One of my friends, who has been working in Chennai for a while, was travelling in a MTS bus using a pass. At one stop, he was asked his ticket by officials and he showed it. They checked it and asked why he hadn’t signed it. He said that he was not aware as the instructions were in Tamil, which he didn’t understand, and no one told him. The officials didn’t agree and fined him. He shared this incident with me and I sympathised.
Another time, I went to CMBT to board a bus to Hyderabad. As I entered the terminus, I saw two boards displaying the terminal number, platform number, state transport names and routes. All of it was in Tamil. I had to ask another person to help me find the right platform.
Chennai, so-called metro city and State capital, doesn’t use English to display important instructions. Mostly, it's in Tamil. When I went to Bangalore, I got a bus pass which had instructions in both Kannada and English. Do Chennai’s authorities expect people from other States to read Tamil? This is not the way information is disseminated in a metro.
I am sure that many people are troubled by this issue. People from all over the country come here. There needs be a system where English is also used to display public information.
Sagar is a working professional.
