I am fortunate to have sufficient education to understand the growth contradictions of society. Especially, when I am trying to find the reasons for individual development, my education and experience helps me to look at the problems differently. I am convinced about the fact that the regional language plays a very significant role in our overall behaviour, relationship, habit and personality. It is not very difficult to find the people with regional accent at any platform in India. But these regional languages have no future in global village. Let us study why regional languages have no future? We will look into different aspects like education pattern, class struggles, professional options, and unification of languages.Changed Education Trend
“I have never allowed my schooling to interfere with my education,” said Mark Twain, commenting on the lack of fun in learning in schools. Today with all the multimedia skill sets, you need a different kind of education. Life is fun and education must be focused on enhancing fun rather than making a school or education a prison. The depth of any subject you choose has increased tremendously. You as a human cannot go on learning to enhance your capabilities for a better life. There is no end of information or even knowledge to acquire. Today, you need to get educated to have a good and enjoyable life. Schooling is becoming a thing of the past. Now-a-days, people are forced to talk about unschooling. The educated and learned parents are not concentrating on course, syllabus or school. They are concentrating on other human or environmental activities.
School children need not go to library to search for books all the time. Sitting comfortably at one place at home, café or even a shopping mall she can access complete list of libraries at just one click of the mouse. And whole set of encyclopedias are available at a much cheaper price. It is not necessary that she spends Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 to have the entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica at her premises; she can just spend Rs. 1000 approximately and have the original Britannica displayed on the computer monitor. Internet and other media have made knowledge accessible at your finger-tips at a much lower cost. Children can have access to information so fast and easily as never before in history. But the only constraint is the language.
Class Struggle and Language
We must understand the age old class struggle to evaluate the importance of language. Today, the whole of Indian continent has one of the biggest enemies of development and it is its regional languages. People are killing each other. Leaders in Assam, Maharastra or Karnataka are doing politics over it. People are dying for language affections. Language is dividing the networked environment developed by the growth of Information technology and telecommunication. This division has engulfed every walk of life. This division can be seen in politics, society and even in corporate world.
The struggle of class is not exclusive to Indian environment. Even US is discussing this issue on regular basis. Oprah Winfrey show is a typical example. She does not hesitate to discuss on latest issues disturbing people like class, language, sex, relationship and so on. In one of the show on class, she discussed that how people of different class can be categorized even the way they speak English. English is a global language and people have to understand this. In India, this discussion is very old but still not matured. Today I would like to remind all my friends who are religiously attached to their regional languages to get detached immediately to have a better and successful future. Language is the biggest hurdle in your global outlook.
For more information on Oprah Show, you can go to the website as below
http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200604/20060421/slide_20060421_350_102.jhtml
The main question comes, is anybody interested to fall behind and see others moving ahead? I do not think anyone intentionally would like to do it unless compelled by the situations. Let us create a situation where we do not creep at later stage of our life.
Professional Options
The horizon of professions has altered drastically. The technological and economic changes have made profession a new domain altogether. Few years ago when beauty shops came in the limelight hardly anybody had an idea that it would emerge to be such a big profession. Today it has matured. Many ladies and gents are working in these shops. Similarly, other professions like modeling, stewardship, journalism, fashion designing, entrepreneurship, catering and hospitality management, tourism jobs, services industries and so on have emerged. The sudden emergence of call centers, BPOs (Business Process Outsourcing) and other IT related services have changed the concept of working in society all across the world. These services have such manpower-intensive jobs with high financial stakes that it will almost delete the concept of the Gandhian philosophy of Charkha and Chakri. The requirements and search for jobs has to be done based on the latest craze and availability. The expertise of English language remains at the forefront in all these professions.
People cannot afford to rely on the old concept of government jobs or other conservative and conventional jobs. The new generation and the guardians of the new generation have to move from conservatism to look for better and progressive appointments. Today, organizations are not finding suitable educated people in cities. Jobs are moving to smaller towns and villages. Once, it reaches small towns and villages, the educated boys, girls, housewives, househusbands and parents will be forced to change the concept of job-search for their benefit and the benefit of the society. The unlearning of the old conventional jobs has to be done on a priority basis. With, this it brings the necessity of learning a global language to move ahead. It is not the question of getting the job today; it is a question of complete cultural shift.
Earlier, jobs were restricted to agriculture, law, engineering, medicine, management etc. The majority of the people were dependent on agriculture for their livelihood. But, now people will move to cities to get the basic facilities. As per, United Nations estimate, by 2030, 50% of the human population will live in cities. The global language will play its role in a new emerging society.
