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The multilingual reality of India is both challenge and opportunity. Our schools must swap the notion that English-only equals excellence

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SHEIKH GULZAR AHMAD

In today’s multilingual India, the modern classroom can too often feel like a linguistic maze. Children arrive speaking a home vernacular fluently, yet struggle to read or write it. Migrant students may understand several tongues but are literate in none. Schools insist on English-communication at the cost of a child’s confidence. Urban families gradually distance themselves from their mother-tongue, believing English equals success. Meanwhile the three-language formula adds yet another layer of complexity.

When the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP) talks about mother-tongue instruction in the

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