Kishore Pariyar: the voice of clarity in banking and bureaucracy

In today's post, I am happy to profile Kishore Pariyar, a plain language hero. He has practised and advocated plain language in his roles at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and at top positions within the government as well as at international organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). This is no small achievement, given the entrenched ways of writing in bureaucratic and banking circles.

I present an edited email interview with Pariyar, who currently lives in Siliguri after retiring from government service. 

What does plain language mean to you? 

Plain language means writing in a simple and clear way. Laypersons are able to understand it easily without professional help. 

Sometimes sentences are written in a complex way to avoid legal risks. Because of this, people may not understand the real meaning. They may even need to pay professionals for help. Plain language solves this problem. It uses short, clear, and easy sentences. 

In a room full of people with different IQ levels and backgrounds, if even the person with the lowest level of understanding can grasp the message, then the communication has truly succeeded. To me, plain language is not about making ideas smaller. It is about making ideas reachable.

Since when have you been practising plain language? What motivated you to do so? And what, if any, were the benefits? 

I have been practising plain language for many years, though I may not have formally called it so in the beginning. During my career in regulation and supervision, I discovered that many non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and banks were not able to comply with RBI instructions, not because they did not want to comply, but because they failed to properly understand the circulars. The language was often technical, lengthy, and difficult to interpret. For fear of making mistakes, many institutions gave vague or incomplete replies.

I also noticed that even many junior colleagues within the system were struggling to understand the language and process cases correctly. This made me realise that complexity in communication was itself becoming a barrier to effective regulation and compliance.

One incident particularly influenced me. A large number of compliances in a bank had remained pending for months, some even for more than six months. I called the compliance officers from different divisions of the bank and explained in simple language what exactly was required. The results were remarkable. Most of the pending compliances were completed within two weeks.

After that, I also started “train the trainer” sessions so that understanding would not remain limited to a few individuals. The idea was to create institutional memory so that compliance culture could continue smoothly in the future as well. This experience convinced me that plain language is not merely about simplification. It improves understanding, reduces fear, strengthens compliance, and builds confidence.

Do you think plain language is only for the layperson? Please elaborate on your answer. 

No, not at all. Even highly educated people such as doctors, engineers, business persons, and professors often struggle to understand complicated legal language. They may know English very well, but when it comes to interpreting legal documents, agreements, insurance policies, or loan papers, many still seek professional help. In fact, lawyers sometimes differ in interpreting the same law or document. This shows that the problem is not education alone. The real problem is the complexity of the language used. 

Plain language helps everyone. It makes communication clear, reduces confusion, and lowers the chance of misunderstanding. A document should communicate its meaning directly, instead of forcing people to depend on experts to understand what is written.

You have worked with the RBI, the government, and with international agencies. How would you rate their openness to plain language? 

In my experience, RBI circulars and regulatory documents are often difficult to understand, even for many employees, bankers, and officials of NBFCs. The language is usually technical, lengthy, and written with great caution to avoid legal and regulatory risks. Because of this, many regulated entities sometimes fail to understand the exact requirement and may not be able to comply. 

The situation is similar with many international agencies. In fact, they are often even more conservative in their drafting style. They try to protect themselves from legal, reputational, and policy risks. As a result, the language becomes highly formal and complex. However, I feel that awareness is now growing about the importance of plain language. Regulators and institutions are slowly realising that communication becomes more effective when people can clearly understand what is expected from them.

Why do citizens need to know what the RBI does? What does its balance sheet hold for citizens? 

Most people think RBI is only for bankers or economists. But RBI affects the daily life of every citizen. 

When prices rise too fast, RBI tries to control inflation (see my explanatory article here). When you take a home loan, vehicle loan, or fixed deposit, RBI policies affect the interest rate. When you use Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and money reaches instantly, RBI is working silently in the background. When a bank faces trouble and people still trust the banking system, that confidence comes largely because RBI supervises banks.

You only notice the electricity supply when it’s missing. Similarly, most people notice RBI only when there is inflation, banking stress, cash shortage, or payment failure.

Citizens should get to know the RBI because RBI protects the value of money, stability of banks, and trust in the financial system.

