Re: Loveable Nation INDIA - Loveable Indian Railways

[rjr@vsnl.com]

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By concluding his message with the words of J.F. Kennedy, Zabarjad
proved that he is no way different from other Indians in having craze
for foreign.

Zabarjad is no doubt right in his description of the general behaviour
of Indians.Like people in any part of the world, we Indians also follow
the rule, "Be a Roman in Rome". The purpose of this message is to tell
that bad governance rather than individual behavior is responsible for
the present mess in India. This I wish to explain by taking an example
from our "Loveable Indian Railways".

Indian Railways with over 60,000 track km spanning entire India
contributes over 1% of the national GDP with annual revenues
aggreagating nearly 10 billion dollars. With a fleet of 6100 locomotives
and half a million fleet carriages, around 14 million passengers and
over a million tonnes of freight traffic move every day over this
network. The negative side of this mass movement is that the quantum of
environmental degradation it produces is equally stupendous.

Unlike the railways in the developed countries, the policy of the Indian
railways is to allow the entire railway yard as a dumping ground to
dispose the solid and liquid wastes, including human excreta generated
in the railway carriages. Even the waste generated on the railway
platforms and in the railway compartments is sweeped into the railway
yard either by the railway staff or by the child rag pickers who carry
out this job voluntarily to get some alms from the passengers. As a
result, most railway stations give a stinking smell despite engaging a
large number of scavengers to manually clean the railway yard.  Apart
from this, the people living close to the railway yard use it as public
lavatory and freely dispose the solid
and liquid wastes generated in their households.

If by chance, a policy decision is taken by the Indian Railways to
collect and store the human wastes for disposal at regular intervals,
things will turn from bad to worse. Already the lavatories in the
railway compartments stink so horrible that passengers sitting close to
them find it unbearable. In the new arrangement, the problem gets
further aggravated.

Another problem with the Indian Railways is that there is no ban on
smoking and there is no provision for non-smoking compartments for the
benefit of those who do not wish to be subjected to passive smoking.
Although waste bins are not provided in the compartments for passengers
to dispose the solid wastes generated, smokers are provided with ash
trays all over the compartments in large number. In the recently made
railway coaches, ash trays are restricted only along the corridors
abutting the lavatories giving an implied permission for smoking in the
lavatories and the corridors. There
is however a recent supreme court judgement banning smoking in public
places including in the railway compartments. Like all other rules, this
rule may also be never implemented properly.

There is a famous saying that "Yatha Raja, Thatha Praja" (What the king
does, people do). The initiative must come from the rulers for people to
follow the rules like in other countries.

R. Jagadiswara Rao






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