We recently had a big mess by our honorouble Education Minister derecognizing 2000 odd schools for teaching in English medium when they were licenced for Kannada medium. While legally this is right, what was apalling was that the govt was reluctant to convert the licence to English medium by probably imposing a penalty. The govt insisted that they have to function as Kannada medium only. The parents of each and every student wanted the school to function in English medium, but the Education Minister was quoted as saying that the students will not lose anything by studying in Kannada. I bet they will. How many times has it not happened that during an interview a person with better English communication gets through while the one who does not fails. We have Kannada poets stating that this move by govt was important to preserve Kannada language. Agreed, but at what cost, the entire career of thousands of students? Students coming out of non-English medium school and college struggle to fit into the corporate world. What we need to remember is that not every student plans to become a poet or a teacher. Most want to get into the corporate world and earn high salaries. When you want to go global, you have to have the competitive edge. Today the reality is that there are more jobs than the number of skilled people, but ironically there is still unemployment. Those who do not fit in, thanks to our politicians and beurocrats, stay unemployed.But there is a solution. Even I feel that our mother tongue needs to be preserved. The solution I would suggest is that let the medium of education be English, but let there be a compulsory local language being taught in school.