The great Indian lie

Here is an easy question: what is it that every rail passenger in India sees at stations, but Union railway minister Lalu Prasad cannot?

The answer is: rodents in coaches, unusable toilets, unclean platforms and trains, no drinking water, poor sanitary conditions and dirty kitchens.

At public forums, Lalu always brags about his achievements as a railway minister and impresses B-school graduates with stories of the “turnaround” he effected in the Indian Railways through “his efforts”. But a report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of parliament has punctured Lalu’s gasbag and has blasted the railways for taking millions of passengers for a ride and compromising on public health.

The PAC report says basic facilities for passengers are found wanting at important stations such as New Delhi, Mumbai CST, Bangalore and Chennai. The railway claims that it spent Rs 256.24 crore on “passenger amenities”, which is only 1.5% of the total capital expenditure and 1.69% of the earnings from passenger services, the report says.

Out of 298 stations reviewed, 128 did not have adequate number of toilets and there was no water in urinals and washrooms at 21 stations including New Delhi, Amritsar, Sealdah and Bardhman.

The existing toilets were in unusable condition due to water-logging, leaking roofs, broken taps, damaged pans, tiles and walls, missing outlets and pipes, non-functional cisterns and poor lighting. Pathetic condition of toilets forced people to relieve themselves in the open, which created more filth. It was also found that 118 stations had no toilets for handicaps.

The PAC report says 28% of A category, 30% of B and 65% of C category stations had no tapped drinking water, while 1/3rd of A category and more than half of B category stations, such as Mumbai CST, Mumbai Central, Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore, did not even have bare minimum requirements.

Water taps and booths were broken at 61 stations and the area surrounding taps was unclean and unhygienic, which created health hazards. Moreover, neither tap nor packaged drinking water was tested for bacteria and chlorine levels.

Only 25 out of 329 stations reviewed were provided dustbins, while 42 stations, including Saharanpur, Unnao, Siwan and Raipur, did not have a single dustbin. Garbage was found lying all around in 62 stations.

The report says proper disposal mechanism was lacking at 73 stations, including important ones like New Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Delhi, Bhubaneswar, Rourkela, Durgapur, Ranchi, Bhopal, Mysore, Hubli, Ahmedabad, Ratlam, Jammu Tawi, Guwahati, Tirupati and Dadar. In violation of regulations, garbage was burnt at 26 stations, including New Delhi, Hazrat Nizamuddin, Mumbai CST and Dadar.

The report also says that in 30 out of 39 trains inspected, caterers threw out garbage from running train though there are various garbage collection points during the journey.

In the survey, 67% passengers said the number of toilets at platforms was insufficient, while 51% were of the opinion that toilets in waiting rooms were insufficient and 85% passengers complained that toilets were always dirty.

Interestingly, India’s largest carrier has no standards of supervision prescribed for cleanliness since Railways believed that “standards of cleanliness are not quantifiable”.

The report also says that high incidence of absenteeism and lack of motivation among workers have resulted in poor maintenance of the railway property.

Inadequate mechanism to monitor the work of contractors for outsourced cleanliness activities, like pest control and bed linen washing contracts, led to a compromise in the quality of work.

Also, the cleaning of coaches in yards was ineffective and resources were inadequate, the report points out.