Sunil Sethi: Smelling a rat on the train

Railway catering was reputedly among the most reliable in the public sector. The trouble has arisen with corporate culture seeping into the government monolith

There is a dreadful old doggerel that came to mind the day the Railway budget was presented this week with new offerings of luxury coaches with designer toilets, instant reservations and gourmet menus. It goes:
A passenger dining at Crewe,
found a rather large rat in
his stew,
Said the railway waiter, "Don't shout!
And wave it about,

Or the others will want some too!"

The limerick is, in fact, part of the set menu on Indian trains. Pilgrims travelling home to Ahmedabad on the Sarvodaya Express from the Vaishno Devi shrine in late January were served a revolting dish of "rat biryani". According to news reports, "Teacher Nilesh Patel and his wife Veena had ordered three vegetarian biryanis, one to be shared between their two sons. When their seven-year-old son Monik dug a spoon in the dish, something heavy obstructed him. When Patel tried to help him out, it was found that a rat had been cooked in the biryani." Half of the 300 pilgrims, ardent vegetarians, had ordered biryani on the train. "The experience was horrifying," continued Mr Patel. "We have pledged never to have food from the railway pantry again." A storm of protest erupted as the waiter tried to throw out the remaining biryani at New Delhi railway station, but some passengers recorded his actions on cell phone cameras. When the protests got angrier, the railway police intervened to contain the situation.

A similar wave of anger swept the Puri-Kamakhya Express at Malda last August when passengers accused the pantry car of serving "rotten, stinking" food; they buttonholed A K Gupta, divisional railway manager of Malda, whose response was, "The responsibility of food served on the train is assigned to contractors under the IRCTC [Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation], not the railways."

Railway catering was reputedly among the most reliable and well priced in the public sector; Parliament's dining halls are still run by them and they are the caterers of choice at many official dinners hosted by political leaders. The trouble has arisen with corporate culture seeping into a government monolith that transported 24 million passengers and nearly three million tonnes of freight daily in 2011-12 - and still managed to lose money. The ministry of railways controls no less than 11 corporations, from regional companies such as the Konkan Railway and the suburban Mumbai Railway to the aforementioned IRCTC that the manager at Malda grumbled about.

Several of these are financially successful and well run - the IRCTC's online website for train reservations, for example, is relatively easy to navigate given the volume of traffic it handles - but subsidies and cost-cutting have resulted in slow electrification, increased outsourcing of services and, therefore, low standards of safety, hygiene and efficiency. Introducing modular toilets and phone and SMS bookings is all very well, but even well-off Indians eager for a taste of train luxury get away cheaply compared to their counterparts in China or Malaysia.

Fares for senior citizens, above 60 years, are discounted at 50 per cent and, if you're female, another 15 per cent off. Cancellation charges being a fraction of what airlines charge, regular travellers (or unregulated agents and touts) make block bookings months in advance on popular routes leading to fearful bottlenecks. Add to that free or highly subsidised travel for the 1.4 million railway employees, and the system is bound to bleed with massive cost overruns.

That leaves the great majority of train users who are obliged to travel the longest distances - from necessity, not choice - but for whom conditions on Indian railways are unlikely to change much. Overcrowding, interminable delays, squalid toilets, poor security and a high accident rate - these are the everyday stories associated with the Indian railway system. Rat biryani would seem a relatively minor hazard. Safest to come armed with an old-fashioned tiffin carrier.