In every wealthy household in India, English has become the first language. Most wealthy children find it easier to learn a foreign language, French, German, or Spanish, than Hindi, Tamil, or Bengali. These children have a bit of a vernacular, which they use to communicate with the help of the home, and sometimes when they are talking to their grandparents. In the best schools in India, it's great not to know Hindi, even for children whose parents grew up in Hindi-speaking homes.
This is not new.The superior status accorded to English has continued since the days of the Raj. Even after the British left, English remained the command language. Globalization has further strengthened it, as English is also the global language of business, especially finance. India's extreme income inequality adds to this mix. The wealthy have built their own bubbles to recreate the way people live in first world cities. English lends itself elegantly to that lifestyle.
The New Educational Policy 2020 (NEP) aims to disrupt this building of power. Not to make it more equitable, but to transfer authority to a new rising social class. To understand this, we must first unpack the elite of India. It consists of two distinct sections that came together in an awkward marriage in the 1990s. The first were the old English-speaking elite, close to the Nehruvian state, who occupied positions of authority in all institutions. They promoted literature, film, art, classical music, and dance, and generally viewed themselves as benefactors to the masses.
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