On a Monday afternoon, around 50 senior executive officers of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) office in Shanthinagar gather at the conference room.
One would assume it’s for a high-level consultation on the alignment of the upcoming Namma Metro line or on technical aspects of the metro construction.
The meeting is chaired by a young man. He opens the discussion with, “Have you finished your homework?”
Homework? You heard it right.
These well-educated engineers, technical heads, and project managers are the newest students at the BMRCL office, where the conference hall has been turned into a classroom. The subject they are learning is Kannada.
N.M. Dhoke, Director, rolling stock, signalling and electrical, who is responsible for the overall planning of the metro, is one of the senior-most students here. Hailing from Maharashtra, he was posted to BMRCL and it was his idea to introduce spoken Kannada classes for non-Kannada speakers at the BMRCL office.
“Metro being a special-purpose vehicle, there is 50-50 partnership between the Central and State governments. This means, we have people working in BMRCL from all over the country. While most planning gets done in English, it is at the execution level that we face problems in communication. We have to work with local labourers and interact with local authorities. So learning Kannada has become essential and therefore, we thought of having classes here in the office,” he said.
The first batch started in late November and till now, five sessions have been completed. The executives spare two hours a day, three days a week, to gain proficiency in the language.
“It has also helped us during our daily interactions with vegetable vendors, auto drivers and Group D workers,” said another official, whose native tongue is Telugu.
Mr. Dhoke too has started conversing in Kannada with his colleagues. “It is important to learn the language of a State one is staying in and it has been a good experience being a student,” he said.
Their instructor, Raghavendra Prasad, who is the founder of IndLangs, called them an enthusiastic group.
“They want to learn and that is the best thing. It is great that BMRCL has given this opportunity,” said Mr. Prasad, who works on creating online platforms for learning Indian languages. His is already working on creating a database for Kannada language, which will be up and running in a couple of months. The BMRCL staff will continue classes in the coming weeks. “The instructor told us that we can learn basics in nine classes. But, we will continue learning. Also, the lessons will be extended to middle-level and junior staff in the coming days. We may also learn to write the language. But, for now we want to speak the language well,” Mr. Dhoke said.
