Inside Mumbai’s Andheri regional transport office (RTO), rows of plastic chairs, on which people once waited for their token numbers to take the driving test, now sit a different kind of crowd: auto drivers, with open notebooks, speaking Marathi sentences for the first time in their working lives. The four-day Marathi course, launched from June 1, has become an unexpected addition to a different area in each of Mumbai’s 25 RTOs. Every day, 50 to 80 drivers visit each centre, racing to pass the language test before their permits are flagged off.
The urgency stems from an announcement made in April by Pratap Baburao Sarnaik, Maharashtra’s transport minister and chairman of the Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC). Sarnaik held a press conference and announced that taxi and auto drivers in Mumbai must know how to read, write and speak Marathi, otherwise they would risk losing their licenses. Transport officials issuing licenses without proper investigation may also face action. This campaign was to start from May 1st.
His statement sparked a political storm within days, drawing sharp reactions from Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Nirupam and Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi, who objected to the timeline. Sarnaik, who is also from the Shiv Sena, part of the ruling coalition, then extended the deadline to August 15, giving drivers a longer window to learn to read, write and speak Marathi. There are 88,923 registered taxis and 4,22,990 autos in Mumbai, many of which are run by people who have moved to the state in search of work.
For some people, the classroom is an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, where old anxieties about literacy, age, and what their children might think come to the fore. Drivers, who have spent years memorizing routes, fares and the unwritten etiquette of Mumbai’s roads, now find themselves again holding a pencil, speaking the words under the eye of an instructor.
For some, the four days pass quickly and without any problems; For others, each session is a short, quiet reckoning with a part of their past they hoped would never revisit.
contradictory ideas
In Kurla, Moolchand Yadav, 53, who has been driving autos in Mumbai since 1991, says he has no problem with the new requirement. “Have been driving here in the city for so many years, now Marathi If you learn then your ride will also improve. (I have been in this city for many years. Maybe learning Marathi will help me find more clients),” he says, confident of completing the course. For more than three decades, Yadav has seen the city changing around him: new flyovers, new fares, new commuters.
For them, Marathi is just the next thing to adapt to, no different than learning a new route or a new app. Some drivers at his stand complain that the classes are cutting into their peak earnings, but he prefers to look at it differently. He argues that a few mornings spent learning the language can lead to better conversations with Marathi-speaking travelers, and possibly with more regular customers in the long run. For Yadav, the classes are less an imposition and more an opportunity, a way to earn the trust of more passengers, and with it, more money.
Not everyone shares his enthusiasm. In Govandi, Mumbai’s eastern suburb, Rakesh Mandal thrills at the idea of sitting in a classroom. “My age 42 Is. my children School are going. if i too School If I start going, they will think that their father is not educated. (I am 42 years old. My children go to school. If I also start going to school, my children will think I can’t read and write),” he says, though he quietly admits that he can’t.
Mandal has driven taxis in Govandi for 20 years and dropped his children off at school before starting his shift. The thought of seeing his children reading to him every day fills him with dread. The discomfort runs deeper than the test. For Mandal, going back to school risks exposing the gap she has spent decades hiding, and she believes no certificate is worth that price.
Sarnaik feels that it is a responsibility to learn the language of the area in which one works. The transport department had received complaints, especially from Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Nagpur, that many drivers were unable or unwilling to speak Marathi with passengers, he said at the press conference.
RTOs change schools
Vidya Prabhu, a retired teacher, conducts a four-day Marathi speaking, reading and writing course. | Photo Credit: Emmanuel Yogini
At Andheri RTO, the person overseeing the program is Deputy Regional Transport Officer Sudhir Jaibhaye. “On the first day (June 8) there were 52 students, on the second day the number increased to 74. Now, we have more than 85 students in every batch,” he says. Classes take place between 12.30 pm and 1.30 pm, which he says is in between the busy morning and evening office commute.
Jaibhaye explains that the office leverages its routine paperwork to enroll drivers in the program. When drivers come to get a new license or to renew an old license or to register a vehicle, the RTO staff asks them to enroll for a free Marathi course. “Drivers are asked to first complete the course, after which their pending applications are considered.”
