Twitterati counts failure of Indian Railways in last three years

On Monday, the Ministry of Railways tweeted a survey claiming the majority feel the condition of Indian Railways has improved in the last three years. The claim comes just a week after two derailments in Uttar Pradesh which claimed many lives.

Indian Railways, the world’s fourth-largest rail network, ferries millions of passengers every day, but, against the claim, doesn’t have a good safety record. In the last three years, at least 650 people have died in train accidents and there have been around 115 train accidents on an average every year in the last three years.

Let’s have a look at What CAG report says:

• During the passenger satisfaction survey conducted, 75 per cent passengers opined hygiene and cleanliness of catering services as average or poor.
• The food that the railways serves is not fit for human consumption. Flavoured milk, juices, sandwiches, biscuits and other snacks served inside trains don't even match the basic hygiene standards.
• Janta meals were introduced with the intention of quality food at low cost to all. It was seen that share of Janta meals to the overall meals sold in six Zonal Railways was declining in the last three years. The availability of Janta meals on stations was also not adequate.
• During an inspection in selected 74 stations and 80 trains, little cleanliness or hygiene was found at catering units. Purified water was not available at 21 stations across 11 railways zones.
• Railways levied and collected ₹11.17 crore from passengers as ‘superfast’ surcharges. But 21 superfast trains were late on 3,000 days out of 16,804 as they failed to attain the ‘superfast’ speed.
• Frequent change in catering policy and consequent transfer of responsibility to manage catering units from railways to IRCTC and back, have created a state of uncertainty in management of catering services provided to the passenger over the years.

How Twitter reacted

The tweet which came after a week of two major train accidents did not go well with netizens and they started counting the failures of Indian Railways. Social media immediately started questioning the authenticity of the survey claiming that they can prove with plenty of examples that the survey is fake and that the Ministry of Railways should not indulge in a publicity exercise with fake data.

People have also drawn attention towards the increasing fares of trains. Some said that they are paying dynamic charges for being a common man.

A man also complained about unauthorised vendors selling overrated food items at the railway station with the help of railway staffs.