Why Indian Children are Good at Coding
The world has been in the throes of a tech revolution for the past couple of decades, and increasingly, India has been at the center of it. The Indian IT industry makes up for over 8% of the country’s GDP, generating over US$180 billion in revenues in 2019. As of 2020, the sector employed close to 44 lakh people in India. India’s share of the world’s annual IT spends was almost 20% in 2020. For context, in 2001, India’s share was just 2.5%. We now own a fifth of the global IT pie!
While these are staggering figures and exciting to every stakeholder in the country’s IT ecosystem, I don’t want to reduce the beauty of technological know-how to employment opportunities. I’ve always believed that ultimately, every innovation and turning point in history is only as important as the impact it has on the children of the world — because they are the ones who the future ultimately belongs to. This ongoing, exciting tech revolution that’s been gaining momentum in India is no different. What does it mean for the children of our country?
Like I mentioned earlier, there is no dearth of jobs or global opportunities for India’s tech workforce. And this demand is only going to balloon and grow in the coming years. But it is also true that not every child dreams of becoming a coder or working in tech. And thankfully so, India needs her scientists, mathematicians, academics, artists, creators, thinkers, farmers, as much as it needs her developers and coders!
I’ve said, repeatedly, that coding is for everyone in much the same way that language is for everyone. And like any language, it’s easiest to pick up and creates the most impact when it is learned young. There’s ample research that tells us that coding makes the brain agile, and helps it sharpen its problem-solving, critical-thinking, and decision-making skills. It helps the brain break down a problem to smaller components, analyse it individually, and come up with creative solutions that account for all facets of the problem.
Who among us can say that they don’t need these skills in life?!
The obvious and widely researched benefits of coding aside, my desire to make coding accessible to all Indian children is further intensified by the belief that our children are uniquely positioned to pick up the language of computers faster, and use it more effectively with far more ease than their peers around the world.
For starters, a majority of Indian children grow up being exposed to at least two, if not three or four languages in daily life. 52% of India’s urban youngsters are fluent in two languages and 18% in three languages. These numbers are telling because learning code and language are similar in one very important way — both need the learner’s brain to be adept at filtering noise from intent and important information. Since children who grow up hearing, learning, studying, and using two or more languages in their everyday lives are naturally adept at switching between languages in their brains, processing and translating between meanings without losing intent, they are able to, without even thinking about it, this skill to learning and using code. Simply put, the delightful cacophony of languages that we Indians grow up with changes the wiring in our brain, keeping it busy, and paving the way for a smarter future!
It’s not just the fact that Indian children grow up around a multitude of languages that helps them absorb coding principles, the smorgasbord of cultural diversity we’re surrounded by, when celebrated instead of shunned and feared, helps our children become better problem solvers by coming up with creative solutions. Growing up with deep exposure to diverse cultures teaches our children’s brains to be attuned to the nuances of a problem, and pre-empt how different audiences might perceive a solution. Say a young coder was to create a fashion e-commerce app. A multicultural upbringing would help her build an app and be sensitive to the needs of a bigger section of the audience than someone who was restricted by their understanding of only a single culture.
Next, learning in India is not linear, or purely institutional. I know that there is a lot of heated debate about whether Indian children are truly good at Maths or they’re just good at book Maths, and both sides of the aisle make compelling arguments. Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the middle, my hope is that with the disruption that EdTech entrepreneurs like me are trying to fuel, someday soon, we’ll be able to unequivocally say that Indian children are good at just, plain Maths, bookish or otherwise! But that aside, I believe that learning in India occurs more outside schools than within!
I believe that there are many moving parts to this kind of free-range learning.
As a country, our people straddle so many different financial stratas, that each group is constantly observing and learning from each other. While there is great wealth on one end of the spectrum, there is abject poverty on the other. And they often exist in very close proximity. Obviously then, most Indian children grow up surrounded by rare insights into the human condition — with so many languages, cultures, and financial situations clashing and meshing into one another like a tapestry of livewires. What might be considered an expensive customer research and product-market fit exercise for other countries is simply a day in the life of an average Indian child!
I’m also of the belief that the fact that India is still a country built on the back of small, family-run businesses has a lot to do with unstructured learning. We grow up ‘interning’ at our parents’ offices and shops!
I could go on and on, but the bottom line is, while the challenges of living in a country with as much wealth disparity and cultural conflicts are undeniable, they also offer Indian children the opportunities and insights required to come up with creative, game-changing solutions to alleviate the problems. Coding is simply a tool to help them enact those solutions. And in the hands of a determined child, it’s a tool that can help her change the world!
