[invidious]

Firstly, how does India define literacy? Forget math. Or grammar or language. Feel free to correct me but I recollect that for census purposes, if a person can write one's name, he is considered literate. So if a guy can manage to scrawl Ram on a piece of paper, he fits the definition of literate.

Except for the Supreme Court, many judges in India even at the High Court level are downright inept. Not too long ago, a Calcutta High Court Judge issued summons to the Chief Justice of India and a bunch of other judges in the Supreme Court to appear before him in Calcutta High Court.

A few months ago one Meghalaya High Court Judge said that "Indians should be declared a Hindu Rashtra" and he would was hopeful Modiji would do it soon. Thankfully, a larger bench overturned that judgment.

So, it is highly unlikely that if challenged in SC or a bigger bench of the Rajasthan High Court, this absurd judgment will stand.

[landcruiser123]

I think this discussion is going out of hand with personal attacks. We should remember that most (not all) of the drivers we rely on are illiterate by someone's definition.

Think of it:
1. The truck driver who delivers your groceries to your local store/supermarket/home
2. Your milkman
3. Your construction contractors
4. Water tankers
5. Some of your bus/cab drivers

If aren't allowed to drive, our country is going to come to a grinding halt. As many pointed out, there's no difference between literate and illiterate people when it comes to driving etiquette in some cases.

[vikramvicky1984]

I could write a lot about how it reflects on our us as a discriminating society but then ours is non political non- controversial forum.

Dear Court,
Please make literacy compulsory no, too much effort and then how do we have cheap labor?
For a driver you are taking away his bread and ensuring his children too will remain illiterate.
Illiteracy was not his choice, it was his circumstances- can you do something about it?
Easy to direct and decide others when you are sitting up on a pedestal and are so privileged.

Fellow member, when you take cabs/ autos, please ask those illiterate/ semi educated immigrants how much they prioritize their kid's education over even meals.

Most of road rage/ drunken cases which are sort of deliberate accidents ( not an "accidental" accident) - were they illiterate?

[vinaydas]

Interesting ruling but when putting heavy machinery in the hands of an individual I expect him to read the operation manual regardless of how familiar he/she is with the machine.

But I still believe the solution is heavy penalty for offenses rather than this ruling.

Example 10,000 Rupees fine for entering a one way (very common among yellow board cabbies and Tempo travelers in Bangalore ). When you make a man pay approximately 33% of his salary as a fine for an offense he will never repeat it in his life.

[GTO]

Mod Note: Some members have been warned. Please be polite + civil + respectful, even while debating. Thanks for the support & understanding

[kaps619]

Firstly, when it comes to driving behavior, there is no difference as such between literate & an illiterate (since experience & skills matters the most in this case).
Also regarding road signs and other stuff, there's already driving & identification of signal tests while issuing licenses. If High Court could direct RTOs to follow all protocols seriously, then such incidents would automatically reduce drastically.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by VeluM

No one is being deprived of the use of a public resource, it is the private individual's license that is in question here.

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.
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A license comes with huge responsibility which must be conveyed to the prospective holder and confirmed by examination before they can be allowed to hold that license.

When I read your arguments, I kind of agreed with you. At first instance what you are saying is correct. Driving is a privilege and not a right.

And then I realized something. The Vienna convention on road stuff. Forget the name. Remember how you can drive with your license from India in many countries all over the world because your license is in English.

Those countries which signed the agreement agreed on common symbols.
Looks something like this.

Symbols. Not German, not french, not Dutch. But symbols




So lets come to the Judgement. Only English readers can get a license? What about a truck driven from Salem fluent in tamil. Allowed only to drive in Tamil Nadu?

Or the hindi speaking truck driver stopped at AP border because road signs are in English and Telugu?

So this judgement is making less and less sense.
As long as the person passes the driving test and understands all the symbols, and can read numbers, we should be good.

As long as they can recognize each of the symbols listed in vienna convention, there is no need to deny them a license.

[VeluM]

Originally Posted by GTO

Mod Note: Some members have been warned. Please be polite + civil + respectful, even while debating. Thanks for the support & understanding

That would be me. My apologies.

Originally Posted by tsk1979

When I read your arguments, I kind of agreed with you. At first instance what you are saying is correct. Driving is a privilege and not a right.

And then I realized something. The Vienna convention on road stuff. Forget the name. Remember how you can drive with your license from India in many countries all over the world because your license is in English.

So lets come to the Judgement. Only English readers can get a license?

No. As mentioned in the judgement, the petitioner is illiterate - unable to read/write any language.

My points as follows:

• The illiterate cannot be self taught by accessing the laws/rules and various printed material that an educated driver might - not specifying a language, just that they'd be unable regardless of the language.
  
• The illiterate cannot be formally tested. Oral testing leaves no evidence unless we have A/V recorded testing, which is impractical due to scale.
  
• From the above two we can conclude that we cannot ensure that the illiterate would have sufficient knowledge of the law and rules.
  
• It is also the law that literacy is a requirement for a transport license - Again not specifying a language, just the ability to read/write. The court ruled based on existing law.
  
