It’s a sorry state of affairs that I witnessed in my just concluded tour from north to south, south to east, east to north and west by prestigious non-Rajdhani and non-Shatabdi trains, a glaring lack of passenger amenities. For example, Rail Neer, hygienically packaged pure drinking bottled water, introduced in 2004 and now available across the railways are not sold on trains, at stations, except on Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains where supply of one bottle each to passengers as part of built-in costs is mandatory. But there too if a passenger wants additional bottle, he/she is provided non-Rail Neer bottled water. Except at prominent junctions and stations, Rail Neer is not available on Non-Rajdhani and non-Shatabdi trains and most of the stations. The railway officials connive with each others in a collusive culture and allow sales of spurious unhygienically packaged contaminated bottled water in multiple fake brands giving impression of so called brand equity. Such sales are allowed with impunity as they give massive cuts, commissions to officials from top to bottom.

Notwithstanding the recent massive fraud on Northern Railway in the sales of unhygienically packaged spurious bottled water where two successive Chief Commercial Managers (CCMs), Chaulia and Sylus were allegedly involved in defrauding the General Exchequer on its account and a massive ill gotten money of over Rs.28 crore recovered from them in total collusion with contractors at the cost of Rail Neer, Indian Railways is allowing sales with impunity of fake branded packaged drinking bottled water.

There is no facilities on board the Suvidha trains, which the Railway Minister announced with a big fanfare in the Rail Budget speech in February 2016. Suviddha trains have Linke Hoffmann Busch (LHB) German coaches as in Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains with a maximum speed of 160 kilometres per hour. But this train runs on snail pace with no one to assuage the passengers on board. There are no one to oversee and supervise that passengers get right facilities. Private food mafia rules the roost by selling unhygienic and under weight substandard foods packaged in aluminum foil at major stations. Before the so-called food packet is opened the food mafia have collected the prices and disappeared. If the food is stale and under weight, there is willful lack of supervisory control over such rots. Even in upper class toilets, for example, AC Second Class in Suvidha trains there is no liquid hand wash in the nicely fitted dispenser. Passengers are thus taken for a ride by the railways. Suvidha trains run late from two to over 10 hours. Other trains including prestigious Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Mail and Express trains do run very late.

There are massive malpractices in the Passenger Reservation System and Tatkal reservations. The railway officials tinker with the soft ware and touts have settings with the reservation officials to misappropriate reserved tickets at higher cuts and commission to the utter disadvantages of huge line of people in the serpentine queue although the railways stage periodically anti-touts campaign and action to hoodwink the people. In fact, the reservation officials connive with the touts resulting in massive continuing corruption in reservation of tickets.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Government’s claims of corruption free and transparent governance are a ploy to deceive the people. In fact, nothing like perceptible good governance is there on the ground in the Railways, notwithstanding the fact that Government of the day is accountable to the people of India, who are sovereign masters of the government! So much for good governance and corruption free railway administration!