The prime minister has promised Indians at home and abroad that he will not rest till the country becomes the third largest economy, after the US and China. The average Indian railway commuter must wonder what this means for her.
Last week, I travelled overnight by train from Bengaluru to Ernakulam. Little seems to have changed. The air conditioning was as cold as a morgue. A complaint was raised. The attendant obliged. Soon it was as hot as an oven. The black blanket smelled of others’ sleep; the little white pillows had on them sepia maps of strangers’ nightmares. The washroom taps did not work, the door bolts were not aligned, and, in the vestibules passengers hopeful of a miraculous berth squatted by their dozens. The Indian train, despite the efficiently-run Vande Bharat and others such, continues to be an arbitrary, uncertain, olfactory experience for most of the 23 million daily passengers.
My journey was behind schedule. But it did not kill or hurt, a probable outcome of buying a railway ticket. Last month, at least 10 passengers were killed and more than 50 injured because of track misalignment due to 'maintenance work'. In the last five years, there have been many accidents.
In June 2023, in the Coromandel Express collision in Odisha, at least 293 people were killed and over 1,100 were injured. The causes were couched in bureaucratese: ‘signalling errors and lack of real-time communication’. The year before, the major accident that occurred was the Bikaner-Guwahati Express derailment at Jalpaiguri, West Bengal: 9 killed, 45 injured. Track fracture was blamed. In 2021, it was the Doda train collision in Jammu: 20 killed, 70 injured, owing to ‘signalling failure’. None of this makes much sense because the technology we have is capable of detecting the problems and sending the information to the right people.
Dead passengers receive a compensation of Rs 5 lakh. The ‘seriously injured’ get Rs 50,000. What’s Rs 5 lakh to the spouse and children of the deceased, who, in most cases, are the main earning members? If you lose an arm, leg, or eye, what would Rs 50,000 do for you?
The meanness of the compensation is an indication of how little value India attaches to Indian life. As a nation with just too many humans, we naturally prefer to know more about feasts than funerals. We know everything about the Anant Ambani wedding, for example. The estimated budget of Rs 5,000 crore, to begin with. The VIP list of invitees. The warmth of million-dollar hugs between total strangers in golden gowns.
But we do not know, or cannot recall, the name or face of a single railway passenger who bought his ticket for his/her final ride. Surely a death that they are not responsible for must rate a higher monetary value than the Rs 2 crore watches that Bollywood stars got for attending a wedding?
Almost every other year, India witnesses a railway accident. But there has been no sustained discussion about the nature of the accidents, compensation or safety. The last white paper on the railways was in 2009. Neither the treasury benches nor the opposition has followed up on the seemingly permanent backwardness of the railways. How odd it is to talk about sending a rocket to land on the moon at a precise spot, and the country’s inability to warn one train that another is coming at it from the opposite direction on the same track, though the same satellite information systems are at work. These systems can sense oncoming trains and alert the pilots and control centres almost instantly.
Yet, rail travel is a bit like a war to the average Indian. If the same rate of accidents was applied to air travel, there would be hell to pay. Recently, when the Delhi airport roof began leaking, it made headlines in every newspaper. Almost every railway station, used by the poorer classes a million times more, is in much worse shape—and yet, it is seen as pretty much all right.
The present minister has done a lot, introducing new high-speed trains and modernising the railways. Among the safety measures he has introduced is the Kavach, a train collision avoidance system named with a mythological allusion. This too involves satellite communication in part, we are told. None of this is cutting-edge technology. All of it has been there for scores of years. It is that we are way behind. It is that despite our ambition—Bovarian in its delusions of grandeur—to become a superpower or the third largest economy, we do not attach importance to the individual or try hard to make his or her life a little easier.
In government offices, ration shops and even splendidly garish public toilets, the guiding sentiment is that the individual consumer is a subject receiving a favour. The railways itself affords a prime example of this almost philosophical disposition. How else can one explain the Mumbai local trains, which feel like travelling concentration camps, transporting 7.5 million commuters daily when they should be carrying less than half that number? There are changes in Mumbai’s daily commuting, of course. The metro, for example—but it is about 50 years late in making its entry.
Clearly, the problem with the railways is the same as most of its trains: it is racing against time, and constantly falling behind.
C P Surendran
Poet, novelist, and screenplay writer. His latest novel is One Love and the Many Lives of Osip B
(Views are personal)
(cpsurendran@gmail.com)