Rail Suffer

About a month ago, I traveled to Delhi in a so called “Rajdhani Summer Special”. True to its name the train was really special, it reached Delhi 3.5 hours late and easily would have won the prize for “The Worst Service Ever” in a Rajdhani train’s category and would have also won the critics award for being the dirtiest Rajdhani train. I remembered this forgettable journey a few days back, when Didi was presenting Rail budget in the Parliament. After the budget presentation everyone in the treasury benches was going Ga-ga over the commendable job done by Didi including our very own Singh ji. She has proposed a lot in the budget, including world class facilities at some stations, increased security in the trains, medical facilities and not to forget the multiplexes on the railway stations.

At this point let me ask you a question, when was the last time you were happy with the food you got in a train? Ok, one more, how many times during your journey in a train have you found a neat and clean toilet (only exceptions being Rajdhani & Shatabdi Trains)? I think most of us will have to really search our memories deep down to come up with an answer for these questions, and these are not the only questions, there are many like them which, we will not be able to answer in a positive way. Today, we take certain things for granted when we travel in a train, food will be lousy, train will be dirty & toilets dirtier. While traveling in a second class sleeper on a long distance train, you must have observed this quite often,a young boy moping the floor with his shirt or a cloth and then coming to you for money. I am really thankful to these children, though they should not be doing this, but imagine the plight of passengers in case they don’t clean up the compartment, it will never be cleaned because there is no one appointed to clean it and if there is someone then he is not doing his duty. By the way, we as passengers are equally to be blamed because I think many of us don’t even know about the existence of a poor soul called dustbin in the trains which are supposed to be used, those who know about this thing are not able to use it after 8 hours of journey because the poor thing has been fed up to its mouth and has no space left in it, because it gets cleaned only at stations, that too if someone bothers to do so.One 2 feet by 2 feet dustbin per 100 people, I think even gabbar singh had a better sense of justice than railways. Didi wants to provide us with world class facilities, I have no problems with that but I think “facilities” is the catch word here, before developing something to world class standards its existence is necessary.

Didi has talked about strict monitoring of the quality of services in trains another far fetched dream which was proven to me during the aforementioned journey. In the “special” train, one attendant came with the feedback form, I was impressed. I thought now is the opportunity to put my point forward, and very diligently (In the B-school I attended, I was taught to provide an honest feedback) I sat down to fill the form, and made sure that the person reading this understands the bad experience we went through. One of my co-passenger was adamant on submitting the form in the railway ministry personally and on this started an argument with the attendant which ended with the pearls of wisdom coming straight from the attendant’s mouth “Sir, irrespective of whether you give it to me or submit in ministry, nothing is going to happen, many travel in this train daily and everyone writes his feedback, nothing has changed and I think nothing will”. I was surprised not only on the wisdom shown by a person working at the lowest level of hierarchy in Railways but also with the truth in the statement made. Didi, a simple worker working in your train knows the facts, I am not sure how will you be monitoring the quality in the trains when even a Rajdhani is not able to maintain it.

Singh ji said “This budget will make train travel a pleasant experience”, I don’t agree Singh ji, with the lack of basic amenities in the train and no value for money spent on food and other services, I don’t think we will be happy to get down at a world class station from a low class train after completing our “suffer”.