Indian English

Indian English is any of the forms of English characteristic of India.

English proficiency

Though English is one of the two official languages of the Union Government of India, only a few hundred thousand Indians, or less than 0.1% of the total population, have English as their first language.^[2][3][4][5]

According to the 2001 Census, 12.6% of Indians know English.^[6] An analysis of the 2001 Census of India^[7] concluded that approximately 86 million Indians reported English as their second language, and another 39 million reported it as their third language. No data were available whether these individuals were English speakers or users.

According to the 2005 India Human Development Survey,^[8] of the 41,554 surveyed, households reported that 72 percent of men (29,918) did not speak any English, 28 percent (11,635) spoke at least some English, and 5 percent (2,077, roughly 17.9% of those who spoke at least some English) spoke fluent English. Among women, the corresponding percentages were 83 percent (34,489) speaking no English, 17 percent (7,064) speaking at least some English, and 3 percent (1,246, roughly 17.6% of those who spoke at least some English) speaking English fluently.^[9] According to statistics of District Information System for Education (DISE) of National University of Educational Planning and Administration under Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, enrollment in English-medium schools increased by 50% between 2008–09 and 2013–14. The number of English-medium school students in India increased from over 15 million in 2008–09 to 29 million by 2013–14.^[10]

India ranks 22 out of 72 countries in the 2016 EF English Proficiency Index published by the EF Education First. The index gives the country a score of 57.30 indicating "moderate proficiency". India ranks 4th out of 19 Asian countries included in the index.^[11] Among Asian countries, Singapore (63.52), Malaysia (60.70) and the Philippines (60.33) received higher scores than India.