I was in a long-distance train travel recently. The train originated from a major city station in the night. I was shocked to see that by the time the train left the station, every single seat and space in AC compartment was occupied by ticketless travelers who were returning to their nearby cities in the night. Most of them were employed in that city, or were students, or were government services employees like Railways, Police or Army. Many of them might have a "pass", but I was sure from their conversations that their pass won't be for AC boggy. Then, why were they allowed to travel like this?
The TTE never came for several hours. In one of my journeys the TTE never came at all. In all recent journeys, the TTE only verified the seats where bookings were done by passengers - in order to find out if anyone who had booked a ticket did not turn up. They would then assign (or even sell, if possible) those seats to others. But the TTE never fined or deboarded any ticketless passenger.
The scale of this "pandemic" is startling. Maybe it has always been like this, and I noticed it only now since I have not been traveling frequently in trains of late. Or maybe I noticed since there are so many changes, and modernization happening in public services that it is shocking to see Indian Railways still living 50 years behind.
Indian Railways top officials must act against this nuisance of ticketless travelers. Indian Railways has become a "classroom" of "normalization" of corruption and lack of ethics in our society. Just launching new shiny modern trains is not enough. The trains and Railways must be run in a professional and ethical manner too. Initiatives like controlling ticketless travelers, avoiding late-running of trains, cleanliness of all trains, are very much important. I hope the Railways Minister is taking a note of the reality.
- Rahul
No comments:
Post a Comment