Language in Education Policy: For a Multilingual India

Executive Summary

India is home to 22 scheduled languages and, according to the 2011 Census, 121 languages counted as mother tongues by more than 10,000 speakers each. This paper argues one central claim: mother-tongue-first, genuinely multilingual schooling is not only a cultural or political good but a proven driver of learning, and therefore the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020's three-language formula should be strengthened from a flexible aspiration into a binding, resourced programme, rather than left to chance.

But strengthening it is not the same as promising everything. The paper's flagship idea, that every large school offer a dedicated section for each significant minority language of its district, must be tested against two hard constraints: whether trained teachers actually exist for under-represented languages, and what such a mandate would cost per district. Measured against South Africa, whose constitution promises education in eleven official languages yet whose reading outcomes are among the worst in the world, the lesson is clear: an ambitious multilingual promise fails unless teacher supply, textbooks and funding are secured first. The recommendation is therefore a phased, teacher-supply-first version of the multi-section idea, backed by SMART targets, standardised vernacular textbooks, and audits with language-balance indicators.

The analysis uses two established management tools, SWOT analysis and Mendelow's power-interest matrix (Mendelow, 1981), to structure the diagnosis, and grounds its recommendations in learning-outcome evidence rather than principle alone.

Introduction and Scope

Background on language in India

According to 2011 Census data, India recognises 121 languages as classified mother tongues, grouped from nearly 20,000 raw returns. These languages are markers of community identity, deeply embedded in the political and religious life of South Asia. The Constitution's Eighth Schedule lists 22 scheduled languages designated for promotion; India also recognises 11 classical languages for their cultural heritage. Hindi and English serve as the two official languages of the Union government, but India has no single national language.

Language systems overlap in complex ways. Hindi and Urdu, historically grouped as "Hindustani," are largely mutually intelligible despite different scripts and literary vocabularies, Sanskrit informing Hindi, Persian and Arabic informing Urdu. Code-switching, or alternating between languages mid-conversation, is commonplace, particularly in blended forms like Hinglish. This everyday multilingualism is the reality any policy must work with, not against.

Background on the education system

Education sits on the Concurrent List of the Constitution, giving both state and central governments authority, and creating room for conflict. India runs state boards, national boards such as CBSE and CISCE, and international curricula including IB and Cambridge. The medium of instruction, the main language between teacher and student, shapes what children can actually understand.

History matters here. Wood's Despatch of 1854 established the parallel use of European and vernacular languages in colonial schools. After independence, the University Education Commission (1948 to 49) recommended mother-tongue education through Grade 5, the federal language afterwards, and English from Grade 9. This became the "three-language-formula" lineage that shaped the 1986 National Policy on Education and NEP 2020.

Does mother-tongue instruction actually work? The evidence

Before proposing how to expand multilingual schooling, it is worth asking whether it improves learning at all. The evidence says it does, strongly.

UNESCO's Global Education Monitoring Report finds that 40% of the world's population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand (UNESCO GEM Report, 2016). Where children are taught in a language they do not speak at home, results collapse: in Côte d'Ivoire, 55% of grade 5 students who spoke the test language at home reached reading basics, against just 25% of those who did not; in Honduras the gap was 94% versus 62% (UNESCO GEM Report, 2016). The pattern is consistent across countries, comprehension follows the language of the home.

India's own foundational-learning data show why this matters. The Annual Status of Education Report finds that in 2024 only 23.4% of Std III children in government schools could read a Std II-level text, meaning roughly three in four could not, though this was up from 16.3% in 2022 (ASER, 2024). When the language of the textbook is not the language of the child, that gap widens rather than closes.

There is a cognitive dividend too. A body of neurological research treats bilingualism as a form of "cognitive reserve": in a study of patients at a memory clinic in Hyderabad, the mean age of dementia onset was 65.6 years for bilinguals against 61.1 for monolinguals, a 4.5-year delay that held independent of education and other factors (Freedman et al., 2014). The honest qualification is that bilingualism builds resilience, it does not prevent disease, so this is a reason to value multilingual schooling, not a cure-all to oversell.

Current Policy: NEP 2020 and the Three-Language Formula

The three-language formula in NEP 2020

NEP 2020 is a recommendatory document that emphasises multilingualism and mother-tongue or local-language instruction, proposing a more flexible three-language formula. It explicitly states that no language will be imposed on any state and requires that two of the three languages be native to India. Crucially, it recommends that the medium of instruction be the mother tongue or regional language until at least Grade 5, and ideally until Grade 8, with bilingual textbooks encouraged for science and mathematics. It also promotes Sanskrit and classical languages, foreign-language options at secondary level, and the standardisation of Indian Sign Language.

