LANGUAGE IN INDIA

LANGUAGE AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT IN INDIA
Alok Gupta

ABSTRACT

Language use in multilingual and multicultural India is naturally diverse. Although each state in India is carved out based on the dominant language of the region, any school or work environment is also multilingual and multicultural.

In such a complex environment, language of knowledge and the culture language may come into conflict with each other and hinder inter-community and intra-community communication. Likewise, because each organization is hierarchically structured, messages and instructions always do not get passed on in consonance with the intent of meaning.

Industry in India has changed over time. Quality, price, service and guarantees, skilled man power have added new dimensions to the concept of 'competition'. Given the fact that the language of knowledge in the industries is English and interaction is carried on as a mix of English with the local language, distortion of meaning across the hierarchy is apparent. Its impact, therefore, is on the end product as well as the economic stability of the industry.

This paper draws on Pool's (1972) analysis of language use in multilingual contexts to situate a point of view that, despite language uniformity in most of the Indian states, per capita output is way below that of the other developed nations. There could be other socio-political reasons for this disparity, but the role of language needs also to be kept in mind. Therefore, inter- and intra-disciplinary attempts should be made by language researchers and management gurus to find a solution to this problem to evolve a viable practical model which could be applied to situations of the present day multilingual Indian Industrial set up.

KEY CONCEPTS

Language Diversity, Language Uniformity, Industrial Development, Economic Development, Knowledge, Multilingual Communication Fields, Intra-Disciplinary Research, Multilinguism, Communication

INTRODUCTION

The Indian Urban Society is multicultural and multilingual in nature. Other than agriculture related industries, most other industries operate in this urban environment where persons from different strata of education, language, religions and gender work together as a team to manufacture products.

PASSABLE PRODUCTS

In most of the 20th century, Indian industries were operating in a protected economic environment where seller was the king and the buyer had to satisfy himself with whatever was provided to him. Competition was kept under control by quotas doled out by the Government and the consumer had no place to complain about the price or the quality. In this sheltered environment, knowledge and productivity of the enterprise as a whole, or its individual work force was not of much consequence so long as a near passable product was made. The Government assured the owners a good return on investment, because of quantitative control on production. The work force was assured a regular income because of strong unions and labor laws of the land.

ENTRY OF MULTINATIONALS AND FIERCE COMPETITION AND

All this changed by the end of 1900's and, in the 21st century, the country has been opened wide for unrestricted import of quality goods, some of which are at low prices never heard of. The Indian industry, all of a sudden, is facing competition in quality, price, service and guarantees, which were not dreamt of. Entry of Multinationals, need of skilled manpower by developed nations and advent of IT industry opened up new avenues for the workforce with exorbitant salaries. The workman, who used to fight through unions to keep his measly job, found many well paying alternatives. Unions are almost out of commission. The owner, whose industry was run mostly by proxy in the past, now has to work more than his work force to keep the wheels running.

LANGUAGE COMMUNICATION WITHIN INDUSTRIAL SETTING

The Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore recognized these problems as early as 1987, where a conference was held on February 11, on the theme of `Language and Communication within an Industrial Setting'. Some comments from the papers presented therein are given below.

Bayer (1989) argued, "Every organisation in a multilingual, multicultural and multiethnic environment brings together individuals who have been through different processes of socialisation… Therefore in such situations, with people from differing modes of socialisation, communication is often in-explicit, indirect and potentially ambiguous".

Gupta (1989) proposed, "Productivity in industrial India is the main theme for the progress of the country and effective communication has been recognised as a pre-requisite to productivity".

Rajyashree (1989) suggested, "Communication is crucial at every stage in an industry thus affecting its production".

Dua (1989) concluded, "It is therefore necessary to study language in industry more systematically and comprehensively not only to understand the specialised use of language but also to solve the problems of management and communication."

