I’ve spent a lot of my time in India hurtling across the country in a railway car. Most times, I’m lucky enough to get booked on a third AC car (~Rs. 300 for a 4 hour journey), which is equivalent to traveling business class on a flight. AC class cars not only have the eponymous AC comfort, but also provide bedsheets and pillows for your bunk*. AC cars are also better kept and cleaner than the general cars; they are also strictly monitored by the ticket inspectors to prevent stowaways. Other times, if the booking is made too late, then it’s by regular sleeper cars I go (~Rs. 200). These open air cars offer the bare bunk bed covered in noticeably dirty vinyl and you risk having cockroaches and mice skitter across your bunk while you are comatose. Still, sleeper cars are guaranteed seating and loitering in these cars by non-ticket holders is kept to a minimum. Sometimes, fortune deals me an unlucky hand and I’m stuck in the general seating car (~Rs. 100), which is a free-for-all arrangement where you can place yourself wherever you find space. I once traveled during the night from Jamshedpur to Kolkata, and there were literally people sleeping under my seat, in the aisles, and even on the luggage racks.
I think it’s the latter scenario that really amazes me about the Indian rail system. A number of people have documented the incredible heartline of India that is the railway – The New York Times featured a video last month and of course, there’s Paul Theroux’s definitive travelogues (The Great Railway Bazaar) of 20 years back. But in my opinion, what is remarkable is how the railway system is an equalizer in a country that is normally full of disparities. The highly subsidized tickets ensure that just about anyone can afford a train journey. Even daily wage earners can save up for the Rs. 100 ticket for occasional trips back to their native villages. It also means that various holy and culturally significant destinations around the country are accessible to everyone. As long as you can save a few rupees per month, you can make a pilgrimage to one of the holy temple cities. I remember standing in the gardens of the Taj Mahal and seeing all sorts of citizens enjoying their country’s wonder. Talking to my auto driver later, I was told that a lot of poor Indians come from around the country to see the Taj Mahal. Like some of the more popular temples, the Taj is on the to-do list of many poor people as the culmination of a lifelong pilgrimage. There’s no such equalizer in any other country that I’ve been through, where even bus journeys can be prohibitively expensive for the poor. [The only exception perhaps is the Chinatown bus system between New York, Boston, DC, and North Carolina]
Of course, there is also a more unpleasant side to the great railway system. As the New York Times video and others have noted, the railways are overtaxed and under maintained. While the general seating cars offer the poor an affordable transportation option, the conditions are also appalling. The overfilled general compartments are unsafe for female passengers during the night, not to mention the unsanitary conditions of such overcrowding. Let’s all pray that no one with a highly contagious disease gets onto a general seating car, because the spread of that epidemic would be unstoppable.
There are other aspects of the railway system that are hard to stomach. Waiting at the Surat station in Gujurat, I saw workers digging and removing the sewage waste on the tracks by hand! They had no gloves, no tools, nothing but a metal pan onto which they piled the waste to carry to another spot for dumping. Demeaning nature of the work aside, the blatant health hazards of the job alarm me enough. While manual waste scavengers aren’t seen at every station, their existence is a complaint that I’d like to lodge with the railway authorities.
But perhaps that’s the problem – the massive network of crisscrossing tracks lacks a central authority. Each region has its own jurisdiction over the railways and as much else in Indian, the level of functionality entirely depends on the region in question. As expected, the Southeastern Railway that governs the routes I travel on most, between West Bengal and Jharkhand, is one of the weaker authorities. Our trains and stations are noticeably more dilapidated and dirtier than the other lines that I’ve taken in other parts of the country.
It’s really a shame that such a great asset of the country is slowly deteriorating without enough care. A central power really needs to take up the task of renovating and better upkeep of the system. And until someone forces the Southeastern Railway to shape up, the only thing I can say to redeem the Howrah station in Kolkata is that at least it has the largest array of food vendors out of any train station I’ve seen.
* Most train journeys are overnight, and thus these are sleeping cars. There are also AC chair cars.