RBI’s balance sheet is not just an accounting statement (see my explanatory article here). It reflects the financial strength of the country’s central bank. It contains information on assets such as gold, foreign exchange reserves, and government securities. These act like safety cushions for the country. During difficult times like COVID, global crisis, or sudden financial panic, these assets help RBI support banks, manage liquidity, and maintain confidence in the economy. 

Like a family feels secure when savings are available during bad times, similarly, the country feels secure when RBI has strong reserves and a strong balance sheet. In short, RBI’s balance sheet assures people that:

• currency will remain trusted,
• banks will remain stable,
• digital payments will continue smoothly,
• and the economy can handle shocks.

What are your personal interests and passions? 

My personal interests revolve around learning, communication, and helping people grow. I am also passionate about emotional intelligence, mentoring, and public speaking, as they help people understand themselves and connect better with others.

I enjoy reading extensively and try to finish four books every month, though I must honestly admit I succeed only sometimes. I also enjoy writing books and articles, especially on finance, leadership, mindfulness, and human behaviour. 

Apart from this, music is very close to my heart. I enjoy playing musical instruments and often sing to myself. It helps me relax, reflect, and stay emotionally balanced. 

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Zen Citizen: An effort towards clearer, bribe-free government processes

 

Last month I wrote about my volunteering project with Zen Citizen on translating the death registration form into plain English. This form gave me a chance to work closely with the founder of Zen Citizen, Vineeta Kommineni. Today's post features Vineeta and her organization and takes a look at their work from a plain language perspective. 

Founded close to two years ago, Zen Citizen is a volunteer-driven initiative that explains procedures in simple language and shares hacks/workarounds and undocumented information to help citizens independently apply for services. 

When Vineeta’s father passed away, she visited government offices many times to get documentation done. Each time she would be turned away by the staff asking for some or the other missing detail or document. The intent was clear: to wear her out enough to push her into paying a bribe. 

It didn’t really work that way. Eventually, Zen Citizen happened. While the core idea behind Zen Citizen is to empower citizens to access government services easily and on their own, the deeper goal is to fight against corruption, Vineeta told me in a telephonic interview. 

“Why should a citizen take the help of even middlemen to exercise their rights? Often the middlemen’s fee covers the bribe,” Vineeta said. 

The struggle for information is real in India. Finding out the police station, revenue district, or municipal ward your house is a part of should be just a few clicks away in this day and age. But it isn’t. One of Zen Citizen’s initial projects, Civic Compass, solved this for the residents of Bengaluru.  

Other tools Vineeta’s team have built are Kaveri Village Finder that helps you locate your property within the revenue department’s maps and Kaveri Image Resizer, a nifty way to resize photos for marriage certificate applications. These tools are workarounds for buggy government websites that frustrate and slow down users. 

Plain language in Zen Citizen’s work

“It isn’t enough to say file an affidavit. It needs to be explained in plain language. And in the absence of such information, Zen Citizen comes in. What’re the different ways in which something can be misunderstood? We must look at all that.

“Writing in plain language is not difficult. The hard part is caring enough about the user to do it,” Vineeta said.

Her current work with Seva Sindhu is to translate government forms into plain English. It’s a portal that hundreds of thousands of people visit everyday to avail of services such as birth or death certificate, police verification certificate, bus passes, and so on. “We are currently working only on the text and not doing any changes in the backend or redesigning the UX as that’s a safe, low-friction place to begin,” she informed me.

But plain language often goes deeper than text: it is about design and, as earlier noted, about empathy – aka getting into the user’s shoes. So I asked Vineeta what her approach would be if a change needs to go deeper than the text level. Take, for instance, the language field in the death registration form. Getting clarity on how to fill this field is not simply about editing the text or providing an explanatory note – see my post on this last month. This one field is enough to show that the form was not designed in a user-first way. 

To this, Vineeta replied, “We started with writing guides to help citizens navigate dysfunctional systems with less frustration. Our goal was to make the best of the situation. We did not want to fight the system or try to convince the government to change its processes—that felt like a battle for another day.” 

