The familiar adage is that there are many Indias. Given our ancient Indic obsession with pairs of opposites, our academic and popular journals are full of bi-polar descriptions. Rich vs. poor, rural vs. urban, Bangalore’s silicon plateau vs. Bihar’s badlands, Gurgaon’s sleek shopping malls (islands of consumerism) vs. Vidarbha’s crop-less farms (islands of death), soaring stock markets vs. barefoot children, spiralling real estate values vs. horror-stricken slums, new-found materialism vs. eternal spiritual values... the list goes on.

I’d like to make my wise sage-like contribution to this litany. We have two labour markets. One where wages increase at double digit rates, where mobility is the name of the game (if you don’t switch jobs every year there is something wrong with you), where resumes gain in value each month, where placement agencies make a fortune. The other where joblessness is an endless fate, where years of despair pass you by as you keep waiting for a job that never turns up and you fill your life with inane activity, not with fruitful employment, an environment where real incomes shrink, savings erode and where you are left as a mere spectator watching the ‘other’ India pass you by.

There is only one differentiator between the two worlds: knowledge of English or lack thereof. You may have flunked high school, but if your English is passable, you are on to the ladder of upward mobility. You may have a master’s degree or even a doctorate, but if your English is poor or non-existent you are for all practical purposes excluded from the ‘shining’ India. Even more than engineering degrees or MBAs, the English language is the great divider.

... contd.