As Maharashtra government’s transport department enforces a rule requiring auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers to have a working knowledge of Marathi, protests are building up. A segment of autorickshaw drivers stopped work and organised protests on Monday, August 24, as they started a three-day strike against the language rule.
As per the government’s new rule, drivers who fail a basic conversational Marathi language test are initially given a one-month notice to learn the language rather than asked to pay heavy fines. It is now a mandatory requirement for driving passenger vehicles in Maharashtra.
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The transport department began enforcing the drive on August 20 after a resolution was passed on August 12, and notices started being issued to auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers who failed to prove their functional knowledge of the Marathi language. The enforcement drive will run till September 30. Nearly 2,500 notices have been issued to auto-rickshaw and taxi drivers so far, according to media reports.
“We have started a three-day autorickshaw strike to oppose the Marathi language order. Nobody is listening to us. If you ask a 60-year-old person to suddenly speak Marathi, how will they do it? We want justice,” one driver said on August 24, expressing a view and angst shared by thousands of drivers in Mumbai who hail from northern India and are unable to speak Marathi.
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According to Sanjay Nirupam, a politician of the Opposition Shiv Sena, passenger vehicle drivers in Mumbai were being penalised without being given the stipulated one month’s notice. He said fines as high as Rs 25,000 were being imposed on each driver found deficient in spoken Marathi.
Maharashtra transport minister Pratap Sarnaik said action would be taken against RTO officials if they fined drivers before the expiry of the one-month deadline given to them to learn Marathi.
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On Monday, August 24, thousands of drivers staged a roadblock on Kandivli Link Road. They said the government’s rule had caused distress among several aged drivers, especially those around 60 or above, as they find it difficult to learn Marathi because they had little to no formal education.
“We are 55-60-year-olds. We have never been to a school. How can we speak Marathi? Had we been educated, we would have been sitting in an office,” one driver said.
Even as the language controversy has divided the political spectrum, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis came out in support of the new rule. He said drivers were not expected to become experts in Marathi. “There is no reason to make them experts in Marathi. They should know work-related, basic Marathi,” he said.