Fair enough. One must choose their battles and Zen Citizen has chosen theirs. Plain language is, of course, central to any work that strives to bring clarity to government processes. One does start with the text, but usually the work grows beyond it.

Translating the death registration form into plain English

 

I worked on the death registration form as a volunteer for Zen Citizen. I'd have liked to use some screenshots but the login is very buggy and I could not get into the Seva Sindhu portal once I completed the project. So, here’re some text-only highlights: 

Preferred language: This is a field at the beginning of the form. At first, it seems like an innocent enough query. But look at it more deeply and it can unhinge the entire form. By preferred language, what is the government asking? Is it the preferred language in which I want to fill the form? Or, is it the preferred language in which I want the Death Registration certificate to be provided? 

I selected English and proceeded to the subsequent fields. However, the language preference continued to haunt me. Further below in the form, it asks for the deceased’s name in Kannada. This on an English form. What happens if I am not a Kannada-speaking person? Of course, you can always use transliterating tools to input the name in Kannada, but how do I verify if it’s a correct reproduction of my name? 

The converse is even more problematic: that is, being asked to type the name in English when I have chosen Kannada as my language for the form. In English, one’s name can be spelled in so many ways. How do you verify if it’s correct if you don’t know English? This can result in a critical failure because if the certificate spells your name wrong, it’s a dud. None of the government agencies will accept it and getting it corrected is a lifetime’s work. 

Ration card: The form assumes everyone has a ration card! How did this come to be? If you don’t have a ration card, you cannot even begin with the form as the name of the deceased is automatically populated from the ration card. 

Date & time of death: The time selection menu progresses by the minute. This can be very tedious to navigate to the exact hour and minute. Providing a time selection menu like we use to set alarms in mobile phones shouldn’t be too difficult. The other question is why the time of death is relevant, unless we are investigating homicide. 

We also looked at the necessity of some of the data being collected – like the age of the deceased’s spouse. We are waiting to hear from Seva Sindhu on this and other queries. 

My learnings from this project as of now

• The form is not designed from the user’s perspective. It seems to primarily solve things for the government agency rather than the citizen.  
• It works on many assumptions -- that someone typing in English also knows how to type their name in Kannada; that everyone has a ration card; that if they cannot figure out something, they can always avail the services of a broker. 
• The form does not seem to be tested with users. Else, some of the things I highlighted here may have caught the eye of the form creators. 
• The form does not seem to take into cognizance the varied background of the users. Given that it’s a death registration form, it is applicable to everyone (!) and hence must be usable by everyone. 

The lacunae of this form are not unique to it. God knows, there are worse government forms out there. It is representative though and makes for a good beginning. Hope to be able to report positively on this project in the days to come. 

DPDP: It’s all about consent (and clarity)

 

Last month I wrote on the blog that in India we seem to be waiting for plain language to be made a compliance requirement. I couldn’t have spoken sooner. 

The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act [pdf] lays down the rules for collection, storage, and use of personal data online. A rule under this Act requires companies to collect informed consent from their users on the data they collect and be clear about the exact purpose they are going to use it for. 

And guess what? They need to ask for consent in plain language.

“Every request for consent under the provisions of this Act or the rules made thereunder  (sic) shall be presented to the Data Principal in a clear and plain language, …” [Emphasis mine.]

(Data principal here means the person who owns the data.)

The DPDP Act is largely inspired by Europe’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR), though it is different in some respects, too. However, both require plain language. Here’s what the GDPR says:

“Requests for consent must be ‘clearly distinguishable from the other matters’ and presented in ‘clear and plain language’.”     

Are Indian companies equipped to create a plain language consent form? 

No. And neither are they equipped to comply with most of the Act. DPDP has fundamentally questioned the way Indian companies do business. Most of them simply do not bother about privacy. And now they are being asked to obtain consent that is “free, specific, informed, unconditional, with a clear affirmative action”. That’s a big ask. 

The Act also lets the data principal withdraw consent at any time, after which the companies can no longer use or store their data. All of this must be complied within May 2027. As one can imagine, companies are scrambling to meet the deadline. 

