Foundational learning focus on teaching skills that makes it easier to acquire further skills - for example, to do algebra you must first understand the number system. Similarly to learn any language, one must acquire skills of oral reading fluency, comprehension and meaning
The whole point of foundational learning in your home language is about familiarity and ease of learning. Children who learm and speak regional languages or just the language spoken around them fluently are most likely to succeed at picking up other languages like English later
Other benefits of learning FIRST in one's own language and then trying foreign languages include children not having to grapple with unfamiliar cultural nuances and vocabularies that do not represent their realities -
A child from Kuppam, at foundational learning stage, does NOT need to have a vocabulary that describes winters or chestnuts.
There a huge body of evidence that supports the idea of foundational learning in local language - and this has nothing to with being exclusionary or privilege. It is just good teaching and learning.
Quite the opposite of what twitter has been ranting about - teaching ALL kids but especially those from marginalised backgrounds in their own language sets them up for success and growth like nothing else does. Parents can be involved in their childrens' education too
Parental involvement is the number one indicator of a child's academic success. With a pandemic and e-learning and a focus on English, do people really think children from low-income households will actually be able to learn English at the foundational level? 
Instead using local familiar languages, local stories, culturally nuanced storie helps educates whole communities, brings new ideas to the marginalised which are NOT accessible when only taught in English. This idea is much more #leftleaning and democratic than...
having English medium only - which is just what capitalists and those suffering from a colonial hangover want -- i.e. teach and learn in a language that nobody gets so that knowledge can be appropriated and kept to the very few.
English medium education is casteist and classist and always been so. Indian history is testimony to this approach - Sanskrit versus Prakrit for example and how Savarna Brahmins like to assert, now, the mythical superiority of Sanskrit over older languages like Tamil
By teaching in mother tongue you are only creating an effective path to opening minds in the future. Do not be stupid about this. Also the #NEP2020 is not a right-wing BJP produced document. Scores of scholars with actual education experience and expertise worked on it.
In many ways it opposes all the scary ideas that the Ambani committee proposed to the Vajpayee govt supporting non-political and technocratic education. Read before you critique. I am no fan of fascists, but before you *blindly* oppose, THINK. Else you are one of them too!
This is of course not to say that there aren't terribly problematic aspects to the #NEP2020 there are many, but home language instruction at foundational level is NOT one of them.
Things we should be concerned about in the #NEP2020 too much focus on ML and Ai without any clear understanding of the mechanisms and what they actually mean by AI and ML since both are distinct.
Lipservice mention of increased budgetary allocations to education without any specifics on which parts get funded and why
Not enough detail on how to deal with the teaching quality and teacher training crisis in schooling
Nothing about moving RMSA forward and how to address the missing middle issue in edu provision for government school students
Worrying focus on FDI and private universities as opposed to a strengthened public education system
So yes, many things to discuss and many things left out, but please let us stop this absolutely atrocious assault on our collective brains, about the things wrong with being schooled in home languages. This is a progressive and long overdue move. #NEP2020
