T N Ninan: The triumph of English and why it bodes well for India's youth

Indians' increasing comfort with English should be welcomed because poor proficiency in the language is the ultimate class barrier - English gives you the passport to a bright future

In the welter of typically gloomy numbers put out this week in Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for 2017, there is a remarkable piece of statistic: that 58 per cent of the sample – taken from 14-18-year-olds in rural areas – could read a simple sentence in English. And four in every five of them could explain what the sentence meant. That makes it 46 per cent of the total who could not just read but also understand simple English sentences — and this is in rural India.
 
Compare this with what the Census said in 2001: