International Journal of Contemporary Research in Multidisciplinary

Introduction:

Education is the universal tool for bringing social, economic and political transformation for building an equitable society. A well-educated society equipped with relevant knowledge, attitudes and skills is the need of the hour for economic and social development. Mother tongue is the first language, a person grows-up with from his early childhood. Therefore, mother tongue is the best option for communication that a person is familiar with. Across the globe, we can see the use of either a major commercial language or a colonial language as the medium of instruction in educational institutes. The government of India introduced the NEP-2020; the biggest reform in the field of education since the National Education Policy-1986. Under the NEP-2020 reforms, medium of instruction is one of the major changes to be executed in which education in primary schools facilitated the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Article 350A of the Constitution states that “state shall endeavour to provide adequate facilities for instruction in the mother tongue at the primary stage of education to children belonging to minority groups'' (Constitution of India, 2008). The Three-Language Formula-1957 (TLF) was proposed for using mother tongue or regional language, Hindi or English at different levels of education across the country (Mohanty, 2008). The NEP-2020 broadens the definition of ‘Medium of Instruction’ (MOI) to include local and regional language at least until primary education, preferably till Grade VIII (Ministry of Human Resource Development, GoI, 2020). Many educationalists, linguistics, early childhood education experts, and cognitive psychologists suggested that an instruction in mother tongue is the most appropriate for cognition and comprehension in the early years of development (Ball, 2010; Khaitan, 2020; Daniyal, 2020). The Global Education Monitoring Report-2016 emphasized that children taught in a language other than their own can affect their learning abilities. The imposition of a single dominant language as MOI in educational institutes can lead to wider issues of social and cultural inequalities (UNESCO, 2016). Mother tongue based bilingual education system significantly enhances the learning outcomes of children belonging to minority language communities (Ball, 2010; Bühmann & Trudel, 2008). NEP-2020 stresses on attaining foundational literacy and numeracy for all children. The reason behind the crisis of foundational learning is the detachment between the language of the child at home and the medium of language used in school curriculum. The term mother tongue has been widely used but on the other hand it is also critiqued, referring to a various situations like the language one identifies with, knows best, or uses the most and understood as one‘s first language (L1). Mother tongue based multilingual-education (MTB-MLE) is described by Diane Dekker (2010) as being more than just using the learner’s first language to explain curriculum content. It emphasizes the importance of curriculum rooted in the local culture, as well as teaching methodology that promotes cognitive development and higher order thinking skills. The North East Regional Institute of Education (NERIE) conducted a programme related to implementing mother tongue education in Arunachal Pradesh (2007), and found that the parents are not willing to promote mother tongue as the medium of instruction, instead pressurized to keep either Hindi or English as MOI where they considered mother tongue lessons are not purposeful, just a formality to learn