Language politics again

The future of something like two lakh school children in and around urban centres in Karnataka has been thrown into uncertainty, with the state education minister's decision to "de-recognise" over 1,400 schools for flouting the state's language policy. The policy says all schools under the Karnataka State Education Board that were started after 1994 should impart education in Kannada, or the mother tongue, and start teaching English only from Class V. Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, who had promised publicly to make English teaching "mandatory" for rural children, seems to be a helpless observer to this new madness. The government has already announced that it is preparing plans to shift large numbers of affected children to nearby schools that do not run foul of the policy, and to give them concessions like exemption from wearing the right uniform and not having to appear for the next round of examinations. The chief minister, meanwhile, has said that the state cabinet will take a decision on the matter, but only after the special assembly session that is starting in Belgaum. Why the assembly should not discuss this urgent and important issue, and why it should be left hanging for weeks, is a mystery.

If Karnataka thinks it is charting new territory, it is wrong. Other states have been down this road before and realised their folly. Gujarat pronounced decades ago that all school education would be in Gujarati, and as a result made its youngsters incapable of seeking job opportunities outside the state. West Bengal, under Marxist fervour, did the same thing and has now retraced its steps after it saw that the whole thing was counter-productive. In Karnataka, the issue is not really the medium of instruction but from which class English teaching begins. Teachers in these schools address students mostly in Kannada and children write exams in Kannada or English. Children from the better-off urban homes usually write in English and those from poor or rural homes write in Kannada. Thus, it is wrong to call them English-medium schools. The established schools in the state are not affected as they began long before 1994, the year of the relevant Supreme Court verdict under which the state's language policy has been framed. That verdict itself has been challenged and the Karnataka High Court is yet to pronounce on the matter. So leaders of some categories among the affected schools are claiming that they will move the court against the government's de-recognition orders. Another way out for the affected schools is to come under either of the two national school board systems, but they may lack the educational standards and resources to qualify for such recognition.

It is an irony that, for more than a decade, the state's education department has been turning a blind eye to schools flouting what was announced as policy but never implemented. Today's sudden disruption hits hardest the aspirational poor who want to give their children a better life, for they will bear the brunt of the guillotine that has been applied. This episode also points to the chief minister's declining authority, as uncertainty looms over the future of his government. Individual ministers (the education minister belongs to the same Janata Dal-S as the chief minister) and political groups are taking positions which they feel will help them electorally, perhaps in the not distant future. And it is hard to find a more emotive issue than language.