1.I do not know the exact size of the Indian economy, but if you stop twitching and observe your own link carefully, you will see a button called “rank by growth”. It is right next to the “rank by size” that you saw on your google expedition. The result might cause some pruritus, so keep some calamine lotion handy.

1. Here is a report from the Economist on the projected size of the different economies in 2020. Enjoy with a samosa and a bottle of Kingfisher.

2. The size of the parallel economy is about the same as the legitimate economy in India. A rude realisation of this came to me during my visit to the Nehru place software market in Delhi a few days ago. This is both a good and a bad thing, but a potential source of strength nevertheless.

4.I wonder how you choose your nom de plumes- They have a pattern which I can’t explain logically, but I can pick you out 9 out of 10 times. Fascinating, the mind of a revolutionary drone…

The next time the Dev/Prema/Valmiki bot shows up, it’ll be with the name tag “Arundhati Roy”

“In fact, brahmi (the earlier pan indian one) and devanagari (a later script predominant in the north, but nevertheless a descendant of brahmi) form the bases for virtually all native indic script.” Actually it was on a trip to Thailand when I realized this. Seeing what was a modified brahmi and being able to link it to all the Indian languages. Having lived outside of India for so very long, I see the uniting threads quite easily now. But living in India as a child, Hindi/devnagari looked very different from Telugu or Tamil and ne’er the twain shall meet.

http://money.cnn.com/news/economy/g20/interactive/index.html?cnn=yes

India is not on the list despite having a population larger than every country on the list combined (leaving out China). Brazil is on that list with a GDP substantially larger than India’s. It is insane to claim that India has “arrived”. It has a long, long way to go.

Actually, the attempts to nationalize hindi preceded even independence (as seen in Rajaji’s attempt), with agitations of varying scale extending through the 30s, 40s and 50s as well. The agitations of the late 60s were not, as I’m sure you know, the only ones.

However, thanks for the insight on large scale immigration from Bihar and UP (did not know that). Props to TN for handling it better than certain counterparts in Maharashtra. Regardless of whether the children of these migrants attend public or private schools, they should learn the language of the state (from what I understand, migrants from other states have often sent their children to their own regional language schools, and never end up learning tamil, This is also not right, as the principle works both ways). C’est tout pour le moment. later.

Dev aka blabbermouth, they are ahead because they don’t have too many bright lights like you.

S.Wry the 1060s anti-Hindi violence erupted much after the DMK renounced secession in 1962. We (I mean we Tamils) have been shortsighted. But as with everything else belief is one thing and practice is another. Hindi is widely taught in Tamil Nadu because it is the ticket to jobs outside TN. Although migration for employment has tapered quite a bit in TN, immigration is now a very big thing. For decades TN has relied on blue collar workers from Bihar and UP for a variety of semi-skilled trades in construction and process plant maintenance )for pharma, chemicals, refining etc). Now in addition with the services boom, there are 1000s of Hindi speakers migrating to TN, not only to Chennai but also to Tier-II cities like Coimbatore and Trichy. So there’s heckuva lot of Hindi being learned and taught!

Thanks, yeah, wasn’t sure.

Your point about script though is open to question since regional language speakers have to learn roman script anyways, which is a completely different and alien system. If anything, devanagari is easier to pick up for one who is literate in a brahmi-based script (I picked up devanagari on my own). The basic phonetics and logic are the same and sanskrit has had influence (varying degrees of course) on virtually all regional languages. In fact, brahmi (the earlier pan indian one) and devanagari (a later script predominant in the north, but nevertheless a descendant of brahmi) form the bases for virtually all native indic script. Even tamil script is derivative of brahmi. So from a lipi perspective, things are not that far apart.

Additionally, as you probably know well, the attempt to make hindi the national language was stymied by the dravidian movement led by Periyar, with many Tamil politicians threatening secession. That was why hindi was not made the sole language of national government at that time. If anything, with the dissemination of bollywood, it would actually be easier to make hindi the national language now. It is already present in all the major cities and towns. There is no reason a three language formula can’t be maintained, with regional language for state administration, hindi for national administration, and english for international business/diplomacy purposes.

Third, China is incredibly diverse with official dialects having changed over time as well. Additionally, there were periods where regional identities reasserted themselves due to the collapse of centralized empire and various states being established at times. All is not as uniform as made out to be. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mandarin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language

During the time of the Qin (and Han) dynasties, Prakrit was the court language in the vast majority of Indian kingdoms/empires, going deep into the south. As a literary language, sanskrit pervaded all parts of the country, serving both cultural and liturgical purposes. Hindi is the direct descendant of these languages.

It is not really a common script/writing system that unites people, but common culture and shared history. As Adi Sankara demonstrated, this does exist in India, no matter what part of the country you hail from. I understand that many remain proud about their regional language (I certainly am) and some are reluctant to espouse hindi as the national language (I am not), but as one non-native hindi speaker person to what I presume to be another, it is possible to do both. In any event, I think we’re now well outside the domain of this post, so I’ll just leave things at that. Nice chatting with you. Later.

What a complete idiot. Is that supposed to be a clever response?

Is instruction in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, Russian etc less intensive than in English? How come they are miles ahead of India?

Dev/Prema/Derailed Train – it doesn’t matter what a language is used to teach. It matters (as in frickin’ matters) how intensive instruction in that language is. Of course it doesn’t matter how much you blabber, if you have no clue about how much English is used in many countries around the world.

Satyajit Wry, the bold wasn’t addressed to you, it was for Dev’s benefit, wasted no doubt though. The Han Chinese – the overwhelming majority of China – have been unified by a common writing system and a literary language Mandarin (or mantrin or of the court) for centuries millennia? unlike we Indians. It becomes exponentially difficult as the years pass. It was easier by orders of magnitude during the time of the Qin, and would have been magnitudes easier if we had adopted a common language around 1947. Today it is out of the question.