• The people likely to be impacted are unlikely to spend money on drivers education classes when just the commercial license itself costs upward of 20k.

The system is flawed at many levels. We must have educated citizens - they are being denied that right. We must have knowledgeable police, better infrastructure, a less cumbersome legal system - all valid points.

However the point of this discussion is that should someone illiterate - who cannot know the law or nuances that even we educated drivers know only partially - be allowed to drive just because the system is flawed, or should we address the root cause and fix it?

I'm not immune to the knowledge that they are people with families, who need food at the very least and are struggling to earn. So is potentially a thief, but do we take the same permissive view if they break the law? The law is the law, and ignorance of it is not an excuse.

I'm sure the older of you would have studied in english the story about the poor fisherman who stole a track bolt from the rail line to use as a weight. He was perplexed as to his crime because he didn't know it was illegal - everyone did it. But the court still found him guilty of endangering the safety of the passengers of the trains, and awarded punishment. As a child I felt sad for the fisherman. As an adult I still feel sad but I know that education is key, and the court was just doing it's job based on the law.

[sgiitk]

In UP once they tried to bar 3rd divisioners from applying for MBBS. Then then minister for health argued, well I am a third division Class XII. Argument over.

[bigron]

How is stealing a railway track bolt relevant to the topic of discussion here. Where is theft in the current scenario?

Mods, this thread is now leading no where with either just the same things being said using different words or someone just opposing it for the sake of opposing.

[kiku007]

Judicial overreach.

Time and again they are going beyond the scope of the case in hand and are giving free advice without consideration of facts.

Where is the data that said people who can't read and write caused X% more accidents in India? Seriously, where is it?

Sun film ban, diesel ban, old vehicles ban and now illeterates are banned. This has to stop.

P.S: The current driver licensing system needs complete overhaul. But that's for the Government to handle.

[RaviK]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

..Or the hindi speaking truck driver stopped at AP border because road signs are in English and Telugu?...

You make a good point. Few years back , I had to make multiple trips to interiors of Punjab, having signs in Punjabi only, and I had to ask for directions every now & then on link roads (with a masters degree under my belt)!!

Its a difficult situation, with no easy exit it seems. If the entry bar is set too high, people will just find the alternates (i.e. drive without the license in this case).
On the other hand, even if a single life is lost due to an accident that could've been avoided had the driver read the boards (e.g. "slow down, school ahead"), many of which are put there by private entities, in non-standard formats, then it becomes a compelling argument to have a certain entry criteria !!

[LoneRidder]

I guess we are reading wrongly into this judgement. This judgement was specific to a person applying for HMV licence. As per rules, HMV licence can be obtained only if a person is VIII qualified. In this case he was a LMV driver, by using his private licence, which doesn’t require any qualification criterion. By virtue of qualified LMV driver, he wanted HMV licence, which has been stuck down by the High Court.

In the process of striking down the petition, High Court also ordered
"A licence cannot be allowed to be issued to an illiterate person..He would not be in a position to understand road signs and notices of caution written on the boards for human safety on the highways as well as on the roads in the cities."
Though reports are not very specific, it could be related only to HMV and the illiterate reference should be only to VIII pass certificate.

More than everything, I too agree, that there should be some qualification guidelines prescribed for different type of licence. The fact that ‘few’ illiterates or few illiterate farmers are driving should not be a reason for not having this rule. Driving is a skilled work or art like many other profession. Having certain ‘level’ of literacy will make a big difference on the roads.

I am sure, none of us were ok with the below news. We would have fumed;

Class 8 student conducts operation in Uttar Pradesh's Shamli district

https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nati...-district.html

Boy 'performs surgery in world record bid'

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20....international

While we all agree every profession needs certain ‘qualification’ to gain ‘knowledge’, even driving also needs serious 'knowledge'. It is also an assumption that this knowledge comes with literacy, like our other assumptions (voting, smoking, drinking).

Road literacy is about symbols, which is common across states, but also universal. Hence argument of travelling between states doesn’t apply at all.

But again, not all illiterates are bad drivers and all literates are also not good drivers. Just now witnessed few hundreds of hi-tech illiterates at Chinnapanahalli railway crossing barging in from all four sides with complete no movement of traffic for over 30 minutes at Namma Bengaluru .

[Renjith Rajan]

Driving involves learning, you can't just drive because you are literate. A normal person, whether literate or not, can easily learn how to operate a vehicle, how to behave in roads, read the symbols, even understand the common words without actually reading it. So illiterate = bad driver is not correct.

It is just a matter of conducting the driving test properly and issuing the license.

[blackwasp]

We are missing a point here. The gentleman who filed the petition in the first place had applied for a transport / commercial driver's license. He was denied it as for a commercial license you need to be 8th pass minimum (IIRC this varies from state to state). When I got my LMV license, I was not asked about educational qualifications, but when I applied for commercial license, I was specifically asked to include my educational qualification.

Now, the Hon. Judge figured out all illiterates are a menace and asked the Rajasthan authorities about it. I think there has been an error and it should only be for commercial vehicles. Another angle is he may have noticed that all license holders have managed to get a license despite being ineligible for the same.