RAILWAYS' RACE AGAINST TIME

HE prime minister has promised Indians at home and abroad that he will not rest till the country becomes the third largest economy, after the US and China.

- C P SURENDRAN

The average Indian railway commuter must wonder what this means for her.

Last week, I travelled overnight by train from Bengaluru to Ernakulam.

Little seems to have changed. The air conditioning was as cold as a morgue. A complaint was raised. The attendant obliged. Soon it was as hot as an oven. The black blanket smelled of others' sleep; the little white pillows had on them sepia maps of strangers' nightmares. The washroom taps did not work, the door bolts were not aligned, and, in the vestibules passengers hopeful of a miraculous berth squatted by their dozens. The Indian train, despite the efficiently-run Vande Bharat and others such, continues to be an arbitrary, uncertain, olfactory experience for most of the 23 million daily passengers.

My journey was behind schedule. But it did not kill or hurt, a probable outcome of buying a railway ticket. Last month, at least 10 passengers were killed and more than 50 injured because of track misalignment due to 'maintenance work'. In the last five years, there have been many accidents.

In June 2023, in the Coromandel Express collision in Odisha, at least 293 were killed and over 1,100 injured. The causes were couched in bureaucratese: 'signalling errors and lack of real-time communication'. The year before, the major accident that occurred was the Bikaner-Guwahati Express derailment at Jalpaiguri, West Bengal: 9 killed, 45 injured. Track fracture was blamed.