Misplaced Priorities

On May 1, Maharashtra’s taxi drivers will confront a new occupational hazard in form of a Marathi language test. Under a state-wide inspection drive led by State Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik, the ability to read a signboard, write a sentence and exchange pleasantries in Marathi may determine whether or not a driver can keep a licence.

In a transport system better known for its crumbling road infrastructure and eternally congested roads, this choice of priority is revealing.

In principle, the case for learning the local language is unimpeachable. Marathi is the cultural and administrative spine of the state and its use in public life ought to be encouraged, even expected. But principles, like policies, are best applied with a sense of proportion. A taxi driver’s primary duty is not linguistic elegance but safe conveyance which is to pick up a passenger, navigate chaotic roads and deliver them, intact, to their destination. That contract has endured for decades in Mumbai, Pune and beyond and often in a polyglot mix of Marathi, Hindi, English and improvised gestures.

Indeed, the very success of Maharashtra’s urban transport ecosystem rests on its informality and inclusiveness. Thousands of drivers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and other states alongside local Maharashtrians keep its cities moving. Many speak limited Marathi. Few passengers, in practice, have treated this as a deal-breaker.

The government’s rationale rests on complaints that some drivers are “unable or unwilling” to converse in Marathi. Perhaps so. But inconvenience is a curious hill on which to plant the flag of enforcement, especially when more substantive failures stare commuters in the face. Maharashtra’s roads remain a patchwork of craters and repairs and traffic discipline is sporadic. Yet it is the driver’s vocabulary that is to be inspected with bureaucratic zeal.

The imbalance borders on the absurd. One imagines an inspector, clipboard in hand, quizzing a driver on basic sentence construction while the vehicle idles beside a waterlogged pothole large enough to swallow a suspension system. If governance is about prioritisation, this is an object lesson in getting it wrong.

There is also an element of selective rigidity. It is entirely reasonable for the state to mandate Marathi in its own offices. Requiring officials in Mantralaya to conduct business in the language reinforces administrative coherence and public accessibility. But extending that logic to taxi drivers, many of whom operate on thin margins and are often migrants navigating a new city, conflates governance with compulsion.

Encouraging the use of Marathi is a worthy goal. Compelling it in contexts where it is tangential to the task at hand is not. A taxi ride is not a language examination; it is a service.

In the end, commuters are unlikely to care whether their driver can compose a sentence in Marathi. They will care whether the route is efficient and their journey is safe. The state government would do well to focus its attention on those counts.