In recent years, Indian Railways has been in the news for claiming to be undergoing a rapid transformation towards catering to the modern-day needs of the passengers. The government has glaringly advertised the newly inaugurated class of trains under the name of Vande Bharat, the much-discussed bullet train, and the resolution to overhaul railway stations to resemble airports, etc. These attention-grabbing announcements have been depicted as momentous changes taking place in the history of Independent India.
However, the train collision in Balasore district, Odisha, remembered as the worst railway mishap in recent decades, has called into question multiple issues that the railway organisation and the Indian government have sidelined. This article discusses the railways' critical role in long-distance interstate migration and how the recent policy priorities with respect to coach composition dehumanise migrant poor people.
Since the onset of neoliberal reforms in the Indian economy, India's growth story has also involved unequal development. While a few pockets of India, primarily concentrated in the south and west of the country, have seen high growth rates with rapid urbanisation and the emergence of megacities, other areas of the country have either experienced lower growth rates or are mired in distress.
In light of low agricultural incomes and lack of opportunities to improve incomes in rural areas, rural Indians have been moving distances in search of new opportunities and better lives. As many studies have shown, most of them choose intrastate migration, where they migrate within their states, because of the closer distance from home and familiarity with the habitat.
However, the concentration of growth in only a few corners of the country has stimulated migration from distressed areas of the east and North-eastern regions to megacities and urban areas in the south and the west. Moreover, while it is challenging to provide exact figures, many studies corroborate that mass migration is disproportionately constituted by people from poor and marginalised sections seeking employment in low-paying sectors such as construction, industrial labour and informal labour.
Indian Railways acts as a pivotal thread connecting the regions of unequal development, facilitating the movement of goods and people between them. Because of connectivity and affordability, long-distance migrants prefer to travel by train. Specifically, the poor and the marginalised seeking employment in the low-wage sector rely on the sleeper class and the unreserved coaches.
Till recently, sleeper and unreserved coaches constituted the majority of passenger coaches. Because these non-air-conditioned are affordable, travelling in those coaches has been the priority for passengers with low incomes. Nevertheless, the prevalence of these coaches is changing now. Along with introducing modern Link Hofmann Busch (LHB) coaches to replace dilapidated old Swiss Integrated Coach Factory (ICF) coaches in the existing trains, coach composition too is being overhauled with more AC coaches and fewer sleeper coaches.
In some routes, the trains predominantly carry poor passengers migrating from distressed regions to the growth corridors. This is primarily the case of trains running from the eastern parts to the southern and western areas. For instance, consider the routes of Howrah-Chennai, Howrah-Hyderabad, and Howrah-Bengaluru, where the proportion of sleeper coaches among the total available seats, excluding unreserved coaches, was 73%, 79%, and 79% in 2009. In the same sequence, these percentages stood at 64%, 71%, and 79% in 2014 and 65%, 79%, and 64% in 2019. However, as of 2022, these statistics had decreased to 56%, 55%, and 51%, respectively. With the railway's determination to modernise coaches and reduce the prevalence of sleeper coaches in a greater number of trains, the proportion of SL (Sleeper) berths is expected to decrease continually.
As a consequence of the reduction in sleeper coaches in these routes, the sleeper coaches are beginning to resemble the overburdened unreserved coaches. We must note that simply reducing the sleeper class coaches does not enable the ability to afford tickets in premium coaches. Furthermore, the inability of the migrants with lower incomes to spend more than sleeper class fare results in overburdening the reserved non-AC coaches. At times, the scenes in the non-AC coaches in those trains resemble the infamous colonial-era ships carrying indentured labourers. With these changing trends in coach composition, the road to a better life is becoming bleaker.
The Indian government has failed to present decent livelihood opportunities to the poor people in their native places. With these subtle changes under the garb of modernisation that supposedly makes the railways a competitor to the airways, the government has chosen to make the lives of poor migrants insufferable.
The govt must realise that it is the poor and marginalised who frequently travel between cities as seasonal labourers and labourers who periodically pay a visit to their families that they have left behind in their native villages. Affording a ticket in an AC coach puts a massive burden on their pockets.
To address this problem, on the one hand, the government must take a step back on its aggressive push on railways towards adopting anti-poor policies under the garb of modernisation. Adequate measures must be taken to diminish the suffering of the migrants by providing them with humane travelling conditions in their search for a better life. In light of the evolving contemporary standards, it is also crucial to reevaluate the continuation of unreserved coaches for long-distance train travel, taking into account the extended duration of journeys they entail.
On the other hand, policymakers must rethink the current trajectory of concentrated growth centres and unequal development. Addressing the economic challenges faced in rural and underdeveloped regions is a strategy to mitigate the necessity of undertaking long-distance journeys merely to sustain basic livelihoods.
Saikiran Netinti is a PhD candidate at the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. He works on social movements and global political economy. He can be reached at saikiran.net17@gmail.com
Views expressed here are the author’s own.