Makhan L Tickoo Background: Two major changes have taken place over the last six decades in Indian ELT. Both have made notable additions to its thought and practice. We shall look at both to grasp their essence and take stock of where ELT stands today. On January 26 1950, independent India adopted a Constitution that made it a Secular Democratic Republic. For schooling, a main result was that a growing number of pupils began to enter the existing as well as the newly established institutions. A steadily growing percentage of them came from families where the parents had not been to school, and in most cases did not see much value in their children’s learning English at school. Among a small number of decision makers two related facts also began to cause concern – one, that English had lost its special status and place on the school’s work schedule, and two that for a sizeable number of policy makers and educational thinkers the language had become suspect and was viewed as a legacy of the colonial Empire. Among the leading decision makers at the Centre a few, including India’s first Prime Minister, Jawahar Lal Nehru, had, however, seen good value in keeping up the standards of teaching English for important national reasons. They invited the British Council (BC) to start its ELT activities in India in their understanding that it had been teaching the language in several countries for over a dozen years. A new approach to ELT methodology: 1950 The BC opened its office in New Delhi and began by teaching short-term training courses to trainers and teachers of English. Two milestone events in the next decade stood out, however, and each added to the other in introducing a major change in ELT curriculum and methodology. The first took place at Mahableshwar near Pune in May 1950. It was the first ten-day conference attended by some 30 senior ELT practitioners from different parts of the country. A new approach was promoted by its leading proponent, E V Gatenby. Having worked with Harold E Palmer and A S Hornby, the two leading ELT reformers in Tokyo, Gatenby was at that time the Linguistic Adviser to the BC. The approach that got promoted had four defining features – oral direct method, early start to English, keeping the first language out of the English classroom and the claim that the alternative with its seedbeds in the UK had gained universal applicability. Several significant additions to Indian ELT