The language the CSAT (Civil Service Aptitude Test) is offered and its content has now become a National issue. Rural folks are speaking up, making their voices heard and they have a point. Below is an article that appeared in the New York Times (I have taken the liberty of copy-pasting it) and the following is a link to an article that attempts to explain the controversy in greater detail:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/what-the-upsc-civil-service-aptitude-test-controversy-is-all-about/488491-72-220.html
The issue at hand is the content and the language in which it is offered.
Let us dispense with the content first. It should reflect the requirement for the job and the debate should end there. The jobs are management oriented and the tests should reflect that. Maybe another set of tests can be offered to allow candidates to qualify for entry level jobs that would lead to management opportunities based on their on their job performance.
However language should not pose a barrier for entry. I am with the protesters and empathize with their frustration. These city bred yahoos have no idea of the situation in rural India. That Babu - Srivatsa Krishna (see article reproduced below) who wants to ban protestors should be sacked.
I would take the language the test is given in one step further. The short term solution in India is to offer the test in the regional language as well as Hindi and English. This should be followed by intense immersion in English and Hindi for people who are deficient in either, to bring everyone up to par.
The IBN article referenced above mentions that Google translate was used to translate the English Test to Hindi. This is bizarre and sheer laziness on the part of the administration.
In Singapore they found that the English speaking persons did better by way of jobs than their Chinese speaking counterparts. So if I remember correctly, all college education is now in English.
The importance of regional languages increases as more and more youth enter college. On the one hand to drop English as a medium of instruction in colleges would be retrograde. However, India is a diverse country unlike Singapore. Language does pose an issue since the medium of instruction in rural and small town colleges is still in their regional language. Furthermore Hindi is completely neglected and picked up by some non-Hindi speaking individuals, only because of the popularity of Bollywood movies.
Unlike any other country or continent India is unique in that there are three languages in use in non-Hindi regions. (Hindi, English and the Regional Language). Sometimes there are two or more regional languages, like in Uttara Kannada (Kannada and Konkani), in Dakshina Kannada (Kannada, Konkani and Tulu). In addition, the Muslims in both UK and DK have their own dialect called Bhatkal and Beyari. All of these issues have to be taken into consideration to level the playing field for the aspirants.
NY Times Report:
NEW DELHI — Please mark the answer that best represents the truth (as this is not to ascertain your ideology, but your aptitude for a job with great perks).
English is a foreign language.
A) True. It came from outside India.
B) False. The former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani also came from elsewhere, but they are Indian now. A language belongs where it lives.
C) True. English is foreign because it is not the mother tongue of the vast majority of Indians.
D) False. English is in fact India’s only national language, far more influential than even Hindi.
E) All of the above.
This question has yet to appear in any objective-type exam, but it has long bothered Indian society and is at the heart of a protest by hundreds of young Indians who are objecting to, among other things, the intrusion of English in one of India’s most prestigious tests — the civil services examination. To be precise, they are protesting one of the two screening tests that hundreds of thousands take every year to qualify for the “main” exams. Only a few hundred survive, to be inducted into a system that may eventually take them to the top levels of bureaucracy.
Candidates have the option of taking the screening tests in English or Hindi, but even the Hindi version has passages in English to test their comprehension of that language. Hundreds of candidates who have taken the tests and failed, or aspire to take the tests, have hit the streets of the capital protesting the English passages, which they say put those who are not proficient in English at a disadvantage. They have thrown stones and burned buses. They have also, oddly, held up protest signs in English.
Any battle against English in India is at once a battle of the poor against the rich, the village against the city, tradition against modernity and the regional elite against a more cosmopolitan elite. On Monday, the government tried to placate the mobs by announcing that the English passages would be scrapped, but as the protesters have other demands, they have not ended their agitation.
The general opinion among bureaucrats is that the protesters are a disgrace. Srivatsa Krishna, a civil servant, wrote in The Times of India that the government should study the video footage of the protesters, “identify the specific culprits and ban them for life” from taking the exams. He found it ridiculous that the exam’s candidates would protest a requirement to possess “English skills of 10th-class levels.”
In almost every state in India, the guardians of culture have tried to restrain the growth of English, but its power has only grown because of its promise of material and social benefits. Most of the cultural guardians themselves send their children to English-language schools. The medium of instruction for higher education in India is almost entirely English.
A politician, Yogendra Yadav, lamented in The Indian Express that “the entire system of higher education that controls white-collar jobs” is loaded against students who did not attend English-language schools. But then, that is the reality of the nation. The dominance of English dims the prospects of students who are too poor to attend an English-language school. But the government, for various reasons, including cultural prejudice, has not done enough to take English to its poorest. Most of its free or cheap schools do not have English as the medium of instruction.
In South India, there have been no protests against the English passages. Historically, that region has protested against the supremacy of Hindi. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his first public speech in the south after assuming office, he spoke in English.
English is indisputably Indian now, and the most useful language in India. But it is not the most beloved, nor the medium of abuse during road rage. That special place Indians will always grant only to their mother tongues.