So my guess is that no one is bothered much about drafting a plain language consent form. I’d be happy to be proved wrong. 

None of the news articles and blog posts I skimmed mention the term “plain language”. They do talk about clarity in the consent form. But how will companies go about achieving clarity without being aware of plain language guidelines is anybody’s guess. And, if their consent forms are not in plain language, they cannot be in true compliance of the law. 

It doesn’t help that the Act itself is not in plain language. That’s a missed chance to set an example. However, some wins are that it provides helpful snippets in the margins which highlight important parts of the Act (see screenshot below). 

 It also talks about different use cases where it becomes applicable. This makes it easy to understand.  

Overall, I would celebrate the fact that India’s new digital privacy act demands clarity and actually mentions plain language, not to forget its pathbreaking use of “she” and “her".  But we need to keep moving ahead.

(Pic credit: Pexels, Mohammed Yasir https://www.pexels.com/@mohammad-yasir-3365802/.)

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Think Indian corporates don’t care about plain language? Think again

When I talk about plain language in India, some of the questions I am asked are: Who practises it in India? Do Indians really care about plain language? This line of questioning seems to assume that plain language is a niche cause and isn’t of much relevance to most people.

Today I have some evidence to show that plain language is indeed practised in India, and no less by ICICI Bank, one of the top private sector banks. But there’s a catch. We’ll come to that.

Take a look at the Bank’s terms and conditions for Indian users. You’ll find:

• The very familiar legalese such as repugnant, thereof, and more;
• Lots of nominalizations such as “by giving a written notice”, “during which any maintenance work or repair is required to be carried out”, “Customers can make financial transactions”;
• Even gendered pronouns (from which century is this text?!); 
• No proofreading: “external service provider,s or agent's”.

No surprises here.

The readability statistics of this document as measured by Microsoft Word:

Words per sentence: 37.2

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 19.6

Passive sentences: 32%

Now take a look at the Bank’s privacy notice for EU users. The familiar legalese is missing and you do a double take: Is this the same company?

“We” and “you” are used plentifully. So are tables and vertical lists, though the numbering is a bit off in places. Note how these are missing from the India terms.

Of course, it could be plainer.

Example 1:

Original:

“We are permitted to process your personal data in compliance with Data Protection Legislation by relying on one or more of the following lawful grounds”

Plain language rewrite:

“The Data Protection Legislation permits us to process your personal data on these grounds”

Example 2:

Original:

The processing is necessary for the purposes of a legitimate interest pursued by us, which might be:

1. to provide services to you;
2. to ensure that our customer accounts are well-managed;
3. to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute…

Plain language rewrite:

The processing is necessary to:

1. provide services to you;
2. ensure that your account is well-managed;
3. to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute…

The document could be clearer in more ways. But the point is that it is head and shoulders above the terms document for India.

Its readability statistics as measured by Microsoft Word:

Words per sentence: 23.9

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 14

Passive sentences: 18.4%

Do note that I have used the readability statistics simply to provide a broad comparison between the two documents. Readability tools cannot accurately assess clarity.

Obviously, ICICI Bank can do a fairly good job of writing clearly when they put their mind to it. I’m guessing this is true of other Indian corporates as well.

So then why are Indian customers crammed with gobbledygook, while EU customers get clearer communication?

The answer is: regulation. Sometimes from within and sometimes without.

Led by central banks, many banks and financial organizations in Europe have consciously chosen plain language to bring about transparency, trust, and better customer experiences.

And this has not come about in a vacuum. Europe has had a long history of plain language, with many countries requiring it by law. In particular, regulations in the banking and finance sector require clarity, the latest among them being the EU Accessibility Directive. In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority practises plain language and expects companies to follow suit.

In such a setting, ICICI Bank would rather not stick out with its thereofs and repugnants. I am not surprised. A few years ago when I came to know about the booming job scene for plain language summary writers in India, I was told that they were all writing for clients abroad.

To sum up, the question is not whether Indians care for plain language. It seems we are simply waiting for plain language to become a compliance requirement. That too may not be far, given the many developments that are afoot. But if you keep waiting for too long, you may have a tough time playing catch-up.