The Universal Language – English

Presently, the world is passing through the consolidation of knowledge-based society driven by Information Technology. The evolution of this Modern Society mostly went unnoticed mainly due to the silent and the smooth process of its formation and development. To a large extent the smoothness stems from the fact that the knowledge based society recognises no region, no religion, no caste, no colour and is mostly operated by the English language. The evolution of knowledge based society is exemplified by the urge to share and know more as evidenced by Wikepedia* and search engines like Google, Yahoo, Clusty and others on the Internet.                       

The common man does not properly gauge the strength of this modern society. The fact that Infosys guided by honest and ethical chief executive announced a bonus of Rupees 126 Crores to its employees on its silver Jubilee is an indicator to the strength of this modern society. Many countries around the world are quick to recognise the development of this society and adapted changes to benefit their citizens. Countries like Germany, The Netherlands, Finland, Japan have started operating in English language overcoming the zealots who always pitched for their native languages. Even our own neighbour, Peoples Republic of China is training its youth in improving their communication skills in English by sending them to various countries including India.

Undoubtedly we in India benefited most mainly due to the availability of abundant resource of manpower in the form of qualified English speaking technocrats, scientists, engineers and administrators. The initiatives of Indian visionaries scripted the success story.

What is disturbing is the insistence of many state governments to unduly promote and use ethnic languages beyond all reasonable limits. It is necessary to preserve and promote our languages and culture. This objective will be fulfilled only when the youth contributes to this cause. In the present I. T. boom it may be noted that the people who are left behind are mainly weak in communication skills.

Suitable steps should be taken for reviving teaching English along with native languages in various states to make the candidates suitable for pursuing careers in modern world. Students should make every effort to improve their communication skills in English by using the various options like Training institutes, Internet, audio-video tools etc. outside their class room hours.

* Wikipedia is an international Web-based free-content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers, allowing most articles to be changed by anyone with access to the website. Midway through 2006, Wikipedia had more than 4,600,000 articles in many languages, including more than 1,200,000 in the English-language version. There were more than 200 language editions of Wikipedia, fifteen of which had more than 50,000 articles each.