The Hindu Business Line : <I>Vanishing advantage </I>

Foreign media and financial analysts usually speak of two great advantages for India in the world economy: the vast pool of science and technology graduates and the millions who can wield the English language. Though India's edge in both these is impressive to a first-time visitor to the country, experience in teaching hundreds of middle- and senior-managers over three decades and more makes me sceptical.

The average professional's facility with the English language and his self-expression are in serious decline. No wonder CEOs of many companies place improvement in communication skills at the top of their management development agenda. The problem begins with the way we teach (or don't) in professional education in commerce, accountancy or engineering, where the bulk of our managers are trained.

Indifferent quality

Written and spoken English have never been the forte with these disciplines. The subjects tend to be dominated by numerical calculations and technical formulae or laws; and recalling them accurately and reproducing them always takes priority.

Putting together a reasoned argument and expressing one's own thoughts does not receive the emphasis it ought to. Errors in language per se are routinely overlooked and not corrected. In schools, however, there is unabated demand for education in the English medium while the quality of its supply continues to be variable.

Glaring deficiencies

Managers themselves do not value writing in proper sentences, partly because of the trend of reducing everything to bullets. Sound bites and headline phrases are used in chunks with little understanding of their nuances of meaning, in what has become a medley language now popularised by television. The result is that middle and senior managers get by within their own organisations in a creative mixture of their native tongues and Hindi, along with a smattering of technical and commercial terms in English. But when it comes to making a presentation, answering questions and defending against critical comment, even in front of a small audience, the deficiencies are glaring.

What the academic administrators, teachers and the graduates themselves forget is that clear and fluent spoken expression is not acquired separately, as if it were some other skill, but rather it has to be learnt in the context of whatever subject one is studying.

No short cuts

Yet that is not the worst of it: the approach of the typical engineer or accountant is to ask for a few proven solutions to any problem, whereas there are no short cuts to linguistic mastery. Reading widely, speaking frequently and writing one's thoughts down, having them corrected and commented upon — all these are the well known ways of acquiring facility over any language. Unfortunately, the reading habit has never been our strong point. Some senior managers hardly read anything worthwhile to keep abreast of developments in their fields. English, a lively and growing world language of choice bar none for commerce, industry and higher education, gifted to us by historical accident, can thus be easily lost.

I doubt if concerted action to improve proficiency, of the kind already underway in China, will happen here given the Indian federal and coalition politics. Therefore, the onus is squarely on the shoulders of the private sector and the corporate world to re-train its employees in a minimum programme of command over English.

S. Ramachander

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