Mind their language

The State should abstain from imposing choices

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The three-language policy, under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has sparked an avoidable controversy that local politicians are exploiting. The latest debate has been simmering for at least a year and reveals that no political party is free of language chauvinism. Significantly, the controversy has roiled India's more industrialised states — Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra (where residents are being harassed for not being able to speak the local language) — principally over fears over the imposition of Hindi. From blue- to white-collar, all three states have been recipients and beneficiaries of large cohorts of migrant workers from India's less prosperous northern and eastern states, the former being predominantly Hindi-speaking. Sporadic incidents of violence against migrants had happened in the past, but the NEP 2020 has unwittingly succeeded in taking it to a new level. If such violence is allowed to spread, the economic benefits from migrant workers will soon disappear, striking a blow to these states' mode