CREATION OF WEALTH

In this new era of competition, it has become apparent that only the workforce creates the wealth. Therefore, higher the level of knowledge and productivity of the workman, higher is the wealth generation. Mere inspection cannot produce quality products. Being a slave driver cannot reduce costs. The only way is to upgrade the worker by improving patterns of communication, and thus knowledge, at all levels.

LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT

From the industrial revolution to date, some of the countries that have made major impact on the industrialization scene are England, France, Germany, USA, Japan, and now Korea. It is interesting to note the fact that all these nations are, by and large, dominant monolingual countries. Some of the other developed monolingual European countries are Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Netherlands.

On the other hand, their multilingual neighbours like Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, Portugal, etc., did not do as well in the industrial field. The second greatest power, USSR, which after disintegration turned out to be really backward, happens to be a multilingual/multicultural country.

WHY THIS SITUATION?

Multilinguism seems to be the prevalent common thread running though most of the industrially developing (formerly called as under-developed) countries.

It is logical to assume that all industrial activities are primarily team oriented and as such the distortion of meaning of information and knowledge across the hierarchy affects quality and productivity. If the communication were better so would be the level of activity.

Does this mean that Language Diversity and multilinguism become THE bane of industrial development?

PREVIOUS STUDIES - LANGUAGE DIVERSITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Work done by Fishman (1968) and Pool (1972) in the international context is noteworthy.

Fishman (1968) had compiled data from 58 countries and observed, "Many of the reported differences between linguistically homogenous and heterogeneous polities also appear to be differences between rich and poor polities … that language diversity may also hinder development".

Pool (1972) went deeper into Fishman's hypothesis and collected data from 133 countries. He plotted the size of the largest native language community in a country as a proportion of the population, on the x-axis, and the gross domestic product per capita on the y-axis. Based on his analysis he inferred, "Language uniformity then, is a necessary but not sufficient condition of economic development, and economic development is a sufficient but not necessary condition of language uniformity. But a country that is linguistically highly heterogeneous is always under-developed, and a country that is developed always has considerable language uniformity, if not uniformity of language origin, then widespread knowledge of a common language."

The above studies prompted me to look at the relationship of language diversity and development in Indian scenario, which is linguistically highly diverse, multilingual and multicultural.

THE INDIAN SCENE

The data for correlating language diversity with productivity for each of the states in India can only be based on Census figures, which are sometimes incomplete. Even though the last Census was taken in 2001, figures from this census are not yet available. Hence the 1991 Census data has been used for this analysis.

Population figures of different states of India are available at http://indiabudget.nic.in/es99-2000/app9.1.pdf. Figures for the Net State Domestic Product at Current prices for the year 1990-91 are given at the web site http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2001-02/chapt2002/tab17.pdf . Data for the percentage of majority language speakers in each state is shown in the table at the web site http://www.ddindia.com/About+DD/About+DD+-+Commercial+Service/The+Three+main+Languages+in+every+State.htm

The figures of state-wise Population, State Domestic Product (SDP), Per Capita SDP and Percentage of Majority Language Speakers, after due mathematical conversion, are given in Table-1. Since there are many small states and union territories, where the figures may not be of relevance, data from the states having population of higher than 10 million was taken to plot a scatter diagram, which is shown in Figure-1. In this graphic presentation, the Percentage of Majority Language speakers in a state are plotted on x-axis and the Per Capita State Domestic Product on the y-axis, as was done in the analysis by Pool (ibid.).

Table-1

India 1991 : Lg. Diversity - Domestic Output Matrix

Figure - 1

From this scatter diagram, using Brassard (1985) explanation, it can be inferred that there is a possible positive correlation between the two variables. This inference is somewhat similar to Pool's work, where a trend is observed, but no concrete conclusions can be drawn. Indian development, during the period 1947~1995, was totally controlled by the government, whose decisions were influenced by political and socialistic philosophies. Nation's highest per capita SDP in the state of power, Delhi, is therefore no coincidence. Similarly low per capita SDP reported for Bihar can definitely be attributed to the poor law and order situation prevalent in the state.

