Auto, taxi shortage in Mumbai as drivers face out-of-syllabus Marathi questions
Auto, taxi shortage in Mumbai as drivers face out-of-syllabus Marathi questions
M.U.H
24/08/202624
For decades, Mumbai's iconic kaali-peeli taxis and autorickshaws have given the city its daily rhythm and enabled the superfast pace the city boasts about. Not just during peak office hours, cabs and autorickshaws are also a crucial part of the city's late-night ecosystem. But since August 21 (Friday), hailing a taxi or autorickshaw and hearing the meter-down sound has become extremely difficult in Mumbai, because officials from the Regional Transport Offices (RTOs) have started checking if the drivers can speak Marathi.
The nakas are everywhere, from south Mumbai to the northern suburbs. Drivers who fail to speak in Marathi are being issued a "memo", and if they fail again after a month, their registration as cab or autorickshaw drivers could be cancelled for three months, until they can pick up a few basic sentences in Marathi. At least, that's what the official requirement says.
Basic sentences in Marathi shouldn't be much of a problem. But drivers allege that the questions they are being asked by the officials are "out of syllabus".
The checking drive is scheduled to continue until September 30.
A section of autorickshaw drivers in Mumbai began a three-day strike on Monday evening against Maharashtra's new Marathi language requirement for commercial passenger vehicle drivers.
Mumbai had already been facing a shortage of autos since Friday, when the drive began. Several commuters told India Today Digital that they had to wait 40-50 minutes to find an auto or cab, with many reaching work late.
The language test, the drivers said, has added pressure to an already difficult livelihood.
On Monday, autorickshaw and taxi drivers in the Kandivali suburb staged a road blockade, alleging that the enforcement of the Marathi language rule has led to harassment and threats against drivers who are not proficient in the language.
Cab drivers who spoke to India Today Digital said they are willing to learn Marathi, but claimed that some questions being asked by officials are beyond what they were taught during the government's training programme.
The requirement applies to taxi and autorickshaw drivers, including those working with app-based cab services such as Ola and Uber. The Maharashtra government amended the Maharashtra Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989, to make working knowledge of Marathi mandatory for commercial passenger vehicle drivers. The enforcement drive began on August 20, after a three-month grace period ended on August 15.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said on Monday, "We are not trying to make our Hindi-speaking brothers experts in the Marathi language, but they should have working knowledge of the language... The deadline to learn the language has been extended three times now. Our Mahayuti government will not allow injustice based on language."
DRIVERS SAY RTO OFFICIALS' QUESTIONS ARE OUTSIDE THEIR TRAINING
Kisun Yadav, a Kandivali-based taxi driver, originally from Patna, told India Today Digital that drivers were prepared to learn Marathi but were struggling with the way the requirement was being implemented.
He said, "Training and certification centres were operating in parts of Mumbai, including Marol Naka, Kanjur Marg, Kurla, Andheri and Goregaon. But the material taught there did not adequately prepare drivers for some of the questions they were facing during RTO checks."
Yadav said this was particularly difficult for older drivers, many of whom have limited education and depend on driving for their livelihood. He said some drivers were not even literate and had taken up driving because they had few other options to earn a living.
The pressure is also greater for drivers who work on short-term contracts. Yadav told India Today Digital, "Many autorickshaw drivers do not own their vehicles. Instead, they work under contractors who own several autos or cabs and pay drivers a share of their daily earnings."
For such drivers, Yadav said, "Learning another language while meeting daily income targets is very difficult. Not all of them become cab or auto drivers permanently. They keep moving from driving, labour work, and other jobs, whatever comes their way."
Yadav also questioned the timing of the government-backed Marathi classes conducted through the Konkan Sahitya Parishad. He said attending classes meant losing working hours, while the sessions were held during periods when drivers could otherwise be earning.
Ashok Tiwari, another cab driver who spoke to India Today Digital, is originally from Ballia in Uttar Pradesh, and has lived in Mumbai since he was five and learnt Marathi in school. But he said his experience cannot be compared with that of lakhs of other drivers who came to Mumbai later in life.
Notably, in Mumbai alone, there are 4.6 lakh auto-rickshaw and taxi licence holders, according to figures cited in The Hindu's report.
Tiwari said learning a new language can itself be difficult for people with little or no formal education. His main objection, however, was to what he described as questions that were outside the training material provided to drivers.
WHAT IS THE LANGUAGE TEST THAT MUMBAI DRIVERS NEED TO TAKE?
The official test consists of practical questions based on situations drivers encounter every day. These include communicating with passengers about destinations, fares, routes, meters and CNG stops. Expected responses include phrases such as, "Mala CNG bharayche aahe. Thode thambave lagel" (I need to fill up with CNG, we'll have to stop for a while), and "meter chalu kele aahe" (have started the meter).
