Soundbytes that make you think November 19, 2009

What a fascinating morning session! Just capturing some of the thought-provoking (and sometimes provocative!) soundbytes:

1. ‘English is a commodity language’
2. ‘Whether or not to have English language in the Indian education system is not a cultural debate.’
3. ‘We are at the risk of losing our cultural moorings in India because of English’
4. ‘English in Sri Lanka is a link language only for its elite class’
5. ‘Education system must ensure diversity and stimulte creativity in order to have productivity’
6. There is a difference between being ‘proficient’ in English and being ‘effective’ in English. In India we need to encourage more of the latter.

Have deliberately not attributed these quotes because my memory is a fragile thing!

Irrespective of who said what, do you agree or disagree with what the panellists in the morning said? Post your comments, have your say, join the debates, throw your punches…

Nandan to Martin, India to UK November 19, 2009

For the inaugural programme of the Policy Dialogue at the British Council office in New Delhi, we had set up a lounging space for the speakers to meet and chat before they went on stage. This was the VC suite in our library. When Nandan Nilekani arrived last evening he was welcomed by Ruth Gee and Chris Gibson. As we were ushering him through our lively library, there was a minor stampede among our young members rushing to Nandan, asking for his autograph and requesting him to pose with them for a snapshot on their mobile cameras. Nandan obliged one and all.

It brought home the point what an iconic figure Nandan is for millions of young Indians across the length and breadth of the country. So it’s not just the cricket and Bollywood film stars that capture young India’s imagination.

Inside the lounge, Martin Davidson, our Chief Executive, met Nandan and said how grateful he was to him for giving British Council his time. What Nandan said to Martin deserves to be framed in gold and put up somewhere. He said, ”I am here to pay back my debt to the British Council. As a child, I was very privileged to be a member of the British Council library in Bangalore.” Cannot think of a better compliment than that on the occasion of our 75th anniversary!!

It also got me thinking about the chance meeting that some of our young library members had with Nandan. Some of them will probably go onto become similar successes and icons in their own right, in their own time. Will they then remember this fortuitous encounter? If they do, I think British Council will have justified the raison de etre of our existence several times over.

Cultural relations, perhaps, at the end of the day, boils down to encounters such as these. One can only create a space and context where such chance meetings can take place and destinies altered. 

Nilekani and Graddol set the tone for English Policy Dialogue November 19, 2009

At 6.30 pm IST, English for Progress: Third Policy Dialogue was inaugurated by Nandan Nilekani, Chair of the Unique Idenitiy Authority of India and one of the pioneers of the IT revolution in India. David Graddol presented the findings of his report English Next India.

Ruth Gee, Regional Director of the British Council in India and Sri Lanka and Martin Davidson, Chief Executive of the British Council, spoke of the importance of the Council work in the area of English language and highlighted the work of Project English in India and Sri Lanka.

In his inaugural address Nandan Nilekani said that English played a key role not only in the field of commerce  and industry but was also a key factor in cementing the diversity of India. English, he stressed was the language of opportunity and the challenge in front of the government and education agencies of all hues was to make the language more accessible and break down the class barriers surrounding the language in India at the moment.

David Graddol’s fascinating presentation raised a number of critical questions about issues we sometimes take for granted about English in the region. One such riddle was around the direct link between English and jobs in India. David took a fresh look at the easy corelation by pointing out that the link was only true of the organised services sector of the labour market, whihc was a very small fraction of the total job market. So if by a miracle, a majority of Indians had good English skills overnight, there simply wouldn’t be enough jobs to go around.

David stressed on the growing importance of English language competence as a skill at par with numeracy and ICT in the international education scene rather than a language with a baggage.

One of his most striking findings were how China is fast catching up or might even have surpassed India as far as the total number of English speakers were concerned. Part of the reason was the large scale project China embraced in 2001 to make English compulsory at the primary school level. But teacher proficiency, David said, was the key to achieving quality in English language education everywhere.

All in all, a very exciting launch of the Third Policy Dialogue. Speaking to other speakers and delgates from India and Sri Lanka, one can sense a lot of urgency among the various key education agencies to provide good English language skills.