ACCIDENT PREVENTION

MY FAIR LADY

I am sure most of you who have seen it will remember the unparalleled rendition of the song “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak” by Rex Harrison in the above film.
I am reminded every morning of the song when I go to office, with a slight difference.
I sing, “Why can’t the government teach the transport people how to write”
While I stand on VIP road, at the Bangur Avenue stoppage, public and private buses whiz past me without any fixed bus stops.
They stop as they will or do not stop at all.
And the most difficult part is finding out which bus is going where.
The government has passed a law that all vehicles will have the registration number plates of so and so size and the background and letters should be of such size and colours. That’s very good and highly appreciated.
But what about the poor commuter.
He has to look all over the face of the bus to see where the route is written.
If he locates it, he has to wait until the bus is just 10 ft away to be able to read it.
Why can’t the government also instruct the bus people to write their routes clearly at some place on the buses faces so that it is visible at a distance of at least 50 ft.
But we in Bengal can also count one blessing.
Everything is written in English.
If you have been to Tamil Nadu, you will find that they write the bus routes in Tamil and in Gujarat write in Gujarati.
So even if you are educated, you have to ask the local people like a rustic as to where this bus is going.
Why can’t the Central government instruct all states to write the bus route and all important road signs in English and the local language?
I wish I could satisfy the whims of the Cow Belt politicians and have them write in Hindi also but there is no space on the bus face to write in 3 languages and if you do write the letters will become too small to make them useful.
As it is, the cow belt politicians are the root cause of this language paracholism , which exists in different states.
If they had not tried to impose Hindi, this problem would not have occurred.
Our Bombay film industry would have ensured that everybody in India knew Hindi.

Radheshyam