- some unqualified pedantry about the data being from 2001. "Oh yeah, we used to oppress people for eons; they've adapted in the past decade."
- The number of fluent English speakers is apparently in the low single digits. Fairly obvious there is a nauseous class system in India, from the NyT article (speaking English gets you a good job ? What kind of society is that ? India is Anglo-Saxon ?).
- I don't think India is "country" in the same way as European states are. To be fair to Europe, Belgium today does work today with both Dutch and French. As a cohort of people, EU, is much closer to India, in terms of diversity etc (yes, I looked up the demographics).
- If you wish to use the epistemological grounding of a European, you're essentially vindicating my position: you have no understanding of the language/concepts you speak.
- Finally, I really don't want to continue this exercise in shallowness (even the narratives are so shallow!). Asking me to answer rhetorical questions hardly amounts to reason.
Good luck being a (medieval) WASP clone, and trampling on people's tongues (see, now, that is an interesting narrative).
More resources on this ghastly society,
- A book which basically arrives at the same conclusion: India is a linguistic apartheid state , https://books.google.com/books?id=QJpjhC6BuM4C&pg=PA124&lpg=...
- India ranks in the bottom 73-74 in PISA (while China/Japan/S.Korea are in the top 10; Vietnam in the top-20s).
- India's literacy is < 80%, probably because there's no real opportunity even if you're educated (and have the misfortune of not speaking English).
- http://thediplomat.com/2014/07/why-india-must-move-beyond-en...
I'm surprised there hasn't been a rerun of French revolution by the proletariat; or may be India just doesn't care - that'd explain the colonization.
A question - how many east asian programmers write C/C++/Java programs in Korean, Japanese or Chinese ? And if they do, do they have resources such as stackoverflow and forums in their languages ? What about Spanish, German and French programmers ?
Another question - what percentage of a population in any country is engineers ? Is it closer to 90% or 10% in above countries ?
Your points about equal access to opportunity are valid, but the assumption that this is responsible for the GDP being low is not in my opinion - there more complex factors.
In any case since you are feel this is important (there are relatively few who do), please try to improve the situation in some way, rather than just complain. It is hard.
In the first link you sent, read a couple pages down and it explains why even half knowledge of english is critical to capture opportunities as they exist in the present.
Your argument is no different from that "rational" @kartD. It's fairly obvious, you don't even know the definition of a "language" is. If you needed an answer, a google search would have done you good ("yes"); asking me to answer rhetorical devices like "ah, but oppression is our only way towards progress!" is stupid. Somehow no Indian has the comprehension to understand why.
Considering the same thing repeated ad nauseum, I also sense strong doses of brainwashing, or the Indian state employing a 50-cent army like Mao's men. I hope for India's sake that it is the latter.
Instead of worrying about India, I suggest you take care of your own (serious lack of) sanity. There is a hindi saying which comes to mind - adhajal gagri chhalakat jaaye - or, empty vessels make the most noise, which based on your "long dead spiritual center", applies to you.
I can only hope India goes through "clone wars" for humanity's sake.
And which company works in multiple languages within it's own home country?
Your wiki source relies on 2001 data (and only considers English speakers [0] and you used as logic that 90% of India doesn't speak English, so it is in fact, mere opinion - yours). When counting both users and speakers, the value was 350M which is ~30% of the population.
It is about speaking. On a single team does it make sense that one does the docs in Hindi, and the non-Hindi speakers do what exactly with this doc? Or does he/she do one in each language? Will every college teach subjects in 28 different languages? Does any European university teach each subject in 28 languages? Do any of the countries in East Asia?
Your NYT article is an opinion piece, it's not admissible or inadmissible. If you're relying on opinion pieces, your logic is already flawed.
Most of what you say is a misrepresentation of facts.
[0]- "Wikipedia's old estimate of 350 million includes two categories – "English Speakers" and "English Users". The distinction between the Speakers and Users is that Users only know how to read English words while Speakers know how to read English, understand spoken English as well as form their own sentences to converse in English.