India Arriving--Chapter 6 & 7

Chapter 6: The English Language and India's Future
Chapter 7: Walking on Water, or Getting into an IIT

I decided to write about both of these chapters as the same time just because they were both very similar and linked easily with one another. Both chapters were about the English language and what it means to the Indian people. Many Indians speak more than one language, although only one is spoken fluently. Although most speak more than one language, there is no single language that is spoken by most Indians. This causes difficulties in education and in the service industry.

Educators find it very difficult to teach children and adults because so many languages are spoken. The author believes that it is just a matter of time before a large number of people will agree that things should be communicated only in English. At this point English would be the language of development. While I agree that English is becoming more prominent in the Indian society, I do not know if I agree with the author that English will become the major language. Maybe it will. I guess I don't really know the timeline the author is thinking, so that makes it hard for me to know whether I agree or disagree with this statement.

India will have difficulty continuing to progress in the service industry of the people are not fluent in English (and quality English, at that). Because India's development strategy includes a focus on services, and English is the platform on which the world's most sophisticated economic ideas are expressed, English is necessary in today's world. While the author believes it is necessary, he also agrees that the native language is also necessary. The author states that "an English-only educational strategy is as ill-suited to running a corner shop as a Hindi-only education is to a career in information technology."

It is difficult to recruit enough English speaking professionals to match the large numbers of people who need to learn English for the telecommunications business. Because of the high-growth environment, demand is growing faster than the capacity. The author gives an example of this by stating that in 2002, Rs. 15,000 would hire top engineering graduates. Today Rs. 20,000 will hire an average quality engineering graduate. Previously, only the best could get jobs, now even the graduate at the bottom can attain an engineering job. Through the combination of higher productivity and an increasing supply of educated graduates, the industry is doing quite well.

Because the industry is doing so well, today senior management will now accept ways of 30% below the comparable US wage to work in India. This is the exact opposite of what it was just a few years ago where workers had to be paid 30% more in order to agree to go work in India. Also, working conditions have improved along with an excitement of working in a high growth economy.