Indian state of Maharashtra has given taxi and tuk-tuk drivers one additional year to learn the local language after a new rule making it mandatory sparked protests.
Transport officials in the western state of Maharashtra had begun testing drivers’ ability to conduct basic conversations in Marathi, the state’s official language, on 20 August. Those who failed were given a month to learn the language, after which they risked having their licences suspended or cancelled.
The government stated that the requirement was meant to improve communication between drivers and passengers and ensure safer journeys.
But the rule alarmed drivers’ unions, who argued that workers should not risk losing their livelihoods while they were still learning the language. Many of the drivers are migrants who came to Maharashtra from other parts of India in search of work, including the populous Hindi-speaking states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.
Amid protests, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced last week that the drivers would be given another year to learn Marathi, as many had been out of the formal education system for years and needed more time.
State Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik has said that drivers will be expected to learn Marathi during the year and that there will be no more extensions.
Maharashtra has almost 979,000 valid tuk-tuk and taxi permits, nearly half of them in the Mumbai metropolitan region.
The extension has brought some relief to drivers who had feared losing their ability to work.
“We were worried that if our licences were suspended, our daily income would be affected,” says Lakhan Pandey, a taxi driver in Mumbai. “Now we feel somewhat relieved.”
But the row has reopened a much older debate in Maharashtra, where questions of language, migration and jobs have shaped politics for decades.
“The issue is not simply about communication between drivers and passengers, but about Marathi identity, migration and employment,” says Prakash Akolkar, a journalist, author and political analyst.
Those tensions stretch back to the creation of Maharashtra itself. The state was formed in 1960 after a long campaign for a Marathi-speaking state.
