Language and the Indian Education System

Our project began with us researching the Indian education system and interpersonal relationships. We did primary and secondary research, while also taking a look at our very different experiences in the system. We found many intervention points while mapping out the system and decided to settle on the language issue as our main topic.

With this topic in mind, we explored how language is viewed in society, its place in the education system, the conflict between linguistic communities and the art of language learning. We gained a lot of insights from this and decided to narrow down on a few target areas (promoting vernacular languages, multilingual education, keeping in touch with one’s heritage and acceptance of different linguistic communities).

Keeping this in mind, we came up with Bhaasha Co., a community publication company for digital and print media. The company makes educational multilingual books to encourage young children to learn multiple vernacular languages (the books are incorporated into the education system as a learning aid), comics for young adults to promote socially conscious messages and provide a platform for young content creators from all linguistic backgrounds, and stickers and memes to generate interest towards other languages amongst social media users and popularise the use of native languages. Another intended idea of use is mascots. Their goal in our mind is to help people interact with the language and create a sense of community.

In the future, we’d aim to collaborate with the education system in full capacity, invite contributions from local content creators, document and publish folklores, and preserve the tradition of oral storytelling in scriptless communities through any intervention possible.