Posts
In 2013 Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and
Industry (FICCI) articulated a vision for higher education in India to be realized
before the year 2030. Called Higher Education in India – Vision 2030, it recommends “goals, policy imperatives and implementation roadmap to
make higher education boost the growth of India to become the third-largest
US$10 trillion economy of the world”.
A Summit on higher education in India by FICCI held earlier
this month, brought out a report on the current status of higher education and a roadmap for the vision. The
report titled State focused roadmap to India's Vision 2030 "is
aimed at developing strategies to align the FICCI Vision 2030 on higher
education for the Indian states”.
To achieve the vision it calls out a few imperatives –
The report identifies three categories of imperatives – social,
economic and intellectual – and recognizes crucial targets to be achieved under
each category. The value of such categorization and targets is fairly evident
and admirable, but it is also important to understand the merits and efficacy of
the use of mother tongue or people’s language in realizing the three
imperatives. In the developed world mother tongue is considered the bedrock of
education but in the Indian Union the notion is conspicuously absent in popular
public discourse.
Consider the social imperative of achieving gross enrollment
ratio (GER) of 50% in higher education. Studies have revealed that mother
tongue based education has not only helped impart effective education but also
achieve higher enrollment rates. Research after research has revealed that
students learn better when taught in mother-tongue, and learning results are meager when the medium of instruction is a non-native language, more so for those
from socially and economically backward sections. Hence, focus on quality
mother tongue based education can not only help improve enrollment but also close
the disparity in enrollments.
The report’s economic imperatives aim for a skilled and
job-ready work force. Skills can only be built on a strong educational
foundation, to which mother tongue is key. Low employability of graduates has
long been a concern in India. A national
employability study conducted by Aspiring Minds shows that the
employability in the IT Product and KPO sectors, for example, are as low as
4.2% and 9.5%. One of the important reasons for such low employability is the
lack of fundamentals required for a job: good educational foundation,
comprehension skills, communication skills, analytical reasoning, creativity, conceptual
thinking etc. Quality mother tongue based education can help better address
these fundamentals.
The intellectual imperatives like high-quality research
output and creating a world-class research eco-system also require that students
be able to continue their higher education, including research in all subjects
of sciences in their mother tongues. We have argued
in Karnatique earlier that the highly innovative nations are the ones with
higher education systems in people’s language.
Of course, enabling our languages to be able to express
concepts of science and technology, and building world-class institutions in
them, will not happen overnight. But undoubtedly this is the only way by which
we can achieve success as evinced by the success stories of countries like Switzerland,
Sweden, Israel, Finland, Korea etc., which top the global
innovation index. In these countries students have the option to pursue
education in their languages at all levels.
The document clearly calls out the fact that most of higher
education is under the control of the states and hence any real change or
transformation can be brought about only by actions at the level of the states.
99% of an estimated 46,430 institutions of higher education in India are under
the ambit of the state governments. 97% of the 21.8 million enrolments are
under the control of the states. Also, 67% of public expenditure on higher
education (INR 384.6 billion) is contributed by the states.
In a union of states, as diverse and as heterogeneous as
India, every issue should be comprehended and dealt with at the level of
individual states. So, the report rightly understands the heterogeneous nature
of the issue and recommends the shift of focus of execution from the national
level to the state level to be able achieve any real transformation.
Since each state is different and the level of development
in higher education is different, the report rightly recommends different
action plans for different states. But one of key things for the states in the
process of implementation is to consider the language aspect. This aspect can
help address several issues with respect to 'access, equity and quality' that the report emphasizes.
However, the value of peoples’ languages in education has
hardly been understood and appreciated in public discourse in the Indian Union,
let alone being effectively harnessed. Hence the states need a long term vision
and commitment towards the use of mother tongues in education, and to be able
to realize Vision 2030 it is absolutely essential that they invest on the
languages of their peoples.
