Education policy and Tamil Nadu's two-language formula

After 34 years, India has come up with a New Educational Policy (NEP). From the 2019 draft I found gems of anglophobia such as these:

Despite the rich, expressive and scientiﬁc nature of Indian languages, there has been an unfortunate trend in schools and society towards English as a medium of instruction and as a medium of conversation. Logically speaking, of course, English has no advantage over other languages in expressing thoughts; on the contrary, Indian languages have been speciﬁcally developed over centuries and generations to express thoughts in the Indian scenario, climate, and culture.

... since Independence, the economic elite of India have adopted English as their language; only about 15% of the country speaks English, and this population almost entirely coincides with the economic elite (compared with, e.g. 54% of Indians who speak Hindi). Furthermore, the elite often use English (whether deliberately or inadvertently) as a test for entry into the elite class and for the jobs that they control: English is regularly used by the elite as a criterion to determine whether someone is “educated”, and perhaps most unfortunately of all, as a prerequisite for jobs - even in cases of jobs where knowledge of English is entirely irrelevant. This sad scenario and attitude (again, it may well be inadvertent) has resulted in the marginalisation of large sections of society based on language, keeping them out of higher-paying jobs and the higher socio-economic strata.

The NEP continues in the same vein about the three-language mantra. TN's two-language formula is predicated on having English as the anchor language. It seems to have helped, in its performance in Higher Education, in Science and Engineering at least. That's my thesis.

First, the facts. There are many international university ranking schemes which are based on educational and research excellence. All of them, e.g. the Leiden Rankings, the Scimago Institutional Rankings, the CWUR rankings, the Transparent Ranking, produce lists of top higher educational institutions that meet a stiff cut-off. We usually find that about 3 to 4% of the HEIs come from India, roughly in proportion to India’s share of global GDP, and far below India’s demographic share. This is fair. What seems surprising is that if we probe within India, then an out of proportion share goes to Tamil Nadu. That is, Tamil Nadu, in an egregious way, dominates the rankings from India. Why? I offer a very lazy, but probably parsimonious and true explanation – for more than eight decades, Tamil Nadu has been steadfast in its commitment to the two-language formula. Is this the explanation?

Let us rely on the data from the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), which is India’s own answer to the burgeoning catalogue of global university rankings. We now have five rankings, from 2016 to 2020. Let us look at the latest rankings of Top 100 from NIRF 2020, from three categories: Universities, Engineering and Colleges.

The table gives the select state-wise participation of the institutions in NIRF 2020. This accounts for 17% to 32%, and far exceeds Tamil Nadu’s share of India’s GDP (8.5%) or population (6%)! An interesting feature of the table is that Delhi and Kerala, which show up strongly in the college stakes, perform poorly in the other two categories. Maharashtra and Karnataka, which show up well in the University lists, do not seem to have top notch stand-alone colleges and institutions. It is Tamil Nadu that has a more balanced representation in all three categories. This shows up clearly when displayed in the form of a radar diagram. A close examination of the participating institutions reveals that there is a large presence of engineering colleges and deemed universities in the private sector in Tamil Nadu. This is remarkable considering that there are many central and state universities which do not make the grade.

Since Tamil Nadu does not have a system of governance or polity that is very different from other states in their neighbourhood, the simplest explanation that comes to mind is that Tamil Nadu is unique in that it has steadfastly committed itself to a two language formula for over eight decades and is not ready to give this up. Perhaps this helps?

Much before independence, and before the three-language formula was invented to meld together a huge union of disparate states and languages, the three presidencies, in the form of their universities at Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, and their affiliated colleges, imparted education at the highest level in a one-language formula modelled on similar universities in the United Kingdom. It was elitist but seemed to have worked well.

The three-language formula has its origins in recommendations made by the University Education Commission in 1949 - the regional language, the federal language and English. However, it was recognized that this does not meet all needs – there are instances where the mother tongue could be different from the state language. Since then, many subtle variations were experimented with, including the latest avatar in NEP 2020.

The English + Tamil formula has been in force in Tamil Nadu for about 80 years or so. On January 23, 1968, the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly formally moved a resolution, that the three-language formula shall be scrapped, and that Tamil and English shall alone be taught in all the schools in Tamil Nadu.

What we have seen above is a loose association between the two-language formula and success at the level of higher education. But correlation is not causation. It is not clear how Tamil Nadu’s two-language formula translates to educational success. Right now, I do not have an answer. That is why I left it as a question. NEP's argument that

English has no advantage over other languages in expressing thoughts; on the contrary, Indian languages have been speciﬁcally developed over centuries and generations to express thoughts in the Indian scenario, climate, and culture.

is therefore suspect. Other states, which have Hindi, or Sanskrit, as the 3rd language should be scoring better.

The NEP 2020 is unnecessarily Anglophobic. Even if only 15% of Indians speak English, it is the aspirational language for everyone. “The rich eat when they want, the poor when they can,” was a quote that I used to associate with Diogenes, but the internet tells me otherwise, that it is a Georgian Proverb (Source: HYPERLINK "https://proverbicals.com/rich-men-poor-men" ). NEP 2020 leads us into the same trap – English for the rich, when they want, and the poor when the state provides them!