Railways, as once said, r the backbone of a nation. Myself being a working woman & living in city like Mumbai - having to commute to far off distances for work, couldn’t agree more on this.
But come corruption & the complete spirit of it st& lost. I don’t disagree with the growth & the improvements visible in the Indian Railways in the past couple of years & couldn’t help appreciating the facilities being introduced & changes being made in order to provide for comfortable journey for the commuters.
All said & done, while riding high on the wings of progress we sometimes wish to forget that while change is supposed to be the only constant thing, corruption instead is the one thing that is constant in India – a parasite that is multiplying exponentially.
I would share my recent experiences on one of the trains with Indian Railways & would leave it onto the readers to analyze & justify the current situation in the government sector in India & how we as responsible & educated citizens can help in curbing the same.
I along with my family recently happened to travel from New Delhi to Jammu & return, the mode of transportation being Northern Railways. The trains & the respective conditions as experienced, that I am about to describe, r for the following trains:
Uttar S Kranti - Train No. 2445 - Up
Shalimar Express - Train No. 4645 - Up
Shalimar Express - Train No. 4646 - Down
We were booked on AC 3 tier coach, needless to say that people spare that extra money & book themselves on an AC coach for some basic expectations that includes
Clean coaches
Clean toilets with water availability
Clean & sufficient bedding
Least of all temperature control(at least that’s what the word AC is supposed to mean)
Since the journey is an overnight 12 hour+ journey, these things become the basic necessity & I pity to admit that none, mind me NONE of these facilities were being available in any of these trains throughout.
I would account for these one by one.
As for the clean coaches, since entering the coach we saw a herd of cockroaches marching fearlessly in the coach, climbing the seats & inspecting each commuter & their luggage. The cockroaches never seemed to stop, they kept on coming from nowhere all through the journey to an extend that people had to cover their faces while sleeping to avoid health hazards. I wonder if this was the state of an AC coach what would people in general compartment be going through!
As for temperature control, there was none. We kept waiting for some time initially, but all in vain. It was not until about an hour passed since the train had started, & the heat & suffocation became unbearable, that we finally asked the attendant for AC & lo! here the AC’s started working as if they were just waiting for someone to complain – lets save as much as we can by not switching AC’s on until any of the commuters complain – let them suffer till they can! This was the attitude of the attendant.
Not to mention about the cleanliness of the toilets. I can only sum up saying there was nothing that can be called clean. To top it all there was no water availability & the attendant just kept giving excuses saying that once the train attains speed the water would be available - what crap! The only reason I could see was that the cleaners were all busy selling paper soaps & candies in the coaches. I am not sure if they r even allowed to do so. The frustration of the commuters reached the brim when one of them shouted, “Where & how do u expect us to use these paper soap strips that u r selling every 5 minutes?”
Now comes the best part – when the workers started distributing the bedding for the night, we noticed that there was one sheet missing per person. Though there r supposed to be 2 sheets provided to each commuter, these people were doing away with just 1. On asking they simply said that on this train it’s a norm to give only 1 sheet. We resorted to challenge the same & approached the TT who agreed that these people r playing fowl & they should provide two sheets per person. After a long follow up of about an hour we got remaining one sheet per person for our family. Still the staff didn’t bother to give away the 2nd sheet to any of the other passengers for the simple reason that they did not bother to complain.
The similar thing happened in case of hand towels, No hand towels were issued to travelers & on querying we got the same-recorded response – “We do not have h& towels on this train”. On complaining for this too, suddenly the towels appeared from nowhere, this time again only for our family because we had complaint.
Something very similar happened when we ordered for dinner on these trains. Food is not included in the ticket price on these trains & we need to order & pay for it separately. Very few people know that when u order for food on Indian Railway, a packaged glass of dinking water & a packaged bowl of curd r mandatory to be a part thereof, which obviously were missing from our plates. Forget about the curd, when we asked for water, again the same reply came – “We do not serve water with food on this train”. Now almost accustomed to this answer of theirs, when we told them not to teach us rules, they agreed that it is supposed to be but they forgot to load water today. On further arguments, the staffer selling food, bought from is own pocket, & gave us two 1 liter packaged drinking water bottles. Now anybody can make out why would an employee spend from his own pocket, until he has some guilt to shield… This again, was not provided to other commuters since they never bothered to ask for their rights.
Now just come to think of it, there r hundreds of commuters traveling on these trains at one time & this I am talking of 3 trains that I know of, might be similar situation on hundreds of trains. Just imagine how much money these people r making for themselves on the governments’ & our expenses. We pay & government provide these things for our usage then who r these people to deny us of our rights & make money for themselves?
They save crates of food supplements supposed to be served to travelers & sell them in the open market to make money. They save on the efforts of distributing, collecting & counting linen & steal on the money saved from laundry of these. I’m sure they must be showing the allowable 5% loss of linen even though they distribute only 40% of the actual linen & sell off the remaining in market to keep their pockets warm.
I would say that it is we who promote & inspire these people to start practices like these; it is we who r to be blamed for their flourishing businesses. Had we bothered & cared to know & raised for our rights, would anybody be able to take advantage like this? Never!
Wake up People – its time we know & practice our rights & help our bit in making the progress measures a success for the nation.