``Plain speaking is good for business,'' says Nic Humphries, first secretary, educational services, The British Council Division, New Delhi. It forms the nucleus of a package of seven courses that are being offered by the Council, with the corporate executive in mind. The courses are in thedisciplines of presentation skills; negotiation skills; report writing; business correspondence; telephoning skills and general business communication skills. There is also preparatory course for the Cambridge Business English Certificate (BEC) examination. The course fee is in the range of Rs 5,500-8,000 per participant. The task of making corporate and organisational communication `consumer friendly' was pioneered by The Plain English Campaign, a UK-based NGO, which has taken the message of uncluttered language across the globe. Euphemisms highlighted by the Campaign include `fiscal underachievers' for poor people and `pre-enjoyed car' for a second hand car. Also phrases like `here to for' and `herein' which don't have a place in modern-day correspondence are discouraged by the Campaign.

The NGO, besides conducting workshops for companies, started giving out awards for the worst examples of `Unplain English'. Corporations used to be terribly embarrassed to get the award since it meant that they were beingconsumer-unfriendly.

The NGO has successfully discouraged the use of redundant expressions in official documents in the UK over the last two decades. The reason they came into being was that ordinary people found it difficult to understand official documents. ``Earlier when one went to a government office to find out about old age benefits, one was given application forms and information leaflets written in a complicated way. Insurance was one such area where the terms used discouraged common people from understanding the fine print of the schemes,'' recollects Humphries.

The Campaign made a big impact on the information coming out of banks in the UK by using simpler grammatical constructions. ``They have made the information consumer friendly,'' says Nick Frew, an instructor with the English language teaching centre at the Council.

That is why plainer English makes sense in India too. In many respects, India has continued with the style of commercial correspondence being used in the 1950s. ``Justbecause it is a commercial letter it need not be a formal letter. The courses teach ways of writing simpler letters along with providing an exposure to modern forms of correspondence like the fax and the Internet,'' says Humphries. Another example of redundant language is the extensive use of passive voice to avoid taking responsibility in government departments. ``Officials use it to avoid owning up to their tasks,'' says Humphries.

The Council is also big on `English at the Workplace', says Frew. ``The distinction between business English and English for the workplace is clear. Our courses are targeted at everybody who is working and wants to use English as part of his work. So it could be a company executive or a social worker in an NGO or an accountant in a government department,'' he adds.Report writing, for example, is a generic course. You need to write a report if you are a banker. But you could also be writing one if you are employed as a researcher in an NGO working on sexual health. Theprogramme intends to expose participants to samples of modern correspondence and provide an idea of what are considered to be international standards. ``In letter writing we expose the executives to a wide variety of letters used in different contexts. Tips are given on construction of letters, ways of making them simpler and adapting them to different situations,'' informs Frew.

All the trainers in the package use the communicative approach, which is the Council's benchmark -- getting people to work together in pairs or groups to encourage discussion and learning.

Registration for corporate training packages in New Delhi begins next month, to be followed by one in Calcutta later this year. Booking forms can be obtained on request from the Delhi office of English Language Teaching Centre; ph: 3711401 (ext. 111). The Calcutta centre number is (033) 28924804.And if the message of plainer language does gain the valuable `kind attention' of `hon'ble' managers, corporate India may extend its `sinceregratitude.'