shatabadi - rajdhani and Indian Railway

I recently travelled through Indian railway shatabadi service from my home town (Jalandhar) to New Delhi. Although I have travelled in shatabadi for many times. It was around 6 AM and it was a dark/chilly early morning on north-western front of India. My train was on time, I board the train and bid farewell to my family [as I was travelling to Jalandhar-Delhi-Pune[stay there for some time]-Mumbai-JFK-Denver]



Few things I noticed



1. The coach was re-designed for positives like bigger windows, nice loading area over the head.

2. Huge Leg space not like the regular economic class flights :-)

3. Newer and comfortable seats.

4. A shared table seats for the families and friends

5. I charged my cell phone from the power-scokets provided within the coach and just next to your seats.

6. I put my head phone on, listening to my fav tunes while sipping my hot cup of tea (just served).

6. A greatly improved service [more professional and better one]





I was happily amazed to see such improvements in Indian Railway. Although I dont know if these changes are happening only for the these two services [Rajdahani /Shatabadi] or changes are widespread across all services, which I doubt.



But all my happiness was gone as soon as I was brought into the Day-light with train approaching ~80-90-100 km/h speed. Every station train visited started painting the real picture.



1. Dirty Tracks

2. Big lumps of dirt

3. People on the tracks

4. and people on the tracks cleaning their A** after dispelling their night supper.

5. People lives around tracks , their kids playing on tracks, few picking up the garbage trying to find something.



I wished there were no windows on this train. A very NRI thinking, and would not changed anything on the ground. As soon train was approaching New Delhi, the reality was becoming darker. The colonies around tracks were widening. Tracks were flocked with more people and more dirt.



I understand Indian railway couldnt have done much about the folks living around the tracks since that issue would have fallen under the local civil administration. But I think Indian railway can atleast keep its platform/tracks clean. There has to be no excuse for such negligence. Indian railway take 100,00,000s traveller every day from onr platform to another from one city to another. It is Indian Railway's responsibility to keep its house clean.