An Assam town’s love for English has opened up jobs for women displaced by hate in Manipur.
Kalgachia is a town of about 30,000 people, mostly Bengal-origin Muslims. But it boasts of more than 20 private English medium schools and junior colleges, making it an education hub for a large chunk of Barpeta district. The town, whose name means ‘a place where banana plants are abundant’, is about 120 km west-northwest of Guwahati, Assam’s principal city.
“Assamese continues to be the primary medium of instruction in our schools, the first of which was established in the 1910s. The aspiration of parents for their children to be more globally relevant is making English medium schools more popular nowadays,” Abu Bakkar Siddique, a retired professor, told The Hindu.
