Hope, development of language ,appeasement and vote bank politics ....

An interesting statement that came out from the Chief minister of TamilNadu recently was about job preference for Tamil educated students. This dubious move has been discussed widely in national newspapers and channels. Often these articles take an outsider view of the situation in Tamil Nadu and hence are always baffled by the decisions. It seems obvious that there is vote bank politics behind the move. I agree to the Chief ministers argument fully when he said that "English is just a language and the knowledge of a language cannot be equated to intelligence". I know a hell lot of people who came from Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada medium schools who have made it to the best schools in Engineering and Management. But then they had to embrace English language after they reached the higher echelons of education / professional career.

The big question is do we need to reserve seats for Tamil medium students in Tamil Nadu ?? Is it to encourage people to study in Tamil medium so that the existing Tamil medium schools dont close down ?? Or is it to provide hope to the Tamil medium students who havent learnt much of Hindi or English , who are hoping that government does something for them to find employment within the state ?? Infact , the truth is that , the government has to preserve the language, but how ??,the answer is... by showing them employment opportunities within the state government . Government decision seems to make common sense here. Because, in today's scenario , the masses dont want to learn a language unless its forced upon them or makes good "business" sense for them. The Government seems to appeal to the "business" sense of the masses who want a good stable job within their comfort zone. All this seems fine to me in the short term to appease people and improve the feelgood factor.

Looking from the point of Mobility within our country, which is of great importance as on today and for the future, it does leave us with two social classes. One class of people who are English educated , who find it easy to go to Bangalore/Delhi/Mumbai /Hyderabad to find jobs. Another class of people who will not travel out of their state due to their inherent language problems. I come from Kerala , a state where there are more trade unions than the people themselves. Due to the English education system , I could possibly go and find jobs in other parts of India, although trade unions had successfully managed to scare away Private sector companies.

So my point is that , the move seems good for Tamil, good for the people who cannot move out of the state due to Language problems , good for the vote bank because the same people would vote for DMK, but not so good for the mobility of the future generations who hope for a government job just because they studied in a Tamil medium school and have a degree to show to the masses.