This brings up the possibility of adding to the assumptions made by Pool (ibid.). In his model, it seems to be assumed that a nation is a homogenous entity, meaning that whole of the population is distributed uniformly within the countries from the point of view of language use. This assumption may not be correct in general, and definitely not so in the case of India where the states were formed primarily based on language.

In simplified words, it is logical to assume that if there is language diversity in all the regions of a country, the productivity could suffer all over the place. But if a country is made up of several regions, where there is a high level of language homogeneity in each region by itself, the sum of the high productivities of each region will still bring the nation ahead, despite the overall diversity of language.

The general situation in India is quite similar to the second case pointed above, where language diversity exists not only at national level but also at state level. But each region is quite homogenous from the point of view of language. However, in high technology industries, especially in major urban Indian cities, multilingual and multicultural people come together forming Multilingual Communication Fields as pointed out by Khokle (1997): "Traditional Trade Centers, places of pilgrimage, military campaigns, centres of feudal power, post-industrialisation production centres and public sector industrial centres have attracted migration from different parts of the country resulting in concentration of speakers of many different languages and dialects at one place. Such places have been labelled as multilingual communication fields (MCFs)."

Added to it is the fact that the basic language of the industry is English and hence the situation becomes even more complex.

CONCLUSION

The situation in Urban India cannot be changed to monolinguism just for the benefit of the Industry. At the same time the industry cannot survive if its work force cannot be advanced in knowledge and productivity. The language researchers could help the Indian industry in providing some insight into how to handle such language diversity and yet enhance the productivity and knowledge.

In general, language researchers have limited access, merely as external observers, to language use in the industry. Therefore inter and intra-disciplinary attempts should be made by language researchers and management gurus to find a solution to this problem. A viable practical model could be suggested which, when applied to situations of the present day multilingual Indian Industrial set ups, will result in very high levels of communication thus enhancing knowledge, productivity and development.

REFERENCES

Bayer, Jennifer 1989, "Language in Organisation and Institutions", in Bayer, J.M. (Ed.), Communication and Interaction Networks. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

Brassard, Michael 1985, "The memory Jogger: A Pocket Guide of Tools for Continuous Improvement" (Lawrence, Mass: G.O.A.L)

Dua, H.R. 1989, "Language Use in Industry: Implications for Management", in Bayer, J.M. (Ed.), Communication and Interaction Networks. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

Fishman, Joshua A. 1968, "Some Contrasts between linguistically homogeneous and linguistically heterogeneous polities", in Fishman, Joshua A. et al. (Eds.), Language Problems of Developing Nations. New York: Wiley.

Gupta, Alok 1989, "Participant-Observations of Language Use in an Industrial Setting", in Bayer, J.M. (Ed.), Communication and Interaction Networks. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

Khokle, V.S. 1997, "Multilingual Ethos: Built in Potential for Communication in Indian Context" in Koul, O.N. (Ed), South Asian Language Review, Vol. VII No. 2. New Delhi: Creative Books.

Pool, Jonathan 1972, "National Development and Language Diversity, in Fishman, Joshua. A. (Ed.), Advances in the Sociology of Languages. The Hague: Mouton.

Rajyashree, K.S. 1989, "Language Use in Communicational Interactions: Industries in the Slums", in Bayer, J.M. (Ed.), Communication and Interaction Networks. Mysore: Central Institute of Indian Languages.

http://indiabudget.nic.in/es99-2000/app9.1.pdf (Population of India) 10.10.2004

http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2001-02/chapt2002/tab17.pdf (Net SDP) 10.10.2004

http://www.ddindia.com/About+DD/About+DD+-+Commercial+Service/The+Three+main+Languages+in+every+State.htm (Three Main Languages in every State) 10.10.2004

Acknowledgement

I thank Dr. Jennifer Bayer, CIIL, Mysore, for the academic interaction and encouragement provided in writing this paper.

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