Why has Railways, once India’s pride, turned into a living nightmare for many?

I was studying in the early 1990s at an institute in Paris designed for mid-career journalists. It was truly a multicultural and multinational institute and there was everything in the world you could find there - including racism.

But what I found particularly galling was the superior attitude of a particular British journalist, who simply could not get over my proficiency in the English language. There were many a dispute we had over grammar, syntax and spelling and she hated it that every time it was I who got it right, whether she checked American, British, Australian or even Canadian editions of various dictionaries to prove me wrong.

We would have ended up as bitter enemies but then, unexpectedly, I was helped by an editorial in The Times (of London) that made her concede defeat.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana were visiting India and the Indian newspapers were ecstatic. Many of them dug into their archives and republished nostalgic stories about the Raj and The Times was simply flummoxed. Why do Indians still love the British so much, it asked, when we did so much harm to their country? After all, one simply could not imagine Russian newspapers, 50 years after Perestroika and Glasnost reprinting Lenin and Stalin-era memorabilia, it ruminated.

Then it added a line that made me very proud. “In fact, the only two gifts that Britain ever gave India were the English language and the Indian Railways. Today, many Indians speak English much better than most British and the Indian Railways is a marvel of modern India.” It went on to speak about the vast Indian population and the network of trains across the country that moved millions of people from one point to another so efficiently every day, that was unparalleled anywhere in the world.

Hmm, Indian Railways. Yes, an institution to be very proud of, really – at least until the lockdown. I do not think The Times would ever be writing about it in such glowing terms ever again. I am appalled that the Indian Railways in recent days has proved to be worse than the trains I travelled in former Iron Curtain countries.

The difference was immediately visible when one moved from the modern Deutsche Bahn trains in Berlin to the other side of the former East Germany soon after the fall of the Berlin wall. Looking at their inefficiency as the trains slowly rumbled through East European territory, I always thought back to the editorial in The Times and urged my friends from all continents to visit India and ride on the Palace on Wheels and Deccan Odyssey for the uniquely Indian experience of not just India ‘s palaces and forts but also its Railways which could rival the best in the world. I don’t think I can do that any longer.

Far from those luxury trains, it is now so excruciating to acknowledge that 40 very ordinary trains carrying migrant workers to various places went ended up at wrong destinations and after taking twice or three times the normal time.

I remember one of my friends who visited India once boarded an ordinary train from Bombay to Calcutta and could not stop talking about the experience. He had never encountered a more efficient railway system anywhere in the world, he said, down to the point where the train did not just have a dining car (like trains across the world) but that the Railways brought you food or beverages almost every other hour on your seat (which most other Railways did not).

But now the Shramik special trains are not only going off track (which in the beginning brought some comic relief in our lives during the lockdown), but they are also leaving the migrant workers hungry and thirsty for 60 hours or more. Many of them are simply dying of thirst, hunger and other complications. That is nothing short of tragic.

And what does the government do?

Far from any remorse or regret at the number of people who suffered and died of hunger on the trains – the sight of the toddler trying to wake up its dead mother on the railway platform at Muzzafarpur in Bihar was particularly heart wrenching - the best that the minister for Railways Piyush Goyal could come up with is to advise those in distress not to travel on trains!

How do they travel then, if not by the fastest and cheapest means of transport available to anybody in this country? Do they keep walking as many have been doing through the lockdown over the past eight weeks? Does the minister think the Railways are not meant for the old, the ailing and the pregnant?

Does this not only expose the callousness of a government that is meant more to take care of exactly these kind of people in distress but also exposes the rank inefficiency and incompetence of the authorities who could run the biggest marvel of the modern world into the ground in just two months after more than 70 years of efficient running even after Independence?

But while I can scarcely believe that this government could run the Railways to the ground in such a short time of its lockdown, the Railways are today a metaphor for our economy. It was easy to shut down everything but it is proving very difficult to revive and turn the wheels of not just the Railways but also industry, from small to medium enterprises as well as big industries and even the farming sector.

If anyone still believes this government will rescue India from not just COVID-19 but also put its derailed economy back on track, they have to be not just bhakts but the biggest of dunces ever.