Every year I eagerly follow the Indian Railway Budget with feeling of both hope and helplessness. I nurse a secret hope that our trains and services will someday will match up to global standards despite feeling helpless.
Unclean coaches ridden with roaches, unusable toilets with no water, bedding with stains, unhygienic and poor quality food and bull dogs for ticket examiners has been my experience of Indian Railways. In 2015, GoI budgeted 8,56,020 crores to be spent over 2015-19 to infuse life, safety and cleanliness in our railways that is 162 years old and moves 1.2 billion people across a nation spread over 31.6 million square kms.
A pleasant entry
I didn't know what to expect when I boarded the Garib Rath (12188) introduced by Lalu Prasad Yadav when he was the Railway Minister during UPA I Government. Yesterday, I traveled from Mumbai CST to Nashik on the train that terminated at Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. Scared of Mumbai traffic, I arrived 50 mins before departure and witnessed toilets and coaches being cleaned. While waiting on the platform, I logged on the free wifi at the station, which was 10 times faster that what I experienced at the Chennaj airport in the morning.
30 mins later, when I boarded the train I was expecting warm coaches, but to my surprise the coaches were already cooled to 24 deg C making it a pleasant entry, this was not the case when I boarded Spicejet at 5.20 am this morning. Is Indian railways doing better job than airlines?
A talkative nation
India is a country divided along the lines of language, religion, caste, community, etc. and despite the varied diversity it is our smile and talkativeness that make us stay together as a natio. 10 mins into the journey, I effortlessly picked up a conversation with my co-passengers, two youngsters traveling all the way to the final destination.
While we were exchanging our life and travel stories, the Ticket Examiner (TE) showed up demanding our tickets along with an ID proof, and surprisingly he was smiling and not grumpy. One of the co-passenger studying to be a chartered accountant and the other running a small unit that pyrolyzes used tires in an eco friendly and zero-waste method to produce furnace oil made me curious and kept me engaged.
The usual lie wasn't needed
Though the conversation fed my intellectual hunger, my stomach was beginning to establish its superiority over my mind. In the past while I did long distance trains, I brought my own food and even got coffee decoction and milk that I boiled in the pantry car by uttering a small pardonable lie that I had an infant with me.
But this time around I didn't carry any food or milk since it was a short distance travel.Since this train had 16 hours of journey time, I was sure that it had a pantry car. My suspicion was confirmed when vendors walked in with tempting options every 5 minutes with an interesting spread from chips, coffee, chikki, bhelpuri, biscuits, popcorn, idli vada, masala tea, water, to aerated drinks catering to Indian palette.
Since I skipped my lunch, I tried to resist my craving to indulge in junk food, but eventually I settled for masala chai and a packet of chikki, healthiest of the options onboard. When asked for a tea, I was expecting the usual skim milk and a tea bag, but to my surprise I received a real masala chai made with half-creme milk.
A packet of mixed chikki and masala chai made our conversation more interesting and we switched from discussing our professional life to technology products, specifically : iPhones, IPads and usage of Chromecast to beam from these devices.
Wow moment!
We were losing track of time and coordinates in our interesting conversation and I got anxious and curious to find out our location and remaining time to my destination. When I put my head out to catch the TE, I found a steaming LED display at the end of the bay that displayed the average speed of the train and details about the next approaching station. Now I wanted to know the in between stations and time of halt at each station and that demand too was satisfied by a poster in Hindi detailing the same at the entrance of the coach.
What impressed me the most during this journey was a call from Indian Railways through an IVR system asking for my feedback on the air condition/temperature, cleanliness of the toilets and quality of bedding. Since when did Indian Railways surprise us with a wow factor?
When I went to wash my hands after tea and snacks, I noticed a full bottle of hand wash made available in the toilet making it a hygienic experience. When did Indian Railways get on track to mend their poor service image, seek customer feedback and since when did my tax money find good use? Wish the airlines could learn from Indian Railways.
Your cooperation helps
I know the GOI is working on upgrading trains, and facilities available onboard and at stations, and my hope to see this materializing got stronger with today's journey. As much as I look forward to my next journey, I also look forward to next Railway Budget with more such announcements to improve the safety, cleanliness and service. But nothing happens without the cooperation of passengers.
If you haven't recently travelled by Indian Railways, give it a shot. Importantly, remember your responsibility to make the journey safe, clean, and hygienic for you and your fellow passengers and elevate the experience to global standards.
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