Deterioration in English Standards
It is often seen these days that many people have a problem while speaking English. Once a student reaches high school he or she is expected to speak good English especially in metropolitan cities. However it is seen that people who after finishing their PUC successfully struggle to speak decent English. These days many people are seen speaking words like bathed, putted etc. Some reasons for deterioration in
People are possessive about their regional languages:- Many people in todays world are greatly possessive about speaking their regional language. Even employees of foreign banks speak regional language. These days you find many people leaving their home states in search of opportunities in other states. In some cases employees are transferred to other States. For example an employee from Kolkata is transferred to Bangalore he will not know how to speak Kannada especially when he is going to stay there for a few months or couple of years. He has to be dependent on English. It is often seen in this situations that once somebody calls a customer care service and asks a query in English, the customer care representative replies in his regional language i.e. Kannada. You cannot expect a Bengali temporarily staying in Karnataka to be fluent in Kannada. The common medium understandable to both is English, and therefore the reply should be in English. What is surprising is that customer care representatives working in reputed international banks like Citibank or that of mobile companies like Vodafone reply to their customers queries in their mother tongue. Some people take fanatical pride in speaking their mother tongue even if nobody understands it. For example in many sates if strangers who have come for a visit as for a route of a place they do not know for example a Kannadiga who does not know the bus routes asks somebody in Tamil Nadu, he is replied to in Tamil. I am not picking some states, because the states cited are only examples and this sort of thing happens every where. Replying in regional language to a helpless person who cannot understand the language i is not only fanatical pride but very bad manners.
Lack of Discipline and schools due to political compulsion:- When I was a student in Secunderabad, it was mandatory to speak English in the school premises. If it was noticed that there was a deviation, students used to be penalized by 10 paise. However that does not seem to be these days probably because of political compulsions.
A particular incident happened during once when I was travelling in bus. A passenger asked the bus conductor "2 Ticket's to Indiranagar" very politely. The conductor lost his cool, reacted very angrily by shouting at the passenger in front of everybody in the bus. He started shouting in Kannada, some foreigner has come and is speaking English. He just did not say once, but kept on saying throughout the journey and everybody were just listening. The bus conductor forgot the fact that he was a public servant. Can you just imagine the bus conductor gets a job in Kerala and somebody reacts to him as badly in Kerala.
The feeling of excessive pride in our mother tongue is one reason for neglecting English. India is a land of many States and many languages and Indians move around their country regularly. In this regard if there is one thing in common it is English and therefore English is a connecting language for all Indians.
Regards
Satish
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