After reorganization of states on the basis of the respective languages, regionalism has gained both the political power as also socio-economic importance. As each state language is more important than any other language there is no unanimity regarding some common language which may be a national language of communication in all states as also in the language of governance in the country.
This is the reason why students resorted to agitation for UPSC test examination in Hindi and not English as has been practice for the last many years. But while Hindi is acceptable to states in northern India, the southern Indian states have their own languages and they normally do not accept any aggression on their home language. That is why the issue was raised in parliament by the AIDMK member M.Thambidurai who stressed that the students appearing for important test examinations should be allowed to take their exams in their regional languages. The parliamentary affairs minister M.Venkaiah Naidu had to respond positively with statement that there is force in argument that the civil service examinations should be conducted in all languages listed in eighth schedule of the Constitution.
Although English is a national language of governance at present and all officers of the higher cadres are expected to follow English irrespective of their state languages, the situation may not be continued in future even though English is also language of global communication. This is because the English medium schools are mostly located in urban and semi-urban areas and they are costly for poor students in both the rural and urban areas.
But if regional languages are accepted as medium of competitive examinations, the prospective officials have to be located in the states of their own languages and national importance of the competitive examinations would be to some extent neutralized.
But if all regional languages have to be made medium of competitive examinations the question remains as to which would be a language of not only national governance at the Union government’s level but also at the level of other national bodies like the RBI and other semi-government organizations having national status.
The language phenomenon is thus a sort of crisis which has to be solved by deliberations with the state governments and some permanent arrangement to keep one language either English or Hindi.
