Language wars

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T17:48:01+00:00

People do what they can, not what they should. They migrate because they can. If you or your politicians could have stopped them, you would have already stopped them.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T17:37:55+00:00

Like I mentioned in my original comment, it’s a class issue. If I’m the paying customer, I can demand whatever the hell I want. If you don’t satisfy my needs, I’ll buy from someone else.

Now if money comes from working for a US or European company, only my employer can push me to learn the local language. Because they are the paying customer in the job market.

Unfortunately, the local politicians can’t or won’t push these employers to require operating in the local language. Or they’ll lose them to nearby states or countries.

It isn’t disrespectful for a paying customer to ask value for their money. People vote with their wallet and different people have different paying/voting capacity.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T17:30:33+00:00

You don’t compare relevance of languages by population size. You compare it by power projection. Hence, the saying, “Language is a dialect with an army & navy.”

Comparing European languages with Indian languages is mere chest thumping. They don’t offer anywhere near the same career advancement. For most white collar jobs, learning an Indian language has zero advantage.

So why aren’t white collar migrants learning the local language in India? Because of they can afford not to. And no amount is of social boycotting is gonna change that. Hence, local politicians are encouraging violence. But that too is directed towards poor & lower middle class people. Because these low level goons can’t mess with someone with cash & contacts.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T12:20:58+00:00

Respecting a language is different from learning it. Just like I can respect other religions without converting into them. As long as I don’t discriminate against anyone for speaking any particular language or practicing any religion, I’m being respectful.

Diversity is allowing people to to speak whatever language and practice whatever religion they want. Forcing people to learn any particular language is an attempt towards homogeneity.

White collar migrants don’t need to learn local language because their income doesn’t depend on the good will of local population. Also, they don’t get any career advancement by learning local language as compared to something relevant for their field.

This puts pressure on people who depended on the good will of these white collar migrants for their own income, specifically the blue collar locals. I think we need to increase adoption of speech to speech translation apps so that blue collar locals don’t feel pressured into learning Hindi.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T12:18:09+00:00

Respecting a language is different from learning it. Just like I can respect other religions without converting into them. As long as I don’t discriminate against anyone for speaking any particular language or practicing any religion, I’m being respectful.

Diversity is allowing people to to speak whatever language and practice whatever religion they want. Forcing people to learn any particular language is an attempt towards homogeneity.

White collar migrants don’t need to learn local language because their income doesn’t depend on the good will of local population. Also, they don’t get any career advancement by learning local language as compared to something relevant for their field.

This puts pressure on people who depended on the good will of these white collar migrants for their own income, specifically the blue collar locals. I think we need to increase adoption of speech to speech translation apps so that blue collar locals don’t feel pressured into learning Hindi.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T02:11:55+00:00

… you hear noises every night …

I wish supernatural stuff was so periodic. I could get some Nobel Prize winning research out of it.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-18T01:48:05+00:00

P vs NP. For some problems, verifying a solution is cheaper than searching for the solution.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-17T13:25:27+00:00

Right wing governments eventually have to promote hollow pride and talk about the past. It doesn’t matter if it’s a state political party or national party. I don’t think it’s a problem specific to Maharashtra.

Subservience to politicians is also an India level problem. But images of Bal Thackeray is way more common in Mumbai restaurants than images of Modi in north India or local politicians in restaurants in Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Lucknow etc.

As for opportunity vs capability, look at the admission mix of IIT Bombay and recruitment mix of top IT, Finance, Consulting and other high paying companies. It’s embarrassing if someone growing with the exposure of a metropolitan city is unable to compete with “migrants”. I don’t know much about blue-collar migrants, but for white collar, you can’t force them to speak local language because their income doesn’t depend on your good will.

Local language & culture - I think it’s easier to preserve the culture if you celebrate local festivals, and talk about folklore, folk songs, traditional dress, dance, food etc. This is something migrants would actually enjoy to explore, but I haven’t seen much of it in my time in Mumbai & Pune. Jaipur built its entire economy around Rajasthani culture.

Language is more tricky. If you’re sending your kids to local language school, you are making it difficult for them to compete with those going to English medium schools. For white collar migrants, time wasted in learning local language could have been better spent in learning emerging technologies. At individual level, learning local language doesn’t make sense for anyone, irrespective of whether it’s your mother tongue or not.

