambani, one of the finest entrepreneurs of our times never went to a B School. Any Ramappa from an interior village in Karnataka may be brilliant in his management skills, yet loses out only because he cannot communicate properly in English.

It is wrong to blame the people for the poor English literacy rate in India. In the current scenario, it is very difficult for people to think in English. Also the thoughts are most effectively communicated when they are expressed in the language one thinks. And more often than not, this happens to be the mother tongue of the person. Moreover, there are examples from history like Atal Behari Vajpayee’s speech in Hindi in the UN General Assembly, where he would never have been as effective, had he spoken the same in English.

But the point that remains is that we should not lose out on emerging opportunities to others just because we are not conversant with English. English has become the order of the day. The times are changing and we need to change with time. Today, we depend a lot on the whole world and we have markets for our products and services across the seven continents. So in order to use these effectively, we need to be able to communicate effectively in that language which is most frequently used in the corporate world.

So, the necessity in the current context is to equip the youth of the country, with English as an important tool to success. I strongly feel that the primary and secondary education system in the country should be designed such that thousands of such deserving Ramappa’s do not miss out getting the best opportunities, just because they did not have access to the language in which the world speaks today.

I do agree that at a micro level, English may not be a priority for a country that’s struggling to achieve a good literacy record. But we should not wait for literacy to shoot up and then focus on English. The attempt has to start parallely, so that we do not lose out on these wonderful years where we are going to be the drivers of the world economy. Let us hope that Kapil Sibal and Ministry of HRD comes up with some policy to this effect.