OrthoDoc

It started off in the men’s room.

There was a casual remark by one of our Senior Consultants in response to the protests by medical students in Delhi, Bangalore and Behrampur about how bad some students are in some parts of the country. I don’t remember who made the remarks in between but I started by saying that English was a barrier to education in India. I thought I lit up a spark but it soon turned into a blaze!

Background:

India’s position is very special. It is home to several languages and numerous dialects (See ethnologue.org for a list). Our nation, soon after its birth was divided on the basis of languages into States. Our Govt. proposed and soon thereafter implemented the three-language formula. Our own mother-tongue (native language) was to be the first language and English the second-language, and the third would be another Indian language. This was done in response to the southern states refusing to accept Hindi as the universal language. So all the schools were literally ordered to carry out the three-language formula. It made sense to read and write in your native tongue because that was the tongue in which you conversed. However a unique problem cropped up. And that was Higher education.

Higher Education:

All forms of higher education at University level continued to be in English whether it was Medicine, Engineering, Science, Humanities or Commerce. So you had to be atleast literate if not well conversed in English to continue your university education. A degree inevitably was linked to a better job, a better financial position and a better social standing. So it was natural that parents desired that their child study in a school with English as the medium of instruction as this promised their wards access to Higher education. In response to this English medium schools cropped up all over the country.

However, this phenomenon was predominant in the cities and to an extent apparent in the small towns. In the villages education continued in native tongues because this developmental process had not touched them. In the cities too, schools that really implemented an all-out English curriculum were the Private schools. Govt schools that catered to the sections of lower socio-economic status had more often than not English has the medium of instruction. This created a schism in the society with people of higher socio-economic status having access to English medium schools and those of the lower classes continuing to pursue their studies in native languages. It has created a rift so wide that it seems impossible at the moment to bridge the gap in any way today.

My Arguments:

• English is foreign to us
• We start thinking and talking in a language but go on to read and write in English. This makes it difficult for all of us as we have to now start thinking and talking in a language alien to us. Why the extra effort??
• English is not de-facto language for majority of Indians. Hence a large group of our society is barred from becoming doctors or engineers. Of course there are large numbers who did their schooling in their native tongues but managed to end up in a medical or engineering college. All these people are the hard-working students who had to struggle. They would have shone brighter in their fields if they would have continued their higher studies in a language they were already familiar with. These are the exceptions rather than the rule.
• Practicing medicine requires a student to fluently converse in a language familiar to the patient. Since most of our patients converse in their native tongues, it becomes even more difficult for a student who has studied his entire course in English to switch over to the native language.
• Even in the clinical setup the number of physicians who use English as a medium of communication border on the minority. Many of them vocalise in their own native tongues. Students form other states, if diligent enough, quickly and easily pick up the native tongues. But the switching in and out of English is what makes life more difficult.
• Writing informed consent has become so important these days. Law requires us to explain to the patient in a language he or she understands and that often is not English. But the form is in English in most of the hospitals and the Junior Doctor or Intern is familiar with English terminology and translation becomes a nightmare. Most of the lower courts use the local language making the knowledge of English redundant.

Counter Punch

I was cornered. The comments flowed from all over. Agitated. Unbelievable. Atrocious. Take your point, but… The gist of what they had to say about the whole thing.

• India has hundreds of dialects in additiion to the score of languages. implementing medical education has been so difficult with English alone. Do you think it would be easy with all these languages?
• Students have the freedom of moving around all over the country because English provides them the common ground to do so. Will they not find it difficult to shift from one place to another and learn one language after another??
• English has been a uniting force. It has enabled communication between the people of various states. It has helped us keep up with the rest of the world. Most of the advances has taken place in the English speaking countries and we have kept pace with new developments due to our proficiency in English. We have managed to beat countries like China in this respect. Emphasising
• Translation of huge books in English into Indian languages is going to be a humongous task! We do not have the necessary tools or resources to enable such a task successfully.
• We are already a fractured society and further division of our communities on the basis of language will only deepen our differences.
• People who need to access higher education will do so depending on their motivation and not their language preferences.
• We have hardly any software in the Indian languages. We don’t have the technological backup to carry out such a task. In the present scenario such a step would be impractical.

So there it was. We went for some time snapping at each other. After a while when things cooled down and we busied ourselves we went our ways. One of the onlookers adjusting his tie, gently put forward his question. So who won??

I often wonder if English has been a barrier to learning of the masses, and development of the country in general.

Whats your opinion?

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