Nishant Shukla

India arguably has one of the world’s largest Rail Networks. A station as busy as Jammu Tawi with daily more than 40,000 passengers travelling through it during the peak season is the northern most point of this boastful Kashmir to Kanyakumari network. The station ironically reveals the ‘rotten to the core’ state of the ever sprawling Indian Railways. The under spaced, overstretched station can best be described as an interplay of sheer administrative failures and an indecisive policy making. On June 18th,  3:30 in the morning the queues for buying a tatkal ticket were getting longer with men, women and senior citizens outside the closed shutters of the Railway Reservation Centre. Somnath Gondwe and his family were the first in the queue. They had been coming to the station to get a tatkal ticket for the last seven days and only that day they were  able to stand in the front because they stood at the gates of the counter at 10:30 P.M, the night before. “We are hopeful of getting a tatkal ticket for Shirdhi as it is urgent because the monsoon season is on and it’s high time to cultivate” said Gondwe. Others in the row were Nita Dangre and Sunita Pandita standing there since 3:30 A.M, but both were uncertain of getting a tatkal ticket. “By the time we reach the counter all tickets will be sold out” said disappointed Dangre who wanted to seek admission for her kids in Mumbai.
It’s a routine spectacle at the Reservation centre of Jammu-Tawi Railway Station after the time for buying a tatkal ticket was brought down to 24hrs from the earlier 48hrs. The Rail reservation counters are thrown open at 8:00 A.M in the morning but surprisingly all tatkal tickets are sold out much before 8:15 A.M. At the reservation centre only five counters are opened for the public due to the shortage of ten employees. The ministry has decided to give Tatkal tickets at 10 A.M. instead of 8 A.M. from July 10th but there has been no effort to examine why all the Tatkal tickets get exhausted within 5 minutes of opening of the counter. No authorized booking agent is allowed to book e-tickets from the IRCTC website between 10 A.M. to 12 A.M. The service is practically of no use for the public “I have not sold any tatkal ticket since March this year as there is no ticket left when  lines for booking e-tickets are opened” said an agent who runs a private travel agency in Jammu.
Sparing the women and the senior citizen counter it’s almost impossible to get to the counters pre-occupied by the touts and the persons from the forces. Sources said touts and booking agents commonly booked tickets en masse in fake names. “Since the names entered on the hard tickets in short form, this helps the touts to sell them to anyone. Usually, the ticket checkers don’t verify the names or match them with IDs of travelers,” said a source in the railways. Apparently the black-ticketing business at the Jammu-Tawi Station can’t flourish without a nexus between the security agencies and the rail officials at the reservation centre. “The business is common everywhere but it’s only at the Jammu-Tawi station where it openly runs inside the reservation hall with the help of the security agencies” told a rail official on the condition of anonymity.
It’s very easy to get a rail ticket if you have those so called connections with the VIPs. Indian Railways has become the fief of the bureaucrat and the politician. What causes even more inconvenience to the passengers with the waiting tickets is the delayed charting.  Passengers only come to know an hour before departure even if the ticket are confirmed. As per norms charting is to be done two hours before the departure but due to the VIP pressure for quotas it is done only an hour before.
“In rush season it becomes difficult for us to feed all the quotas two hours before the departure: sometimes the trains are even late” said the Divisional Traffic Manager Jammu-Tawi R.N.Meena. He further added, “our aim is provide utmost comfort to passengers. Despite working against may adds like heavy rush of passengers during some occasion, Railway Department ensures that no one suffer.”
Jammu and Kashmir is a state known for its tourism where lakhs of tourists visit every year particularly during the summer season. Tourism is the life line of the state’s economy. Ironically for those who prefer to travel by Rail there are more seasons to repel than to beckon them. During the summer rush when more than 40,000 passengers come and leave the station everyday there is no preparedness at any front to tackle with the increased influx.
Security is the biggest farce at the Jammu Tawi Station when it comes to training, equipment and deployment. If you return safe from the station it means two things, either there was no risk today or you were lucky that you escaped.
There are only two X-Rays Baggage machines installed at different points to peep into the luggage of passengers during this peak season. The X-Rays machines often get over-heated due to overloading of luggage and then needs a rest for at least 30 minutes. During these 30 minutes passengers are allowed to go unchecked on the platform. The metal detector frames are usually out of order. Moreover there is no substantial arrangement to effectively tackle with an emergency like a terror attack at the station.
“A high level team of the department has recently surveyed the security arrangements and will soon recommend more measures to beef up the security at the station including the installation of more X-Rays machines and scanners,” said Shiv Kumar the S.S.P Government Railway Police Jammu,.
However Kumar said “although the deployment of Govt. Railway Police has been increased keeping in mind the summer rush but still we are short of two companies of policemen. A police constable – the most important link in the fight against terror-is equated to an unskilled worker. Constables constitute over 85 percent of the police force. Though the shortage of funds is denied by the department still the constables and SPOs employed at a cheaper rate of Rs. 3000 per month without sufficient training of arms and pre-emptive measures.
Modern policing techniques like riot control, bomb disposal, disaster management, evacuation, fire drills and search are imparted only to special units. There is no incentive to acquire specialization as it is not linked to promotions. A constable has to work for up to 14 hours a day without overtime and a good housing facility.
Even more depressing about the station is its utter state of neglect. Heaps of waste and scattered garbage can be located anywhere in the premises of the station and on the platform. The toilets and waiting rooms are insufficient and filthy. “Twenty years back there used to be 85 permanent safai karamcharis at the station, now there are only 32 left” told a source.
Rest of the work is taken from the contractual labourers employed for just Rs. 4000 per month.
The Rag picking contract expired in December last year, and the tendering process for fresh contracts is still stuch in the files at the Ferozpur division of the Northern Railways. Sources in the Railways disclosed that the tendering would be done by the end of July and from August the station will have about 57 more safai karamcharis including rag pickers who’ll work with mechanised cleaning equipments. The ship of the Indian Railways is already sinking into losses.
The trend of outsourcing even its small projects like sanitation shows that the Railways Board has become poorer. It can’t afford recruiting permanent sweepers or buying even waste bins for the station.
Recent visit by the GM Northern Railways, has made it clear that there is no plan or proposal for the modernisation of Jammu-Tawi Station except the Multi-Functional Complex being built at the station comprising a Rail Yatri Niwas and a Passenger Amenities Centre. The whole emphasis is being laid on the Rail line project up to Katra-Vaishno Devi that is expected to be ready by March 2013 and will automatically share the burden of Jammu-Tawi Station as most of the trains would be going up to Katra.
The station paints a grim picture about the glaring inequalities of the growing Indian economy. Young children as old as ten cross  their way with the trains in search of rags and plastic bottles, no medical benefits and just one room for hundred coolies to sleep in, lack of civic sense among the public on account of poverty and illiteracy, shortage of clean drinking water, insufficient toilets at the station are the facts even more depressing.

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