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While there are cultural and political dimensions to Singh's arguments, his assertion that English is harmful isn't well-grounded in terms of economic outcomes.
A clutch of recent academic studies have tried to quantify the beneficial economic impacts of speaking English and/or attending an English-medium school. A perfect natural experiment happened in West Bengal. In 1983, the Left Front government eliminated English from the primary school curriculum in government-run schools. The logic of the government and its supporters was that English at the primary level was an elitist pre-occupation and would do more harm than good to the poor rural kids, who were the main beneficiaries of government schools, the argument went, and were more likely to drop out if forced to learn English.
Two studies show that things didn't go quite as planned in West Bengal. The first - by Joydeep Roy, Can changing academic standards affect educational outcomes? Evidence from a policy experiment in India, Georgetown University working paper, 2004 - shows that getting rid of English didn't, as might have been expected, increase enrolment in government schools. Rather, there's some evidence that eliminating English increased the average number of years of schooling, suggesting fewer kids were dropping out because they didn't now have to cope with English in the first few grades, which supports the government's argument. Unfortunately, this benefit came at a high economic cost.
The second West Bengal study - English language premium: Evidence from a policy experiment in India, Washington University in St Louis, working paper, 2008, by Shilpi Kapur and Tanika Chakravorty - shows that a one-per cent reduction in the probability of learning English lowered weekly wages by 1.6 per cent. Overall, this resulted in a whopping 68 per cent drop in wages due to the change in language policy. What presumably happened was that graduates in government schools who had inferior English skills had a harder time competing with graduates of private English-medium schools for well-paying jobs.
It's also noteworthy that the change in language policy led to an increase in families' private expenditure in education - suggesting, for example, that kids in government schools were now being sent for private English coaching classes to make up for not having it in school.
Yet another micro-level study - by Kaivan Munshi and Mark Rosenzweig, Traditional institutions meet the modern world: Caste, gender, and schooling choice in a globalizing economy, American Economic Review, September 2006 - collected and analysed data from the Marathi speaking stronghold of Dadar in Mumbai. It found that an English education, as opposed to Marathi-medium education in secondary school, boosted the incomes of both men and women by about 25 per cent.
A new study - "The return to English language skills in India", Economic Development and Cultural Change, January 2013, by Mehtabul Azam, Amiee Chin, and Nishith Prakash - analyses a large dataset, the 2005 India Human Development Survey, to give us the first macro estimates of the returns to English language skills in India. The first interesting result is that proficiency in English has been sharply increasing in India. According to the 1991 Census, 11 per cent of the population reported speaking some English. According to this new data, that had shot up to 20 per cent by 2005. Evidently, many Indians don't share Singh's logic.
Most importantly, this new study of men's earnings finds a large impact of English language skills on hourly wages. Taking account of other factors that influence wages (such as years of schooling and family background, among others), the study finds that hourly wages are about 34 per cent higher for men who speak fluent English and 13 per cent higher for men who speak some English relative to those men who speak no English.
This is a big impact, comparable to the economic impact of completing secondary school and half as large as a benefit of a university degree.
In fact, speaking English appears to be complementary to education and experience; in other words, more experienced and more educated workers get the most bang for the buck by speaking English. By contrast, young men without secondary education get no extra wage impact from having some English because some English alone isn't enough to get a well paying job anymore although it might have worked for older workers.
Either way it's clear that English is beneficial, not harmful to Indians in the economic domain. Of course, that doesn't address the concern of "cultural nationalists", who bemoan the ill-effects of English on Indian culture, values, etc. Presumably, Singh and others who share his views would be willing to trade off some income for less English and more Hindi or Sanskrit being spoken in India.
In reality, the concern about English is more a red herring than a real argument. Nothing stops a cultural nationalist from using English at work and speaking Vedic Sanskrit at home if he or she wishes - without turning into an "Englishman".
Perhaps it's time for Singh and others who share his views to stop bemoaning the ill-effects of English and recognise whether anyone likes it or not, English is here to stay. Contrary to the idea that requiring English in primary school is elitist, as motivated by West Bengal in 1983, the truth is the most elitist thing you can do is to exclude those who're poor and disadvantaged from getting the benefits of English language skills and English medium education.
