The importance of the choice of LANGUAGE in the Indian context

India, as we all know, has a tremendous diversity of languages and dialects as we traverse our country. According to the Census of India of 2001, India has 122 major languages and 1599 other languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India

Whenever we wish to drive change in any aspect of life, be it at home or at the workplace, we have to articulate and communicate the need for change to the target audience. The context and the content would vary from instance to instance: for e.g. it could be safety and process-discipline related on the factory shop-floors, it could be company performance related data sharing to our team at an open-house session, it could be sharing market realities to our dealers and channel partners at a product launch, it could be related to sharing some life-truths to our children at home, it could be related to purchasing vegetables at the local grocery etc.

In a manner of speaking and in my personal view, change of any form happens when the cycle of "COMMUNICATE - CONNECT - COLLABORATE - CREATE" happens effectively. For this to happen the first process of COMMUNICATE has to be very effective.

Among other aspects, the most critical to me is the choice of the language of communication. Unconsciously we do make a shift when we speak to audiences that we really care about (for e.g to some of our senior relatives, we may shift to our mother tongues instead of English and Hindi). We could make this a more conscious and deliberate choice of using the correct language when we speak orally as well as in the written text on our slides , posters , display material etc.

At many plants and factory shop-floors, I notice that some of the safety instructions / process- descriptions are not necessarily in the local language. Recognizing that many States in India have local workforce (specifically plant associates) who are more comfortable in their local language rather than just Hindi and English, we may have to reconsider our choice of language.

Likewise in events involving our local level channel partners, I have seen the "connect" happen far more effectively if the key slides and their content, the medium of spoken communication etc. were in the local language. 

The choice of the language should not be to suit the convenience and comfort of the person/s communicating but more to suit the convenience of the target audience.

In all International destinations, one would see such content in the local languages, right from the airport to the streets and road-signs, to public transport and even in work-spaces.

As senior leaders of organisations, we could bear this in mind when we communicate with Suppliers, Dealers, End-Users, Plant associates etc.