“In Africa, poverty is a tragedy; in India, it is a scandal.” And I understand what he means by that. In Africa, there are all sorts of conditions, the state, the society, lack of education and so on. In India, you have very competent and bright people, very strong institutions in education like IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and yet 400 million or whatever number of people are under poverty. This is cataclysm. This is not only terrible so far as the poor people are concerned, this is also a terrible indictment of the Indian establishment... My concern is how seriously the Indian establishment is taking this issue of inclusive growth. I asked a government official, he could not answer me. I said when you wake up in the morning, do you have a plan how to ensure inclusive growth?
The Elite barricades itself, using colonial laws, language ...
English is the language of exclusion in India. India spends nearly US$6 billion on English education. In Purchase Power Parity exchange terms, it is possibly greater than US$100 billion towards education in English.
Korea, Japan, China, Russia, Germany, France, Spain - do not use English and are significant industrial or cultural powers. Most importantly, what happens when US declines as an economic force. The influence of English is largely today due to the dominance of Britain and USA (by turn) from 1850 to 2000. In the next 25-50 years, the importance of English and US will decrease. Where will Indian-English dominated education system be at that time?
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