Abstract
The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) offers its set of examinations in a “medium”, whether in a language recognized by the Constitution of India or in English. The notion of medium in the examination borrows from the notion of medium in schooling where it refers to the primary language of pedagogy. Although not all students who have studied in a particular medium in school and university go on to attempt the UPSC examinations in the same medium, most do. This article reports on fieldwork conducted in 2014 in coaching centers in Delhi’s Mukherjee Nagar and in the city of Varanasi. It traces some of the ways in which people hold ideologies about the significance of studying in one medium or another. Much ideological reflection, for example, was oriented to the fierce protesting that broke out in various locations in Delhi during the summer of 2014, just before my fieldwork. The protests were focused on changes made to the UPSC examination in 2011 which initiated increasingly poor results among Hindi-medium aspirants. The article also answers the call of scholars to consider institutional practices – especially as they change – alongside ideological reflections because, in the case of coaching centers, practice and ideology are not aligned.
Acknowledgements
Because of the promise of anonymity, I cannot thank those to whom I owe the most, the coaching students and teachers who let me sit in their classes and who answered my incessant questions. Krishna Kumar, Nita Kumar, Ravi Kumar, Manabi Majumdar, and Srinivas Rao provided warm hospitality and stimulating conversation about the language-medium phenomenon and coaching services in education. Once again, NIRMAN provided a warm home in Varanasi. This article began as a paper delivered at the Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison, Wisconsin where Laura Brown, Sonia Das, Christie Davis, Katherine Hoffmann-Dilloway, and Priti Sandhu gave excellent feedback. Two anonymous reviewers and Christie Davis helped me clarify and tighten the article’s argument and I am extremely grateful.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Language and schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language medium matters
- The language medium “divide”: Ideologies of Hindi-English use at four all-girls’ “public schools” in North India
- English medium education, patriarchy, and emerging social structures: Narratives of Indian women
- English immersion and Bangla floatation? Rendering a collective choice private
- Language medium and a high-stakes test: Language ideology and coaching centers in North India
- Muslims in Sri Lankan language politics: A study of Tamil- and English-medium education
- The right to education act (2009): Instructional medium and dis-citizenship
- Book Review
- The gendered significance of the language-medium divide: moments of discursive empowerment and dis-empowerment
- Small Languages and Small Language Communities 86
- Language ideologies and identities in Kurdish heritage language classrooms in London
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction: Language and schooling in India and Sri Lanka: Language medium matters
- The language medium “divide”: Ideologies of Hindi-English use at four all-girls’ “public schools” in North India
- English medium education, patriarchy, and emerging social structures: Narratives of Indian women
- English immersion and Bangla floatation? Rendering a collective choice private
- Language medium and a high-stakes test: Language ideology and coaching centers in North India
- Muslims in Sri Lankan language politics: A study of Tamil- and English-medium education
- The right to education act (2009): Instructional medium and dis-citizenship
- Book Review
- The gendered significance of the language-medium divide: moments of discursive empowerment and dis-empowerment
- Small Languages and Small Language Communities 86
- Language ideologies and identities in Kurdish heritage language classrooms in London