You tourist? Go straight & traffic signal

Delhi police have spent more than Rs 25 lakh over two years to teach their men to say “good morning”, “good afternoon”, “thank you, sir”, “India good country” and “go straight and red signal”.

The plan was that 42,000 policemen — from constables to inspectors — would be taught spoken English and etiquette in preparation for the Commonwealth Games. Police commissioner Y.S. Dadwal wanted his force to be ready for the thousands of foreigners due to visit Delhi for the Games.

Two private institutes were assigned the job.

“The spoken English course and behavioural training was a farce. We met over 300 constables last week who had undergone the training but they failed to speak one sentence in English. It was simply a waste of money,” said a senior IPS officer who is part of the Games security team.

The policemen have told the officers they were only taught words like “very good”, “how are you”, “beautiful place”, “India good country”, “very good people”, “good morning”, “good evening” and “good afternoon”.

Most were sweating when asked how they would give directions in English if a tourist approached them, the IPS officer said. “Go straight and traffic signal and left,” one blurted without knowing what he was saying, the officer added.

“We will have a meeting soon with the private institutes and ask them to return part of the money spent on the course. Or else we would ask them to give them training again.”

Between Rs 25 lakh and Rs 30 lakh was spent on the course.

S.N. Srivastava, joint commissioner (training), who was in charge of the entire programme, refused to comment when asked if no one had kept tabs on the quality of the training through the past two years.

“I cannot say anything on this,” he said.

The policemen were trained in batches, with each group attending class from 11am to 4pm for three days.

“The three days turned out to be a picnic for everyone in our batch. We had great fun as we got a much-needed break from duty. From the beginning, we knew three days would not be enough for us to speak English. Even people from the institutes said so and gave us a list of words and sentences to memorise,” said a constable posted at the police headquarters who completed his language training last month.

A head constable at Rajendernagar police station said: “Now my son teases me when I try to memorise some English words and sentences. I know some basic words and this is what I learnt there as well. We had a gala time there without learning anything. We wished the course should have continued for several months.”

An IPS officer was critical of the way the course was planned, saying people cannot start speaking a foreign language overnight. “Had this been the case, English would have been spoken by everybody in our country,” he said.

Rajan Bhagat, the Delhi police spokesperson, said there had been some problem with the course. “We are trying to find out what went wrong. The course was meant to groom our personnel with language skills and etiquette. I think three days are not enough to develop all the skills.”

But he contradicted himself when asked why a three-day language course was conceived. “Do you think our policemen are illiterate?” Bhagat asked.