Trying to get government jobs is the old concept now. Few educated people could get government jobs. Very few will join the loss-making public sectors to have secure jobs. Gone are those days in this fast developing professional environment. The concepts of hard work and joining a profit making company have evolved. The open economy and market has given freedom to join multinationals. It has given freedom to select professions. People change professions like their clothes. Companies are starved of people. People have a luxury of choices. The changes have to be felt, realized, soaked, conceived and understood. Whoever has done this, unlearned the old trends and fears, is enjoying the fruits of growth. The fresh IIM graduates are on auction like the eligible grooms of Andhra Pradesh. Be proactive and chose the professions of the time.
English Has No Alternative
In a recent report, it became clear that regional languages have no future. Many languages are dying out because of population movements, cultural oppressions, wars and economic disasters. Experts say as many as half of the world’s 6,900 languages are endangered. In the name of Olympic Games even China is quietly learning English to join the global community.
In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a huge discussion in all the institutions across India whether we should study English or not. Even today, there is great confusion prevailing in India in particular and other developing nations in general. The people have been given a dose of nationalism in terms of languages. But how far is it advantageous? Is it in a position to give you comfort of knowledge? Is it giving you a better life?
You join any professional Institute; you are forced to study in English. There are hardly any good books available in other languages. All the high level professional books are available in English. There is a tremendous difference in the availability of professional books in English and any other language. The local languages are left for the utilization of local ‘tribes’ only, not for the global person. There was a time when there was a requirement of less information and that too in a different mode like books or drawing or painting or any art medium; but, today when you surf the net for the ocean of information, you are forced to learn, think and act globally. You can not access global information in regional language. The people across the globe are feeling the handicap of being attached to regional languages. Many have started cursing their parents and teachers for the failure. People have started questioning the governmental indecisiveness to implement global languages in school. Karnataka is a typical example of this. Narayana Murthy has already questioned the apathy of governments in state and center. A digital divide starts from regional languages. People are being forced to remain deprived.
Language Unification
The advent of technology has forced humanity to think about the concept of unification of languages. Even the famous Nobel Laureate, Rabindra Nath Tagore, who wrote many poems and prose in Bengali, a local regional language of India, was forced to learn and translate his own writings in English to get a wider audience and recognition, leading to the Nobel Prize for literature in 1913.
The advent of the computer has given a beautiful tool to humanity. If this intelligent machine is to be utilized then in the years to come, the people have to learn fewer languages. The development of an Operating System is a very difficult and tricky proposal. Once it has been developed and matured in approximately a decade’s time, it may be very difficult to develop with those rich features in any other languages. The availability of www.google.com, yahoo.com, hotmail.com, indiatimes.com and so on would ensure some kind of unification in the development and spread of languages in the years to come. As the use and spread of mobile devices increase, more unification of languages will be forced upon the human being. When good professional books were not produced in the last century even with the high level printing technology, is there any reason to believe that, operating systems or other software would be produced in any regional languages?
There was a time when people from South India used to fight against the forceful imposition of Hindi on them. The people from North used to get emotional about the language issues. Schools, colleges and institutions had the tremendous task of keeping a balance between the propagation and utilization of different languages. Now the situation has to converge. Language unification should be taken as an international mission to avoid the gaps between different people and to spread a global culture in this world. The spread of one language will put less pressure on students to learn and master it. People will be able to concentrate on more fruitful work for humanity rather than fighting over languages. We must learn from the statement of the famous thinker, Edward de Bono, who says, ‘Language has been a most important step in human evolution. Language is now the biggest barrier to further evolution.’ He writes further in his famous site http://www.edwarddebono.com that language is an encyclopedia of ignorance. Politicians who send their children to Harvard or Boston for higher studies and do politics over Hindi or other regional languages at their native place should not be able to make a fool of large sections of people.
It was the far sighted vision of American policy makers to accept English as national language after British left their land. The two centuries of magnificent development is the result of this policy. People are not killing or dying based on languages, they are focusing on development and better lifestyle. The result of learning English is so obvious, US is able to create Bill Gates and Stephen Covey.
Today, there is no other option than to unlearn regional languages. People need to unlearn their attachments to regional languages. People must keep themselves away from regional feelings. To have global access, global opportunities, global success and so on people need to be a global citizen with the ability to speak, read and write in global language.
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