Commentary/Dilip D'Souza
How will we turn into a magnet for the world's foremost capitalists if we
cannot run our trains on time?
At the railway station, they've hit upon a new wrinkle on the usual way to
tell you what's happening with a train you're waiting interminably for. Of
course, the old way was to fight your way to the tiny information window.
There, you couldn't hear the man's mumbled response above the usual station
racket. So then you turned to the board that's reserved for this
information. It normally has a terse few lines with names of trains, their
scheduled arrival times and the number of hours late they are, numbers that
always seem to mutate into bigger numbers as you wait. I do believe there
has not been a single day when these boards were empty.
But now there's some mysterious point after which the lines no longer tell
you how late the train is. Instead, the man writes on the board: 'Left
Kalyan at 2245.' As if to say, it's on its way, therefore it will be here
eventually, so please don't bother me with stupid questions any more.
What the railway man hopes you won't remember is that Kalyan is not exactly
next door. When I got to the station the other night, the board said the
train from Pune I had to meet would be an hour and 40 minutes late. This,
on a three-and-a-half hour run. Then the sign on the board changed to:
'Left Kalyan at 2245.' Now Kalyan is a full hour away.
If the train had
already lost an hour and 40 minutes in getting to Kalyan, what would it do
between Kalyan and Dadar? Sure enough, it lost another half an hour and
finally rolled in well past midnight. Two hours and ten minutes late. Only
once in all that time was I sure of when it was going to arrive: when I saw
the lights on its engine, just outside the station.
Meanwhile, the sign remained teasingly on the board long after the train
had moved on from Dadar: 'Left Kalyan at 2245.'
Now think about it: why didn't the man simply write 'Left Pune at 1830' on
the board, close up his window and go home? That's about as useful to know
as the time the train left Kalyan. What's more, he wouldn't have had to
wait over four hours to write it, either. How much simpler this would have
been! No doubt, now that I've done the hard work of dreaming it up, the
railways will quickly put this efficient innovation into practice.
Of course, I spent those two hours and ten minutes hanging around at Dadar.
That's because even though I tried all evening, I could not get through to
any of the railway inquiry phone numbers. Correction: I did get through to
one of them, an automated service that asked me to punch in the number of
the train I was interested in. I had no idea, so I waited, hoping a human
being -- I think the railways still employs some of those -- would answer.
All I got was a polite 'The number you have pressed' -- I had not -- 'does
not exist. Thank you for using this service.' So I had no choice
but to make my way to the station, hoping the train would be on time.
And since it wasn't, I had lots of time to ruminate about the utter idiocy
of the entire episode, among other things. Besides various very nasty
thoughts directed at the railways that I will desist from reproducing here.
Here in Bombay, we are very excited that it is 1997. We're waiting keenly
for the middle of the year. Not, as you might imagine, for August 15, when
independent India turns 50 years old. That's not of much interest to
anyone. No, we've focused a month or so earlier, on the day when Hong Kong
returns to China's fold. There's a popular perception here, right or wrong,
that that will signal the end of Hong Kong's position as a global financial
hub.
And who will step into those giant shoes? That's right: Bombay. I am quite
certain that not one day has gone by in 1997 without someone or the other
in our political firmament muttering fond hopes about how Bombay is going
to turn into the next financial capital of Asia, the world's new Hong Kong.
It's enough to get a mere columnist positively shaking in his boots with
excitement.
Then there's an experience on a train station. Reality hits with a thud and
a whole host of questions start asking themselves. Try them the next time
you have two hours to kill waiting for a train.
How will we turn into a magnet for the world's foremost capitalists if we
cannot run our trains on time? Or if we cannot ensure that as simple a
thing as inquiring about the trains on the phone works reliably? Or if even
that's not possible, at least that reasonable information about them is
available at stations?
There's a seductive glamour to that vision of
Bombay-as-Hong-Kong: shimmering glass towers, glitzy malls, planes landing
and taking off by the minute, people whispering high finance into their
Nokia mobile phones. But who's going to take care of the not-so-glamorous
details? Like running the railways efficiently?
Don't get me wrong -- I fully believe that Indians have the skills and the
drive to take Bombay to the place in the world that Hong Kong occupies
today. A vibrant stock-market, a spirit of entrepreneurship, proven skills
in industry: these are only some of our strengths.
But they are more than compensated for by corruption and inefficiency from
those who rule us. Standing there at Dadar station, I asked myself: why
should I believe a government that tries to sell me stories of a new Hong
Kong when it cannot assure me that a three-and-a-half hour train journey
will not take five-and-a-half hours? When it forces me and hundreds of
others to spend those extra two hours twiddling our big toes at the
station, ignorant of when the train will actually arrive until we actually
see it pulling in? When, come to think of it, it will not even give us
chairs to sit in while we wait?
So I'm thinking, why not simply change the name of Mumbai yet again? Why
not call our city 'New Hong Kong'? What better way to ensure that when Hong
Kong vanishes into the Chinese maw, a New Hong Kong will be right here
where Mumbai is today?
Hmm. 'Left New Hong Kong at 0730'. Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?
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