If I have to answer this in one word its a BIG NO. Since there are lot of ifs & buts and assumptions associated with it - will elaborate a little bit.
First, why NO ? To guage a nations development - language is not a metric or criteria - industrialization, education, standard of living are some of the metrics. With respect to this if you see the G-5, G-7, G-8 or G-20 group of countries - majority of the countries (in each group) are non-English countries. In fact English as a native language is only for a handful of countries - UK, USA, Australia, Canada, New zealand South Africa and few others.
Countries like Germany, Russia, Japan, China, France,Italy, India etc .. are all world's advanced economies and no way they can say the development (or the non-development) is because of English. For Engineering, the benchmark is Germany, for quality the bench mark is Japanese, for cost effective - China, Taiwan, worlds sweetest language - Italian, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil - opinions differ, but not English ....So English is not a differentiating factor. No doubt English is established itself as a language of business and to an extent language of technology. But it doesn't mean that English alone can bring prosperity or growth to a nation. It is a good second language. Thats it.
With respect to Indian situation vis-a-vis English - ONE BIG MYTH that is created and being circulated - English is the reason for our (recent) growth and success. Nothing can be far from truth. In fact this (misguided) over-dependence on English is actually holding us back on the development. People will argue that the IT, ITS, ITES ($) revenues are all because of English. My personal opinion on this is it is nothing but a glorified clerical service and bodyshopping. What we earn on this is peanuts when compared to what we could have. The problem is we dont have any IP/Patent/Invention. We dont invest/develop worldclass products. Germany built SAP. Japs created SONY. We dont have a world class BRAND (yet). To build that you dont need English. You need native intelligence. Which we have. But which is blurred because of dependence on English.
The limiting factor is - our higher education not being in ones mother tongue. Even - to understand the concepts - one has to be proficient in a foreign language (English) and then master the subject - this is pretty difficult for somebody who is switching to English Medium at the college level. The creative ability of one diminishes if he/she is forced to think in another language.
Also, on the English/British education system - its again a forced one on us (by British and Christian missionaries). My personal opinion on this is - it creates very good clerks and followers (and restricts creative thinking). It is to the credit of our native intelligence (common sense?) that we were able to overcome most of its limitations and be able to grow.
Before the English/British style education we had the Gurukul style of schooling. It will be another topic/debate on the merits and demerits of it. The one good thing I could think of the present (English/British) education system is it helped to eradicate few social barriers. But at what cost ? At the cost of our Mother Tongue(s).....which I feel is very costly .....
It is a pity that our medium of instruction has to be in English (a foreign language) instead of our Mother tongue. This in spite of being one of the advanced civilizations in the world - be it architectural wonders (Tanjore temples), engineering feats (Kallanai dam) or in medicine, literature etc. For almost two to three generations and more as a nation/state we have to endure this ignominy and the worst thing is we take pride in it. The slow death of our Mother tongues is an unpardonable sin we are doing to our forefathers, culture and civilization.
We are going to have one generation of people (are already we have ?) who is neither proficient in English (but they think they are good at it) nor good at their own mother tongue (for which they are proud of (!)) and have little or no knowledge of their nations main language.
First, why NO ? To guage a nations development - language is not a metric or criteria - industrialization, education, standard of living are some of the metrics. With respect to this if you see the G-5, G-7, G-8 or G-20 group of countries - majority of the countries (in each group) are non-English countries. In fact English as a native language is only for a handful of countries - UK, USA, Australia, Canada, New zealand South Africa and few others.
Countries like Germany, Russia, Japan, China, France,Italy, India etc .. are all world's advanced economies and no way they can say the development (or the non-development) is because of English. For Engineering, the benchmark is Germany, for quality the bench mark is Japanese, for cost effective - China, Taiwan, worlds sweetest language - Italian, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Telugu, Tamil - opinions differ, but not English ....So English is not a differentiating factor. No doubt English is established itself as a language of business and to an extent language of technology. But it doesn't mean that English alone can bring prosperity or growth to a nation. It is a good second language. Thats it.
With respect to Indian situation vis-a-vis English - ONE BIG MYTH that is created and being circulated - English is the reason for our (recent) growth and success. Nothing can be far from truth. In fact this (misguided) over-dependence on English is actually holding us back on the development. People will argue that the IT, ITS, ITES ($) revenues are all because of English. My personal opinion on this is it is nothing but a glorified clerical service and bodyshopping. What we earn on this is peanuts when compared to what we could have. The problem is we dont have any IP/Patent/Invention. We dont invest/develop worldclass products. Germany built SAP. Japs created SONY. We dont have a world class BRAND (yet). To build that you dont need English. You need native intelligence. Which we have. But which is blurred because of dependence on English.
The limiting factor is - our higher education not being in ones mother tongue. Even - to understand the concepts - one has to be proficient in a foreign language (English) and then master the subject - this is pretty difficult for somebody who is switching to English Medium at the college level. The creative ability of one diminishes if he/she is forced to think in another language.
Also, on the English/British education system - its again a forced one on us (by British and Christian missionaries). My personal opinion on this is - it creates very good clerks and followers (and restricts creative thinking). It is to the credit of our native intelligence (common sense?) that we were able to overcome most of its limitations and be able to grow.
Before the English/British style education we had the Gurukul style of schooling. It will be another topic/debate on the merits and demerits of it. The one good thing I could think of the present (English/British) education system is it helped to eradicate few social barriers. But at what cost ? At the cost of our Mother Tongue(s).....which I feel is very costly .....
It is a pity that our medium of instruction has to be in English (a foreign language) instead of our Mother tongue. This in spite of being one of the advanced civilizations in the world - be it architectural wonders (Tanjore temples), engineering feats (Kallanai dam) or in medicine, literature etc. For almost two to three generations and more as a nation/state we have to endure this ignominy and the worst thing is we take pride in it. The slow death of our Mother tongues is an unpardonable sin we are doing to our forefathers, culture and civilization.
We are going to have one generation of people (are already we have ?) who is neither proficient in English (but they think they are good at it) nor good at their own mother tongue (for which they are proud of (!)) and have little or no knowledge of their nations main language.