Anjali Deshpande, 73, one of the teachers at the Andheri centre, says attendance is recorded meticulously. She prepares a sheet where each driver’s license number, vehicle registration number and badge number are logged. Attending all four lectures and signing the attendance register is mandatory to obtain a certificate, issued jointly by the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh and the Konkan Marathi Sahitya Parishad, institutions renowned for their work in the Marathi language, under the Department of Cultural Affairs, Maharashtra.
Deshpande is a retired clerk from the Centre’s defense department, who took voluntary retirement and started tutoring in Marathi and Hindi. She speaks warmly of her days teaching in RTO classes. “More than 200 auto drivers now call me ‘Marathi madam’,” she says, laughing. “I get a different, more pleasant treatment from auto drivers whenever I go out for work.” Unlike many parts of India, Mumbai’s autos run by meter, although fares may involve negotiation.
At Wadala RTO, lectures take place between 1 and 2 pm, which is usually during the lunch break of the RTO. There one of the course coordinators explains the philosophy behind the teaching method: a combination of visuals and text. Most of the instructors, she says, are retired professors and language teachers who have spent years in academia.
“The main difference between teaching children and adults is that children ask a lot of questions and start from scratch, whereas adult learners deal with their difficulties on their own with less help,” she says, adding that her focus is on spoken Marathi. Students are taught 14 sentences. On the last day, students are tested on these to qualify for the certificate. Officials say the test will assess whether a driver can read signboards or documents in Marathi, write a basic sentence and carry on simple conversations in the language.
The weight of passengers is increasing
Reactions to drives are not limited to drivers. Jyoti Ganta, a corporate professional who travels about 9 kilometers a day from the Shimla House area in south Mumbai to Fort, about 5 kilometers away, offers a traveller’s perspective. She says, “It is not always necessary for drivers to speak Marathi. Sometimes both passengers and drivers are so busy on our phones that we just exchange OTPs, and that’s all.”
Ganta’s mother tongue is Telugu, but she speaks fluent Marathi as she was born and brought up in Mumbai. “When we change locations geographically, only two things change: one is food, and the other is language. Therefore, we should speak the language of the soil.” Chetan Tokade, a 28-year-old auto driver from Ambernath in Thane district, is in a combative state. “Why should we change our language, our culture, our pride?” Drivers unwilling to adjust should “go back to their hometowns,” he says. He believes that Maharashtra’s Marathi-speaking drivers are capable of running the city’s transport on their own.
Vedant Jather, a 34-year-old call-centre employee who travels to Kanjurmarg station every day, strikes a more measured note. He says he has no problem with migrants, but he finds that some drivers who have been living, working and earning in the city for more than 40 years still have not learned the local language. “Is it possible that this will happen in Karnataka or Tamil Nadu?” He argues that learning the local language is a responsibility that drivers should take upon themselves, rather than waiting for a government deadline to force the issue.
political firing
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena’s Mumbai vice-president Arvind Gawde is critical of the government’s approach, calling the entire exercise an attempt to woo migrant voters from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. “Why is this government running ‘Learn Marathi’ project for people coming from UP and Bihar?” He alleges that the ruling coalition wants to help migrants settle permanently in Mumbai and turn them into vote banks.
He calls this practice “political theater”, questioning why taxpayer money is being spent on language teaching, pointing out that no other state runs a comparable program. “Have you ever heard that the Tamil Nadu government is spending money and manpower to teach its language to outsiders?” He also believes that this is a poor use of the RTO’s limited resources. The RTO should focus on the broader problems plaguing illegal drivers, road safety and public transport, and not on what he dismissively calls “schooling”. BrotherS”.
The four-day Marathi course, in just a few weeks, has become a small but clear window into the larger concerns of language, identity and belonging that continue to define life in Mumbai. As the August 15 deadline approaches, there is increased commotion in RTO offices across the city, while the debate continues over who actually owns the city and on what terms.
chinmay.r@thehindu.co.in
Edited by Sunalini Mathew and Amarjot Kaur
