The plight of Indian Railways

Much has been written about the Indian Railways all over in the newspapers, blogs and many other media sources. There have been numerous case studies at IIMs, Harvard and other B schools about the Lalu transforming Indian Railways into a world class rail service. But the truth is Railways are in a complete mess and the whole journey remains full of chaos. The affluent seldom travel (only exception is when the city is far away and there is no flight service available to the city) and thus the people who usually travel are working class (aka the great Indian middle class) or the poor section of the society or the daily passengers.

Let's take a whole look at the journey.

The Booking : Problems start even before you reach station ! Though the railway minister announce many new trains in each rail budget, the fact remains that you need to book your tickets at least one month before for prime routes or three weeks for non prime sectors. If you have the privilege of plastic money one can use the internet reservation service, which actually is a very good service, otherwise you have to stand in long queues at the booking window. The booking staff is usually the typical Indian government babu who has no sympathy towards the fellow standing people and move the things at his own discretion and will. Then there is the problem of touts which are omnipresent in each govt establishment. They will leave no stone unturned to rip you off. Now add to the confusion of which train to go by and on which route, reserving your ticket in itself is a big achievement !

The Station : Now you have got your tickets booked (vow!!) you head to the railway station happily to catch your train. An advice here : start your 'mission' to station well before the schedule time as the jams are imminent on all roads leading to station. So now you have made it to the station ... welcome to the world of stink. Here everything stinks , from the booking window to entrance halls to the platforms and last but not the least passengers (no i am not being racist here but this is the fact, so lets bear it). Then there is no proper space to park your car. The parking is managed by some locals who don't know the abc of prking rules. The haphazard parking add to the already chaotic traffic jam. Somehow, you make it to the platform on time only to 'discover' that the train is late by few hours (cor : not all trains arrive or depart late but yes, the probability of train running of schedule is very high). Also, there is a strange logic behind the trains running out of schedule or in exact word no logic at all. There are few trains who always run late without any specific reason and there are few who always leave at time. This has made the regular passengers expert that they can easily tell which train is good or bad (in terms of time). So it always pays for good to consult a local before making reservation for any particular train. Indian station even lacks the basic amenities. If you are traveling first time in a train then probably you will have to put a lot of effort only to know on which platform the train is scheduled to arrive/depart. More than ten platforms are common in big cities, so unfortunately if you entered the station from wrong side and the your platform is at other end, take my words : it will soak the energy out of you just to reach the other side of the platforms. There are no escalators, so you have to carry your luggage on your shoulders. You can have a coolie to carry your luggage but again he'll try every possible way to over charge you. There is no potable water and don't even dare to enter restrooms.

The food available on the platforms is unhygienic and can cause several air transmitted diseases or food poisoning. Rats are common on the railway tracks and they are so big that even cat will think twice before she can dare out her adventure to catch them. Given this huge population of rats it is simply not safe to deposit your luggage in the cloak room even the railways take no responsibility of your luggage being damaged by rats. There are whole lot of people on platform so no matter how early you come, you probably will never get any berth on the platform chair. Inside the station you can see whole India. People from many states and many walks of the life which keep the station abuzz with activities which anybody will simply find unbearable.

... to be concluded