For business, government and millions of ordinary people, proficiency in English has come to be seen as a key to prosperity, but evidence that this hope will be fulfilled is lacking, says David Graddol • Comment on this article
Wednesday January 20th 2010 "Unorganised" ambition ... the benefits of English to low-paid workers are unproven Photograph: Deshakalyan Chowdhury/AFP India will become the world’s most populous country within decades. Already it has more children in its schools than China. And there is now a huge and growing demand from parents from all social backgrounds that their children learn English. English may now be regarded as a key ingredient in India’s economic success, but estimates of how many Indians actually know the language lack credibility, with numbers ranging from 11 million to 350 million. As with most things in India, English proficiency is distributed very unevenly across the diverse socio-economic groups. Because there is no assessment of spoken language proficiency in education exams, there is no way of knowing what range of skill levels exists in the population. But the reality is that English plays some role in the lives of all Indians, even those who say they cannot speak or read it. One of the reasons for this great demand for English is the buzz surrounding the Indian economy. Even in the last recessionary year, India’s GDP is expected to grow by over 7%. Much of the recent Indian economic surge has been driven by the technology and call-centre sector, which has for the first time provided well-paid jobs for anyone who can speak English – regardless of social background. This started with the availability of low-cost, English-speaking graduates working for large north American and European companies, but the sector has matured rapidly and several Indian companies have now emerged as global players. But how much English is needed to support India’s continued economic growth? Is the English-speaking talent pool running dry, as warnings from Nasscom, the sector’s trade body, seem to suggest? Nasscom complains that only 15% of engineering graduates in India are “employable” – largely because they lack communication skills despite completing English-medium degrees. A Nasscom representative at a recent conference in Delhi spoke about the need for the education sector to supply employers with “ready-to-eat” graduates. This has started a lively debate about the quality of the higher education sector (dominated by English-medium institutions), but also about the proper role of education in Indian society. Yet, when overall employment is analysed more closely, it turns out that there have been remarkably few new jobs created in the whole of the organised sector. India has achieved largely jobless economic growth. Over 93% of the workforce works in the “unorganised” sector, which consists largely of low-paid, insecure jobs. So the important question facing India is whether English will help these hundreds of millions of workers improve their standard of living. Government ministers have made fine noises about the need to rapidly expand the vocational education sector, and the need to include English teaching as a key component. However, there is no sign yet of much happening on the ground, not least of where the job opportunities will be. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a little English will help maids, drivers and even a street beggar earn more, and that English helps workers find jobs in neighbouring states. But there has been little systematic research on the opportunities that English provides, or on what kind of English such workers might need. Not, one imagines, the mix of grammar and literature that has traditionally been taught in Indian classrooms. There are structural reasons for the slow expansion of jobs in services – mostly connected with protectionist policies designed to prevent hundreds of unskilled workers losing their jobs. Certain kinds of manufacturing, for example, have to remain in the hands of the small-scale, handicraft sector. Large-scale retail jobs have been slow to appear, because of limits on foreign investment. The UK-based supermarket business Tesco maintains a logistics centre in Bangalore that services its global operations, but it has not been able to open stores in India the way it has in China. There are hints at what might happen if this sector is allowed to grow. Perhaps nothing captures the spirit of the new, young, consuming classes in India better than Coffee Day, a chain of coffee shops that now reaches across India with 845 cafes in 128 cities. Coffee Day is an Indian company that provides a glimpse of potential future employment in the organised retail sector: employees are expected to be able to deal with customers in English. The fear is that if large chains emerge, they might provide thousands of new retail sector-jobs, but they might put millions of small, family-run stores out of business. >From an educational perspective, it is easy to find reasons for not investing in English. It is hugely expensive. It also distracts from developing more basic needs in education: drinking water and toilets in schools, teachers who actually turn up and spend their time wisely in classrooms, improving enrolment and access to secondary schools, and extending education in a child’s first language. There is, above all, a huge practical problem: a lack of teachers who speak English. Despite the emphasis now put on offering English to young learners, teachers in lower-primary school are weakest at English. In some states, only around 20% of teachers are thought to have even a basic English competence. India is a society in which English has long signified social status and education. But as televisions reach into ever more homes, as villages are connected by mobile phones and as new roads are built, the English language washes even into rural backwaters. It symbolises much more than the possibility of a better job: it provides a potential escape from poverty and the oppression of a lower-caste village life. A survey carried out by an Indian TV channel in the summer of 2009 found that 87% of Indians now “feel that knowledge of English is important to succeed in life”. Success and English are now tied together in the popular imagination across India. David Graddol is a UK-based applied linguist and researcher. His study of English language education in India, English Next – India, commissioned by the British Council, is published this month
