A Lot of things have been said about Indian railways and its revival. i have seen in news about various initiatives taken by railways and how the railways turned in to profit making entity from a loss making entity. Lalu prasad Yadav, our railway minister is being credit with for spearheading the effort of revival of Railways. Not only the railways turnaround story has become a case study in many of the business schools but Lalu was also invited to give lecture on this story at IIMs.
Some of its efforts such as Internet ticketing, cargo services are very much appreciable and improved railways. But I am very skeptical about the few very important aspects, which are still lacking i.e. cleanliness and infrastructure. I happened to be there on two very important stations on Indian Railways Bilaspur and Allahabad last week. Both of these stations are considered main junctions.My stay at both these stations was prolonged due to some expected/unexpected delay of my train.I just tried to gauge both these stations.
Let me first describe Allahabad station. In my life I have not seen such a worst station. The entire station is just like a mess, unclean tracks and it was a nightmare for me and my wife to stay there for 4 hours waiting for my train. when you look at railway tracks at Allahabad station, you will see all the rubbish things including shit. I had taken a picture of Railway track for posting in this site, but decided not to put it because people seeing the photo may not eat for next two days. So worse the railway tracks are maintained. . Even the stalls there are so unhygienic, it is impossible to buy any product there. One cannot imagine using toilets there. The total infrastructure is in mess.
This shows the ground reality of railways. Why no effort is being taken to clean up the mess here. Why officials are not questioned about such pathetic state of this station. One may answer it is too crowded. But I have seen crowded stations like Mumbai CST and Bangalore. At least they are not so bad and some efforts of keeping the station clean are visible. But at Allahabad, the name cleanliness it self is absent both with officials and travelers. Off course this is my first visit to this side of UP, but I have traveled extensively in south, west, central India and Delhi side.Hence probably I am deep shock after seeing the mess.On the contrary, I am little impressed with the Bilaspur station at least w.r.t cleanliness. Much better than Allahabad station. What further impressed me is that many of the stalls were given to private parties who have maintained it well. Also the display systems, courtesy of inquiry staffs were good. However the upper class waiting room was very badly maintained with broken chairs. After seeing the waiting room, I decided to spend time in Platform rather than waiting hall.
Why railways not talking about the modernization and improvement of amnesties. Why they are just going behind numbers.My sincere request to Railways is to take up the cleanliness as a main drive and drastically change it. This needs to be top driven and enforced. Few change like usage of suction type toilets as in west to be used instead of open toilets, which invariably makes the track dirty.The entire maintaining and cleaning job of platforms, tracks, toilets, rooms and waiting halls to be outsourced and given to private parties with accountability and deliverables. .All the new trains have to be very modern and comply with all sanitation and hygiene requirements. Otherwise what is the use of so much of profit (if I am right last year Railways generated 15000 Crores.)? It is always said that Railways is for a common man. That doesn’t mean that common man has to travel at such pathetic conditions. I totally agree that a common man has the full responsibility of not spoiling the railway stations and trains, but at the same time Railways has to provide such environment for a common man to think twice before he throws anything at railway station,at least in country like India where discipline is the last thing in a persons priority list. It was said that Kolkata Metro would be a mess after few years in a crowded city like Kolkatta, but look.. Even after so many years it is maintained at same cleanliness levels. So it is incorrect to say that people spoil the places. If a good environment and surroundings are provided, people cannot and will not spoil it.
After seeing Allahabad Station, I wonder whether revival of Railways is a reality or just hype. May be it is real when it comes to numbers but when it comes to ground realities, it is just a faux.
Wake up railways … Clean up, otherwise the next disease epidemic will start from railway station.
Critically yours
Kiran
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