Dear railway minister of the big mouthed ruling government!
Another couple of months are left before you table an awaited Railway budget. Actually, it feels really good to see the way you guys hold the lengthy railway budget perched firmly in your hands every year, claiming ample of goodies in store for Aam Aadmi. Alas! Ground reality cease to improve. A standard sanitation, check on extra charge levied on eatables & ban on unhygienic & poorly cooked eatables sold at platform, seamless network connectivity & timely running trains are yet far from reality. You must understand that if you aim to shoot for the star, you must revisit the ground reality first & accomplish the needful instead of darting false promises.
What I highlight here is another pressing concern which exposes the plight of our railways system, something that has left me disappointed to the core. Couple of years back the mere thought of booking an online tatkal ticket would send a chill down my spine. No matter how good the broadband connection was, if you managed one for yourself, you nailed it! Now that the website has been revamped, accessing the website has become a lot easier for us. But the not-so-punctual trains who are never on time, have only multiplied our woes. Trains do cut a sorry figure of one of the biggest institutions of free India. Kudos to our office bearer government, be it our veteran congress party or the ruling BJP. I am sorry to say that all their endeavours have been tarnished with passing time & they haven't done much to revamp the outlook of the Indian Railways.
Taking the months of Dec & Jan into consideration, I comply with the fact that fogs do affect the schedule of the most used public transport system. But now that the pink season has already packed its bag & there is not much of fog either I don't find it reasonable why most of the trains are running late, some by almost a day.
OK, here is the situation, I had this urgent work of passport verification & was lucky to find a stretched weekend in between, thanks to our beloved Republic Day. But my happiness was short lived as entire two days of my weekend were consumed by this lousy train named Swatantrata Sainani Exp, which runs from Delhi to Darbhanga & becomes my soft target coz the train gives me the liberty to board it even after attending my office on Friday. By the time the train left Delhi it was already delayed by 9 hours & it costed me 17 extra hours to reach home safe & alive. You see, people don't die because of the delayed journey, if they did there would be some serious amendment in some railway act or something. The big delay cooked me up to the core. And the fact remains that we Indians have learnt to live with such anomalies, at times when things overstep the line it leaves us red faced.
On the eve of Republic day, I would sincerely have our beloved railway minister introspect things from ground zero. In my opinion if you want to make a noticeable move, please don't begin with skyscrapers & smart things. You must start with something which is connected to people from different walks of life. Indian railway is definitely one of them!
Wish you all a very Happy Republic Day & Ministry of Railways, I just hope somebody is listening.
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