davethegrinch.net

Dave says:

If there is one thing the British left behind that the Indians are in no hurry to rid themselves of, then it must be the railway system. It is the lifeline of the country and the only piece of infrastructure that actually works as advertised, well most of the time at least. For clarity, but not necessarily brevity, I will divide the actualities of this not-so-modern marvel into 3 categories.

1. How the government would like you to see it.

2. How it is.

3. What nobody likes to mention.

So, here’s the governmental trainspotting facts: it is the 2nd largest rail network in the world with over 42,000 miles of track and it is also the largest employer on the planet with over 1.6 million employees - although many of them appear to stand around doing nothing. Fourteen thousand locomotives grace its tracks with black smoke-filled regularity to transport 12 million people a day. Although the fact that every year over 800 people die in train accidents might at first appear to belong in my 3rd category, I have decided to include it here because compared to the government’s other transportation infrastructure, the roads, it’s really very safe. Even though the rail system is the most dangerous in the world, over 85,000 people die each year on the pot-holed, hair-pinned roads so as our principle means of transportation, that factoid makes us feel a little better.

So, how it is. Basically, inefficient, dirty, cheap and the only way to get around. If it were not cheap, we would feel cheated but then you get what you pay for. A sense of properness pervades the system as if Winston Churchill still presides over its daily operations. There are 7 classes of train travel ranging from 1st class “Indian luxury” down to 2nd class hard wooden benches, no windows, cattle-car economy. We have taken the following in descending luxurious order: AC2 (bunks that convert into day seats, divided by curtains, 6 people to a cube and air-conditioning), AC3 (same thing as AC2 except 8 people to a cube and no curtains) and Sleeper (same as AC3 but open windows and no air-con). Quite frankly, they all suck but AC2 is the way to travel, one becomes used to it and may actually sleep for a few hours. The stations also reflect the class structure with waiting rooms of appropriate griminess for the appropriate class. Those in 2nd class or without reservations wait on the platform - literally, they lay out a piece of cardboard and go to sleep right there in the booking office, on the platform, on the steps - thousands of train refugees waiting for a train, I guess, but it’s really hard to know. The ticket collectors are of the old-fashioned variety, too. They all dress smartly, sport a mustache and sign your ticket. It is wise to never cross a ticket collector, they love their jobs and the system and would love nothing more than to throw you from the train. When the passport number I gave for my booking did not match the passport I presented, I was given a very stern lecture on the privilege that it was to book online and therefore, I assume, how privileged I was to be riding this gentleman’s train. He informed me I was falsifying information to a government office and I seriously thought our trip was going to end right there and then.

It appears to us that to reach the stated factoid of 12 million passengers a day, they must all be squeezed, packed and pushed onto one single train. There is often over 20 coaches of which most are unreserved 2nd class (wooden seats, no windows) and because they’re unreserved as many get in the carriage as can get in the carriage or hang out the windows or ride on the steps or grope tenuously to doors and there they stay for the whole 12 hour journey. The other classes are reserved and are often reserved days in advance which makes it tricky for us because we usually have to book our departure as soon as we arrive else we could be stranded in a dump of a town for a week. It’s a real pioneering wild-west railroad spirit even though the reservation system is computer based and works with quite amazing efficiency.

A quick note on efficiency before I move on to what nobody talks about. Trains that go long distances and make few stops are called Express trains. Actually, they have cute names like The Konklan Express that conjure up romantic images of transcontinental rail travel but, they are more express by desire than by execution. Each train ticket has your distance printed on it so out of 3 or 4 express journeys of greater than 400km each I have calculated the average speed to be about 52kmh which is about 33mph - not much of an express.

Now on to what nobody talks about. Firstly, the good stuff. This system is exactly what the people need. It is cheap, reliable and connects every small to midsize town to city in the country. This means that most everyone gets to travel. It is the lifeline, it brings goods in and out and makes the remotest places part of India. People wave when the train goes by and it presents the population with hope that they, too, can move. Whereas some cultures have the church, pub or town hall, India has the railway station to bring together the community. It is an ecosystem, from the stray dogs on the platform through the beggars to the employees and up to the tourists. However, ever ecosystem has its parasites and this is no exception. The level of poverty in the country is apparent when traveling by train, you can see it out the window and then, unfortunately, it taps you on the shoulder. There appears to be no policy for not allowing beggars on the train perhaps because this is the part nobody likes to talk about. Little boys of 6 years of age crawl on their hands and knees on the dirty coach floor with a rag. They make feable attempts to clean beneath your feet and then will beg with grunts for either your food or money. Old men with missing limbs tap your shoulder constantly asking for a hand-out and mothers work the trains with their diaperless, filthy babies. They all look and smell terrible but they’re not always genuine. We’ve heard stories of fathers cutting fingers from their children to make them more sorrowful for begging purposes. We’ve heard of kids putting Vaseline around their eyes to fain weeing. It’s always the kids, child after child looking up at you with practiced and obviously needy eyes. They are all present on the streets, too, but in a train you have no escape. Many a conversation has been had concerning what, if any, to give these people. Begging can be profitable, certainly more profitable than doing nothing, and probably more profitable than the worst jobs imaginable such as road sweeping or latrine cleaning. But should we, as tourists or even as residents, be expected to employ the beggars? Shouldn’t part of our ticket price be a respite from the poverty that surrounds us 24 hours a day? We’re not sure - it’s a complex issue but this is the ecosystem that exists and we as visitors need to remember that we will soon be back to our comfortable standards and when our memories of this experience need to be prompted by this report, this will still be the existence of 12 million people a day over 42,000 miles of track bound together by those concrete ties.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 1:21 am and is filed under Global Travels, India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.