<div dir="ltr">
<h1 class="">Skip English, focus on Indigenous Languages for India’s Development</h1>
<div class="">
<div class="">By <a href="http://www.newsgram.com/author/ng-news-desk/">NewsGram News Desk</a> - </div> <div class="">January 26, 2016</div><br></div><div class=""><a class="" href="http://cdn.newsgram.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/DSC_133111-11-11-11-11-11.jpg"><img class="" src="http://cdn.newsgram.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/DSC_133111-11-11-11-11-11-696x464.jpg" alt="" title="New books Searching" height="464" width="696"></a></div>
<p><span style="color:rgb(128,128,0)"><em><strong>By Harshmeet Singh</strong></em></span></p>
<p style="text-align:center"><em>“A common perception in India is that Indians need English to succeed. But is it the other way around in reality?”</em></p>
<p>The sky high vision and aim of becoming a world power that we carry
with respect to our nation, are based on an extremely shaky education
system which considers mimicking western theories the best way to impart
knowledge.</p>
<p>With such a rich culture which is renowned worldwide, you would
imagine that Indian students of social studies and humanities would
carry with them enviable knowledge of Indian traditions, language and
vedic sciences. But unfortunately, all our education system offers to
them is western ideas and western thoughts.</p>
<blockquote class=""><p><span style="color:rgb(0,0,128)"><strong>Our
Anglophonic education system is majorly responsible for a continuing
colonized mindset that regards English as a mark of superiority. As the
African and Asian nations tread the path of development, their share in
the global GDP will see a surge in the coming decades. The economic
influence of the English-speaking nations is set to dip in the near
future.</strong></span></p></blockquote>
<p>With Spanish giving a tough competition to English in the US, English
is looking for an emerging economic power that would save its status as
the global language. In order to rope in Indian audience and viewers, a
number of US and UK news channels have now started covering news from
the Indian perspective.</p>
<blockquote class=""><p><span style="color:rgb(153,51,0)">India
adopted a three-language for its education system in 1960s, when the
Indian economy looked up to US and UK. With English taking the
center-stage in this policy, the regional languages started losing
ground. Despite vast changes in the economy and India’s global standing,
we never thought of re-visiting our language policy for education to
save our indigenous languages.</span></p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://cdn.newsgram.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/DSC_127244444.jpg" rel="attachment wp-att-54875"><img class="" src="http://cdn.newsgram.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/DSC_127244444.jpg" alt="English" height="533" width="800"></a></p>
<p>Some of the most renowned scientists in the world have taken birth in
non-English speaking nations, thereby ruling out the perception that
English is necessary for professional success in the field of Science
and Mathematics. Though knowledge of English, like any other language,
is certainly a handy skill to have, it is a myth that English is
‘necessary’ for professional success.</p>
<blockquote class=""><p><span style="color:rgb(128,0,128)"><strong>There
are innumerable examples to break this myth. The onus of breaking this
myth for the Indian youth lies with the Government which needs to ensure
that there are ample employment opportunities for those who chose to
give English a miss, and rather concentrated on other skills.</strong></span></p></blockquote>
<p>The first step in this regard would be ensuring that there is high
quality educational material in indigenous languages for the students at
all levels. The UGC initiated <a href="http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/ugc-bharatvani-project/1/534641.html" target="_blank">Bharatvani project</a>
is a major step in this regard. Proposed to be developed as the largest
language portal in the world, the Bharatvani project aims at delivering
knowledge in almost all Indian languages, with the help of multimedia
formats. It plans to aggregate multimedia content from the government,
writers and other non-governmental organizations and put it on a common
platform. UGC also plans to rope in publication houses and different
universities to make it a success.</p><p><a href="http://www.newsgram.com/skip-english-focus-on-indigenous-languages-for-indias-development/">http://www.newsgram.com/skip-english-focus-on-indigenous-languages-for-indias-development/</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
</div>