Come autumn and the itch to travel out of Delhi starts to take over. On a train to Rajasthan, the railways seem to feel that blaring filmy music is a luxury that they are providing free! In an otherwise cool and comparatively clean train, this noise pollution forces a headache. Attendants ply the corridors but do not have anything you ask for, from cold drinks to dahi in a kullar or, for that matter, in any receptacle. Cold drinks, we gather, have been stopped ever since the Coke and Pepsi scandal dominated the headlines and dahi is far too desi! For a country known for its constant tea drinking, the worst tea bags are on Indian railways. Obviously something fishy in the tender. Fortunately, this train did not fall off the tracks and the destination made up for the rather pathetic journey in a so-called Ist-class category. Small wonder that tourism is minuscule in a country that has more to offer than most.
It is incomprehensible that an organisation that ran some of the most wonderful trains has deteriorated in the way it has. Let us just compare the Ist and IInd air-conditioned coaches of then and now. Today, one feels as though one is travelling in an extended toilet that is filthy. In the old days it was the epitome of a relaxed and luxurious way to travel, with wholesome food, pleasant staff and perfect timing ? you could check the time on your watch with the departure and arrival of the then Frontier Mail. What has gone wrong?
It is the same country, the same people and the same rule, one person to one seat in this class of travel. Is it that we have people running the operation who have no clue whatsoever about graciousness, cleanliness and wholesome food? Is it a question of the wrong person in the job? Or, is it because the minister travels in his personal bogie with all the trappings of bedrooms with attached bathrooms and a living room, that he cares not about the rest of the train and those who sustain his organisation? Talking about bogies with bedrooms, a living and dining room as well as a kitchen, these should be taken away from ministers and allocated to the department of tourism so that travellers can rent their own vestibule for the journey they want to do with a group of friends.
Why are these good things the privilege only of politicians, those men and women who have allowed the slide to happen? Why not generate money for the railways by renting out private bogies? If you try and approach the railways with such an idea, they will complicate your life so completely and make you run from one mindless rule maker to another, that you just give up in despair.
For those who come to India in search of discovering the great heritage and historic cities of India, the first shock that overwhelms them is the railway experience. It is dirty, smelly and traumatic with cheats and touts plaguing them as they try desperately to find their way around with no signages to help them, filth on every inch of the platform, only to climb onto a carriage that is equally unappealing, where the refreshments and food will give you a runny tummy. A question: if the Army can keep their cantonments clean, and have adequate signages, why then does the civilian administration fail so fundamentally? Same people, same tradition, same culture. The poster reads ?Incredible India?. It spells out the truth. But, it describes only one side of the coin. The small print should read ?Scary India?.
The situation was not this horrific a decade ago, the degradation not so complete. If we are serious about attracting tourism and the intrepid traveller, we have to begin with cleaning up our act ? literally. Clean the airports, railway stations, airplanes, trains, loos ? they are all dirty and smell awful. It should not take much to rectify this. Without this, India will soon be bypassed even by the small numbers that continue to come. As Oscar Wilde once said, ?we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars?!