The transport department has said the questionnaire is based on the Marathi training provided to drivers by the Konkan Sahitya Parishad. Officials have said the questions are designed around everyday conversations between drivers and passengers.
But the drivers India Today Digital spoke to asked what exactly constitutes "working knowledge" of Marathi?
It must be noted that Marathi is the mother tongue of nearly 36% of Mumbai City's population, making it the city's largest linguistic group, according to the 2011 Census. However, at the same time, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar were among the biggest sources of migrants to Mumbai from outside Maharashtra, accounting for nearly 47% of Mumbai's out-of-state migrant population, according to 2011 census data.
The Census report on the mother tongue of residents in the city has shown that respondents who identify Hindi to be their mother tongue have grown by over 40% from 25.88 lakh to 35.98 lakh in Mumbai. At the same time, the number of respondents who said that Marathi is their mother tongue fell by 2.64% from 45.23 lakh in 2001 to 44.04 lakh.
So, the Marathi language rule comes against this backdrop. Drivers who spoke to India Today Digital said most passengers they encounter understand and converse in Hindi, and that this has been the case in Mumbai for decades.
OVER 1,200 DRIVERS ISSUED NOTICES IN FIRST ROUND
Maharashtra Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik said on August 21 that 1,268 commercial passenger vehicle drivers had been issued notices after the first day of statewide checking. Of the 8,217 drivers tested until the evening of August 20, 3,995 were tested in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR).
As of August 20 (Thursday), in the MMR, 604 drivers were found to lack working knowledge of Marathi. On the same day, outside the MMR, 4,222 drivers were tested and 664 were issued notices, according to the press release by Sarnaik.
Drivers receiving notices have one month to acquire the required working knowledge of Marathi. If they fail to comply, their badges can be suspended for three months.
Sarnaik defended the exercise, saying, "Possessing working knowledge of Marathi is not merely a matter of following rules but is also about the convenience and safety of passengers."
However, cab drivers Kisun Yadav and Ashok Tiwari said that if you go to a busy station like Dadar or Bandra Terminus, or Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, where trains from everywhere in Maharashtra arrive every few minutes, you'll barely find any passengers who only speak in Marathi. "If someone from Kolhapur or Solapur or Satara is initiating the conversation in Hindi, why would I respond in Marathi?" asked Yadav.
The minister, however, has also said the government does not want to take away anyone's livelihood, but wants to protect Marathi and Maharashtra's identity and culture. He said 1.65 lakh drivers had already undergone Marathi training and received certificates during a 105-day campaign.
The results, however, are visible in the form of strikes and absent cabbies and autorickshaw drivers in India's financial capital.
But the rule itself is not entirely new. According to Sarnaik, a requirement for practical Marathi knowledge for operating autos and taxis has existed in Maharashtra since 1989, but had not been strictly enforced. The state amended the 1989 rules in 2026 to give the requirement effect.
The enforcement has nevertheless triggered concern among drivers and unions.
Official data says Maharashtra has around 9.65 lakh licensed rickshaw and taxi drivers. The government's training campaign covered only 1.65 lakh drivers.
DRIVERS FROM UP, BIHAR FEAR CONFRONTATION WITH MNS MEMBERS
For drivers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, there is another concern — the fear of confrontation with Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's (MNS) activists.
Drivers told India Today Digital that the MNS's history of confrontations with north Indians in Mumbai makes some of them nervous about the language drive.
The party has a long association with aggressive Marathi identity politics. The MNS won no seat in the 2024 Maharashtra Assembly election and did not contest the 2024 Lok Sabha election, but is aggressive against both north and south Indians when it comes to language politics.
The picture, however, is more complicated than a simple MNS-versus-migrant narrative.
MNS has joined hands with Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT). Yet Jan Suraaj leader and newly elected Bankipur MLA Prashant Kishor, who had worked with Uddhav Thackeray's undivided Shiv Sena, said he had sought an assurance that Hindi-speaking migrants would not be targeted. He also credited the Uddhav-led Sena with ensuring that such violence did not take place during his stint with the party.
However, workers of Raj Thackeray's party have continued to target north Indians, with several instances of north Indian business owners being beaten up during the BMC polls in January this year, despite the language plank falling flat.
For drivers like Yadav and Tiwari, however, politics is secondary to the immediate effect on earning a living.
Yadav said learning Marathi is not a problem by itself. The problem, he said, is being expected to learn it quickly while continuing to meet daily financial commitments, particularly when the questions being asked during checks do not always match what the drivers were taught.
The frustration is now visible on Mumbai's roads, as the three-day strike began on Monday, and commute already difficult because of the rains.