Implementation, however, has been uneven, some states have adopted the recommendations readily, others have strongly opposed them.

States resisting the formula

Non-Hindi-speaking states, particularly Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal, have raised concerns about practicality and a perceived Hindi bias. Tamil Nadu, treating education as a Concurrent-List subject, maintains its long-standing two-language policy of Tamil and English, suspecting an attempt to impose Hindi under the guise of supporting all Indian languages. Tensions sharpened when central funds under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan were withheld from the state over non-adoption of NEP, prompting legal action and considerable public friction.

States in favour

Other states support the broader reform. Haryana moved to make English and Hindi compulsory for Grade 9 and 10, with Sanskrit, Punjabi or Urdu as third-language options. Andhra Pradesh's education leadership defended the policy on the grounds that it does not make Hindi mandatory but emphasises choice, including the mother tongue as medium. Proponents see a shared link language as an instrument of national unity.

SWOT Analysis of the Three-Language Policy under NEP 2020

Strengths

The policy builds on an existing three-language framework rather than inventing a new system, which aids feasibility. Promoting local languages as the preferred medium means teachers can often be sourced locally. The explicit "no imposition" clause guards against the perception of favouring one language, and the framework supports cultural exchange and the preservation of India's literatures. As the evidence section shows, the multilingual emphasis is also backed by learning-outcome and cognitive research (UNESCO GEM Report, 2016; Freedman et al., 2014).

Weaknesses

The policy is vague on how. It says students, regions and states will collaborate, but offers no mechanism for that coordination. Every additional language is an additional subject that burdens students and demands more teachers and resources in an already strained system, a constraint the recommendations below take seriously rather than assume away.

Opportunities

Digital learning tools can extend instruction in languages that lack local teachers. Developing multilingual textbooks in technical subjects can accelerate the creation and standardisation of scientific vocabulary in Indian languages, a genuine gap today.

Threats

Language is tied to identity politics and is a sensitive issue across South Asia. Because Hindi teaching resources are abundant, there is a real risk of a disproportionate rise in Hindi provision, feeding fears of linguistic homogenisation. Concurrent jurisdiction means Centre-State disputes can stall implementation, and the policy may widen inequality if urban English-medium schools sideline regional languages while rural schools cannot offer foreign or third languages at all.

Stakeholder Mapping

Mapping actors on Mendelow's power-interest matrix (Mendelow, 1981) clarifies who must be managed and how:

• High power, high interest (manage closely): state and central governments and the Finance Ministry, who control policy design and funding.
• Low power, high interest (keep informed): students, parents, teachers, rural and government schools, NGOs and linguistic-minority groups, directly affected but dispersed.
• High power, low interest (keep satisfied): the judiciary, which adjudicates Centre-State conflict and protects minority rights, so the policy must be constitutionally watertight.
• Low power, low interest (monitor): ed-tech firms, publishers, private schools and international bodies.

A Cautionary Comparison: South Africa's Eleven-Language Promise

India is not the first large democracy to promise schooling in many languages, and the most instructive comparison is South Africa, whose constitution recognises eleven official languages and whose Language-in-Education Policy guarantees the right to learn in one's home language "where reasonably practicable." On paper, it is more ambitious than anything NEP proposes. In practice, it is a warning.

Most South African children are taught in their mother tongue only for the first three grades; from Grade 4, instruction switches to English (or Afrikaans), a second language for more than 80% of learners, while the home language becomes just a subject (The Conversation, 2020). The results are stark: in the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, 78% of South African Grade 4 children could not read for meaning in any language, placing the country last among the 50 participating systems (Spaull, 2017).

The reasons are exactly the constraints India would face. Extending mother-tongue instruction even to Grade 6 would require rewriting science, geography and mathematics textbooks into all eleven languages, and would assume that the necessary scientific and academic terminology already exists in each, which it often does not (The Conversation, 2020). South Africa shows that a multilingual guarantee, unmatched by teachers, textbooks and funding, does not raise achievement; it can leave children fluent in no language of learning at all. That is the test India's multi-section proposal must pass.

Proposed Language-in-Education Policy

The goal is to strengthen NEP 2020 for practical implementation on three fronts: clarity of strategy, protection against homogenisation, and prevention of a wider urban-rural gap. The design principle, learned from South Africa, is supply before mandate.

A clear, measurable implementation strategy

Replace vague coordination with SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) targets. For the first language, states can adopt the standard form of the most widely spoken scheduled language while including literature from local dialects to preserve variety. Districts should formally identify their major linguistic minorities using Census mother-tongue data, and each large government school should work towards offering at least one section in each significant minority language, on a district-specific 1 to 5 year timeline with regular inspection to keep resources equal across sections.

