..The inconvenience caused is deeply regretted..

Since the initiation of economic reforms since the early 1990s, life for the middle class Indian has changed beyond recognition. From unreliable home telephones which would often go " dead ", today's customer is spoilt for choice with umpteen number of mobile phone connections available. The ancient-looking Fiat Padminis and the Ambassador Cars have been replaced by sleek modern Hyundais and Suzukis. The monopoly of Doordarshan has given way to a proliferation of private 24/7 news and entertainment channels. And the Internet has brought the world at the fingertips of the middle class indian. For many Urban Indians, the neighbourhood kirana shop has been superseded by glitzy malls and supermarkets. Mc. Donalds and Subway, words once restricted to the vocabulary of NRIs , are rapidly becoming the favorite food joints of the increasingly affluent middle class Indian.

But if there is one aspect of life, that has barely changed since those days, is intercity transportation. With regular Air travel still beyond the means of most of the population, the venerable Indian Railways continues to hold monopoly over this vital aspect of life. And barring some superficial changes in the ticketing and reservation ( computerised, online reservation, "Tatkal" ( immediate ) quota ), there have been apparently no major changes at ground level in the running of trains.

Yesterday night , I had the misfortune of travelling in "Duranto" (quick) Express, the first non-stop train between Lucknow and New Delhi. And as I had expected , the "non-stop" tag was on paper only--it seemed to halt at every passing station, even made some stoppages in the middle-of-nowhere locations . It has been the same old story for indian trains since i was a child in the early 1990s--- our train halts in the middle-of-nowhere, we are told " there is no signal " , after some time we see a train passing by on the nearby track (in the same direction as our train ), and after it has passed, finally our train wakes from its siesta, whistles, and starts moving slowly again. This scene would be familiar to most seasoned travellers of the Indian Railways--it has barely changed since my childhood, and god-only-knows how many generations of Indians have spent tiring and irritating time , waiting for the other train to pass by and their own train to resume moving.

Today, with the Indian Economy growing by leaps and bounds, and India being one of the "emerging economies" , we see rapid visible change in nearly all aspects of life ( atleast those related to technology, if not those related to society ). But somehow, this advancement seems to have bypassed the Railways almost entirely. The Indian railways continues to move at a sluggish pace, both its trains and its plans and strategy. The Railways are still largely run as a social service , rather than a revenue-generating, profit-seeking business. The IR is one of the last remaining remnants of socialism in the otherwise liberalised-Indian Economy. So severe is the dearth of new ideas, that even today, the outer walls of trains are not rented for commercial advertisements, an action that would be politically feasible and would generate enormous revenue for the old warhorse of Indian transportation.

In the summer of 1994, my family boarded a train from Lucknow to Howrah. It reached its destination some 6-7 hours late. And today morning, the latest wonder train of the IR, the "quick" Duranto Express proved only quick enough to reach NDLS 90 minutes late. ( 9.5 hours for a journey that was scheduled to last 8 hours )

..And as they say " Punctuality is a word which does not exist in the dictionary of the Indian Railways "

And if you are not familiar with the title of this page, you have probably never spent more than a few minutes at an indian Railway Station.