So the correct answer is “E.”
Follow Manu Joseph, the author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Facebook.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/what-the-upsc-civil-service-aptitude-test-controversy-is-all-about/488491-72-220.html
The issue at hand is the content and the language in which it is offered.
Let us dispense with the content first. It should reflect the requirement for the job and the debate should end there. The jobs are management oriented and the tests should reflect that. Maybe another set of tests can be offered to allow candidates to qualify for entry level jobs that would lead to management opportunities based on their on their job performance.
However language should not pose a barrier for entry. I am with the protesters and empathize with their frustration. These city bred yahoos have no idea of the situation in rural India. That Babu - Srivatsa Krishna (see article reproduced below) who wants to ban protestors should be sacked.
I would take the language the test is given in one step further. The short term solution in India is to offer the test in the regional language as well as Hindi and English. This should be followed by intense immersion in English and Hindi for people who are deficient in either, to bring everyone up to par.
The IBN article referenced above mentions that Google translate was used to translate the English Test to Hindi. This is bizarre and sheer laziness on the part of the administration.
In Singapore they found that the English speaking persons did better by way of jobs than their Chinese speaking counterparts. So if I remember correctly, all college education is now in English.
The importance of regional languages increases as more and more youth enter college. On the one hand to drop English as a medium of instruction in colleges would be retrograde. However, India is a diverse country unlike Singapore. Language does pose an issue since the medium of instruction in rural and small town colleges is still in their regional language. Furthermore Hindi is completely neglected and picked up by some non-Hindi speaking individuals, only because of the popularity of Bollywood movies.
Unlike any other country or continent India is unique in that there are three languages in use in non-Hindi regions. (Hindi, English and the Regional Language). Sometimes there are two or more regional languages, like in Uttara Kannada (Kannada and Konkani), in Dakshina Kannada (Kannada, Konkani and Tulu). In addition, the Muslims in both UK and DK have their own dialect called Bhatkal and Beyari. All of these issues have to be taken into consideration to level the playing field for the aspirants.
NY Times Report:
NEW DELHI — Please mark the answer that best represents the truth (as this is not to ascertain your ideology, but your aptitude for a job with great perks).
English is a foreign language.
A) True. It came from outside India.
B) False. The former prime minister Manmohan Singh and the former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani also came from elsewhere, but they are Indian now. A language belongs where it lives.
C) True. English is foreign because it is not the mother tongue of the vast majority of Indians.
D) False. English is in fact India’s only national language, far more influential than even Hindi.
E) All of the above.
This question has yet to appear in any objective-type exam, but it has long bothered Indian society and is at the heart of a protest by hundreds of young Indians who are objecting to, among other things, the intrusion of English in one of India’s most prestigious tests — the civil services examination. To be precise, they are protesting one of the two screening tests that hundreds of thousands take every year to qualify for the “main” exams. Only a few hundred survive, to be inducted into a system that may eventually take them to the top levels of bureaucracy.
Candidates have the option of taking the screening tests in English or Hindi, but even the Hindi version has passages in English to test their comprehension of that language. Hundreds of candidates who have taken the tests and failed, or aspire to take the tests, have hit the streets of the capital protesting the English passages, which they say put those who are not proficient in English at a disadvantage. They have thrown stones and burned buses. They have also, oddly, held up protest signs in English.
Any battle against English in India is at once a battle of the poor against the rich, the village against the city, tradition against modernity and the regional elite against a more cosmopolitan elite. On Monday, the government tried to placate the mobs by announcing that the English passages would be scrapped, but as the protesters have other demands, they have not ended their agitation.
The general opinion among bureaucrats is that the protesters are a disgrace. Srivatsa Krishna, a civil servant, wrote in The Times of India that the government should study the video footage of the protesters, “identify the specific culprits and ban them for life” from taking the exams. He found it ridiculous that the exam’s candidates would protest a requirement to possess “English skills of 10th-class levels.”
In almost every state in India, the guardians of culture have tried to restrain the growth of English, but its power has only grown because of its promise of material and social benefits. Most of the cultural guardians themselves send their children to English-language schools. The medium of instruction for higher education in India is almost entirely English.
A politician, Yogendra Yadav, lamented in The Indian Express that “the entire system of higher education that controls white-collar jobs” is loaded against students who did not attend English-language schools. But then, that is the reality of the nation. The dominance of English dims the prospects of students who are too poor to attend an English-language school. But the government, for various reasons, including cultural prejudice, has not done enough to take English to its poorest. Most of its free or cheap schools do not have English as the medium of instruction.
In South India, there have been no protests against the English passages. Historically, that region has protested against the supremacy of Hindi. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his first public speech in the south after assuming office, he spoke in English.
English is indisputably Indian now, and the most useful language in India. But it is not the most beloved, nor the medium of abuse during road rage. That special place Indians will always grant only to their mother tongues.
So the correct answer is “E.”
Follow Manu Joseph, the author of the novel “The Illicit Happiness of Other People,” on Facebook.
