Abstract:

       There is an assumption in India today that the spread of English-medium education is necessary for India's growth. Technologist and entrepreneur Sankrant Sanu questions this with a detailed study based on his visits to over 35 countries to study language policy. He finds that, even though English is being used as a link language, the most prosperous countries are using their own languages as the medium for higher education, science, medicine, engineering and law. Of the top 20 richest countries all of them uses the common languages of the people, of which only 4 are English-medium. Of the 20 poorest countries however, more use English-medium, and exclude the vast majority of their people from development. 

The advantages of science and development will happen the fastest when brought to it in the languages of the common people. Based on this, Sankrant has created a comprehensive policy proposal for Indian languages that is based on the EU model. This proposal allows every child in India to be educated to the highest level in their own language and restores the primacy of the economic linkages of Indian languages which is necessary to Indian to develop both economically and culturally. 

About speaker:

        Sankrant Sanu is an author, technologist and entrepreneur. He was a senior development manager at Microsoft where he co-founded Microsoft Sharepoint. He has been a serial entrepreneur since then, involved in startups in Seattle, Bay Area, Ottawa and Gurgaon. Some of his essays were published in the book “Invading the Sacred.”  He has written for Rediff, Entrepreneur Magazine, Dainik Jagran, the Hindustan Times, Amar Ujala, and Manushi among others.

Sankrant did his B.Tech. in Computer Science from IIT Kanpur. Sankrant did graduate studies in Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. He teaches the Art of Living course. His latest entrepreneurship venture is the publishing house Garuda Prakashan. He holds six technology patents and blogs at sankrant.org.