Kannada a must for BMTC commuters!

Kannada a must for BMTC commuters!
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: When an efficient public transport system is the need of the hour, a large number of those using the State-run BMTC buses are facing a problem. The display boards on the buses, indicating the route and destination are in Kannada.

This is a big problem because BMTC has around 4,000 buses and runs several thousand schedules a day. An estimated 70 per cent of the City population rely on BMTC buses, and a good number of them can’t read Kannada. For them, BMTC services have turned out to be a great disservice.

A prominent citizen commented that it was a cause for concern that BMTC’s approach showed that it was more of a parochial government entity than a people-friendly organisation. This is disturbing because Bangalore is an important City in the world and its buses have shunned English. The public transport in Kolkata, Chennai, and Mumbai etc, too are equally parochial but they, at least, display the route details in English.

A cosmopolitan city and the country’s IT hub, Bangalore is home to a large number of people from other states and countries. A large number of those who travel by bus belong to the working class and similarly students too, may find the present system unfriendly.

“I have to change two buses everyday to reach college. The numbers written in Kannada makes it very difficult for me to catch a bus. I have boarded the wrong bus many a times because of this,” says Nancy, student of Mount Carmel college.

“The bus drivers and conductors are not helpful and do not guide us because we do not know the local language. We find it difficult to travel freely because of the language problem,” says Shobhit a student of Nagarjuna College of Engineering.