Instruction

Giving public instructions in a billion plus country is one of the most economical ways to spread message. But sometimes these instructions can become a good entertainment.

In nineties, Indian government took an initiative to increase the literacy rate in India. They targeted villages where literacy rate is poor. I remember my childhood days. Whenever I used to visit my grandparents place, I often came across such public awareness ads written on walls of several households. The wordings were like this- “Sakshar Janata- Bhusan Bharata” means literacy is an ornament of India. Now think, it was written to inform the importance of literacy among illiterate. Those who could read that for them it was ok but what about those who could not read a word. For them there is no message at all! Why would illiterate people bother about the written instructions? And those who know how to read letters, for them it is of no use because they already had achieved basic literacy. In villages this initiative was a grand failure as nobody paid attention to these messages.

Take another example of instructions on vehicles especially on trucks. While I was passing nearby a standing truck, I read the following instruction- Keep safe distance of 2 metres. And it was written in very small font which I could read when I was almost a foot away from the truck. There I wondered that how a person seating in another vehicle is supposed to read that message. It would not be visible to the driver of the other vehicle. And if the driver gets curious about those unreadable small letters, it has to take its vehicle almost near to the truck which would violet the instruction given on the truck itself. So in no circumstances two vehicles will come too closer. So such instructions are also useless.

Well it is not right to say that these instructions are useless at all but minimum care should be taken while planning for such initiatives like, who is the target audience and what platform should be used. It is not too difficult to evaluate. And if this is not done then new jokes will entertain us regularly.