Feasibility: can the multi-section mandate actually be staffed and paid for?

This is where ambition meets arithmetic, and where the proposal must be honest. India's government schools already carry a large teacher deficit: as of 2025, 3,57,862 sanctioned teaching posts lay vacant, according to UDISE+ and Project Approval Board data, 1,93,862 in Uttar Pradesh alone, against a workforce of roughly 9.6 million teachers (Careers360 / UDISE+, 2025). There is simply no trained-teacher cadre for many of the 22 scheduled languages outside their home regions, let alone the roughly 99 non-scheduled languages.

The cost is non-trivial too. Consider an illustrative back-of-the-envelope estimate (not a budget figure): if a district has around 15 to 20 large government schools and each opens one extra section for, say, three or four significant minority languages, that is roughly 50 to 80 additional specialist teacher posts per district. At about ₹4.5 lakh a year for an entry-level government teacher under the 7th Pay Commission (Careers360, 2026), that is on the order of ₹2.5 to 3.5 crore per district each year in salaries alone, before textbooks, teacher training and inspection. Across the country's 700-plus districts, the recurring salary bill alone runs into the low thousands of crores.

The conclusion is not to abandon the idea but to sequence it. The mandate should be phased: a language qualifies for a guaranteed section only once (a) a district audit confirms it as a significant minority language and (b) trained teachers and standardised textbooks for it exist or are funded in the same budget cycle. Where teachers do not yet exist, the first investment is a dedicated teacher-training and recruitment pipeline for under-represented scheduled languages, not an unfunded mandate that schools cannot meet.

Standardised bilingual textbooks

A permanent committee should standardise technical terms in vernacular languages and update them as knowledge evolves, so that a science section in an Indian language is not held back by missing vocabulary, the precise failure point South Africa illustrates.

Preventing homogenisation

To counter the risk that abundant Hindi resources crowd out other languages, audits should include explicit language-balance indicators, with targeted investment in high-quality teaching materials and teacher training for under-represented scheduled languages. Quotas and funding should be designed to correct, not reinforce, existing imbalances.

Addressing rural-urban inequality

Audits must verify that none of a school's three languages is neglected, regardless of location, so that the policy does not quietly widen the gap between urban English-medium schools and under-resourced rural ones.

Conclusion

Language-in-education policy demands compassion and foresight, because it touches both identity and livelihood. The core claim of this paper is evidence-backed: teaching children first in a language they understand improves learning, and India should therefore make NEP 2020's multilingual promise real rather than optional. But the reforms should be reviewed continuously against public concern and new technology, including vernacular AI tools such as BharatGPT, not revised once a generation. Above all, South Africa's experience warns that a multilingual guarantee is only as good as the teachers, textbooks and funding behind it. India's advantage is that it can choose to build the supply first, and mandate second.

Sources

1. UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, "40% don't access education in a language they understand." https://www.unesco.org/gem-report/en/articles/40-dont-access-education-language-they-understand
2. ASER Centre, Annual Status of Education Report (Rural) 2024, National Findings (Std III reading levels). https://asercentre.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/ASER-2024-National-findings.pdf
3. N. Spaull, "The unfolding reading crisis: the new PIRLS 2016 results" (78% of SA Grade 4 cannot read for meaning; last of 50 countries). https://nicspaull.com/2017/12/05/the-unfolding-reading-crisis-the-new-pirls-2016-results/
4. The Conversation, "Policy options to crack the mother tongue versus English riddle in South African schools" (2020). https://theconversation.com/policy-options-to-crack-the-mother-tongue-versus-english-riddle-in-south-african-schools-142396
5. Careers360 / UDISE+ & PAB data, 3,57,862 vacant sanctioned government teaching posts (2025). https://news.careers360.com/teachers-day-2025-government-schools-3-57-lakh-teaching-vacancies-udise-plus-pab-data-uttar-pradesh-lead-education-ministry
6. Careers360, Government Teacher Salary (entry-level PRT, ~₹4.5 lakh/year under 7th Pay Commission). https://competition.careers360.com/articles/government-teacher-salary
7. M. Freedman, S. Alladi, H. Chertkow, E. Bialystok, F. I. M. Craik, et al., "Delaying Onset of Dementia: Are Two Languages Enough?", Behavioural Neurology (2014); Hyderabad cohort, dementia onset 65.6 vs 61.1 years. National Library of Medicine (PMC). https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4052164/