Dr. Jayant Lele represents the Queens University, Kingston, Canada. His paper in Prof. M.B.Emeneau Centenary International Conference on South Asian Linguistics is titled, "The Missing Public Searching Vaguely for a Community in the Indian English Debate". This paper focuses on the issues that arise due to the intervention of English in India.

           His discussion cites three positions - Structuralist that states that the distinction of native/non native, used in describing Indian English as against the other dialects has no structural basis; Functional Sociolinguist who claim that they have discovered their own 'irreducible primitives' to account for the bewildering array of variations encountered in languages, including the English in India and argue that these primitives irreducible; and Postmodernist Position articulated by Probal Dasgupta, which questions the value of engaging native/non-native distinction and emphasize the absence of a tradition in linguistics that grants the status of normality to the 'popular' varieties of languages.

          Mr. Lele reiterates what has been said earlier and claims that the UG's systematically cultivated hegemony in linguistics rests on an institutional network. He observes that these three positions seem to touch what Dasgupta calls "the big time issues", but they seem to be innuendos. He observes that all these three positions, while responding to the question about the impact of the position of English in India , will hold about the nature of Indian political economy.

          Analyzing the status of English in India, Mr. Lele points out that while these three positions suggest that language must go along with the sense of comradeship, in the face of all the actual inequality and exploitation that so obviously prevails in India, one must face the question which language or perhaps whose language has the capacity to create or sustain that comradeship and its social framework.

          Mr.Lele says that the variationists failed to understand such distinctions of their political power and in fact perpetuate their real negative consequences for the people on the peripheries. Quoting Singh Lele asserts that in terms of relevance for the big time issues the distinction between Englishes, relate directly to the central -peripheral status of the people in the political economy. He says that an important step in the direction of making clear the peculiarity of English in India applies to the differences between those who live in the metropolis and international periphery as against to the people at the center and on the periphery with in the metropolis itself. Mr.Lele presents many questions in search of solutions to the problems of English in India -the strategic planning for language learning and social interactions and the possibilities for action that directly addresses these questions.

           In conclusion, through the three positions of Structuralist, Socio-linguists and Post-modernists, Prof. Lele observes the situation of whole of India in the perspective of English. The impact of English on the people, the way English is used in Indian context, the structural basis of English usage in India is presented in this paper.

           Many issues related to the limited number of publications in this area, Structuralist position and post-modernist concepts presented in this paper were discussed after the presentation. Eminent linguists like Prof. Rajendra Singh, B. Kachru and Prof. Probal Das Gupta led the arguments.

           Prof. Lele analyzed the relation between English and political analysis of English in India , while replying to the queries.