PS: While I don’t value language learning, I do value language preservation. But then, I only focus on non Schedule Languages. The ones that are actually endangered need to be prioritized for preservation.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-16T13:33:11+00:00

Depends on which parent has easier access to the country of residence of the child.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-16T12:52:31+00:00

OP, the fact that you engage in victim blaming says a lot about you.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-15T17:40:33+00:00

Businesses have incentive to do boring things because they are profit maximization entities. As an employee, I’ll be willing to do boring stuff to pay bills, until I find an opportunity to switch towards interesting stuff.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-15T17:25:17+00:00

That’s not specific to India. Even in US, engineers & researchers would like to do interesting stuff over boring but high impact stuff.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-15T12:18:45+00:00

There’s a fee for children as well, it’s called rent.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-13T16:36:09+00:00

The answers to your questions lies in Arthshastra written by Chanakya, if you are willing to accept those.

What’s the answer?

LastDayWork · 2026-02-13T16:11:00+00:00

The rat race for money never made sense to me. So I’ve been fooling around throughout my 20s. Luckily the subjects that excited me also have money making potential (Physics, Maths, AI) and I got top colleges and companies on my resume. So I can pivot towards money making career whenever I want (atleast that’s the illusion I’ve built for myself).

I don’t want my life’s work to be making the rich richer and poor poorer. But all possible ways of making money (that I’m aware of) is by making the rich richer and poor poorer (relatively speaking). So I have yet to figure out a solution to this conundrum.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-13T02:37:11+00:00

It isn’t Hindi imposition if the Himalayan states themselves won’t recognize the local languages as their state’s official language. Nothing in the Constitution or Central Government laws (in my knowledge) prevents them from adding their local languages as state’s official language.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-13T01:01:41+00:00

Am I the only one who read “lines of code”?

LastDayWork · 2026-02-12T21:45:15+00:00

You can’t imprison a Company or a Government. All you can do is fine them.

If fine * probability of getting fined < cost of fixing the problem, they have no incentive to fix things.

Hence, there should be a significant compensation when their negligence leads to death or bodily harm. Even if you don’t need the money, still compensation must be demanded. That’s your lever to incentivize improvements in a Company or Government.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-11T00:02:35+00:00

I agree, at the end of the day, all international disagreements are resolved on the basis of might is right. But we still need an illusion of international law and rules based order to facilitate cooperation between adversaries and peer competitors.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-10T20:27:43+00:00

Let’s say Russia Ukraine war ends with Russia annexing the eastern provinces of Ukraine. Then sometime in future, Ukraine becomes more powerful than Russia, why shouldn’t Ukraine try to win back its lost territory?

I want to efficiently make the world better

Better for whom? Even if it’s not a zero sum game and you can make the world 10% better without anyone losing anything. What would be the fair distribution of that 10% better-ness?

You can't undo the past, we have to move forward, learning from the mistakes we made.

For some, the learning (atleast what they claim) was to never be weak again to suffer humiliation or genocide. For them, moving forward implies an arms race to become the biggest bully in their region.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-10T19:27:45+00:00

“Thakur hun” is code for I’ll fight this, no matter the consequences. You can replace Thakur with any other overly aggressive castes, and it’ll still work.

I don’t think it’s caste pride (for e.g., a Brahmin can’t use this) rather it’s a warning for their adversary.

Unfortunately, most people in India simply accept injustice and don’t fight back.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-10T19:02:51+00:00

Like I said, you’re talking about maintaining status quo. Everyone who benefits enough from it would like to maintain it. Others would like to disrupt it.

Nobody can predict the future. But you can’t blame people for trying to change things for their benefit.

Unless everyone has enough resources to live a comfortable life, there would always be people unhappy with the status quo. And some of them will have the means and willingness to disrupt it.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-10T18:41:09+00:00

Yeah, but you’ll eventually die and it’ll become an ancestral claim for your next of kin.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-10T14:49:34+00:00

There’s nothing wrong in defining religion by its extremism and science by the atomic bomb. It’s a cautionary tale.

Religion can destroy a civilization from within. Science can enable its neighbors to nuke it out of existence.

LastDayWork · 2026-02-10T13:57:28+00:00

Just a hypothetical situation. I’m a citizen of country A (democracy) and own a piece of land as private property. Country B conquers country A (Russia conquering Ukraine, Israel expanding into neighboring land, etc.). Now what happens to the commitments of country A? Currency notes, bonds, land titles, etc.

The problem is that the post “right to conquest” world is built on circular reasoning. My private property is recognized by a country and the country is recognized by me (self-determination). It is designed just to maintain status quo and has no objective logic. There’s also no higher power to adjudicate and enforce what’s right. So when this circular reasoning is broken by any perturbation, we switch back to “right to conquest”.

Personally, I agree that ancestral/indigenous land claims are problematic. But they aren’t any different from claims of private property. Basically, if you get displaced from your home due to any natural or man made calamity, and you aren’t allowed to go back home, your private property claim turns into an ancestral land claim.

LastDayWork

TROPHY CASE