Mayawati146;s reform

English is a piece of cake. I can totally conquer English. I will use English. I will learn English. I will live in English. I am no longer a slave to English. I am its master. I believe English will become my faithful servant and lifelong friend.8221; That8217;s from the Li Yang Crazy English website, where the Chinese are taught to shout out loud in the language of global competitiveness. States like Uttar Pradesh, which earlier eschewed English, have done a 180-degree switch, realising that it is increasingly the only way to transact with a wider world. Those who could afford to flee the public system would send their children to 8220;English medium schools8221;, and ensure that they grew up fluent, so the demand for English instruction actually also came via UP8217;s subaltern politics, under a Mayawati government.

And it8217;s not just India8217;s cow belt that8217;s junking old, resentful associations. Hong Kong recently made a pragmatic decision to undo a decade-long policy of teaching in Cantonese and revert to the language of erstwhile colonial rule. Moreover, as the UP education officials suggested, when four-fifths of electronic information is stored in English, rejecting the language amounts to setting our faces against the global interconnectedness that defines our times. Even though there are now more multilingual platforms and machine translations than before, the Web mostly speaks English. The language dominates international business, politics and culture more than any other language in human history.

Just as English is taking over the world, the world is also taking over English. It is a stew of accents and influences, and the OED can barely keep up with the intricacies of Yiddish English or Caribbean English, let alone the hip improvisations of various urban subcultures. India is second only to the United States in the number of English speakers and is all set to overtake it. The Empire strikes back, and how.