Train of consciousness

A mother asks for money for treatment for her son who is suffering from cancer. She is assured of a recommendation letter to get her son admitted in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. A lecturer of an engineering college complains about Trinamool Congress goons threatening her and is advised to organise other teachers against them. These were scenes on a local train when Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M) politicians Sujan Chakraborty, a leader on the state committee, and Ritabrata Banerjee, a Rajya Sabha MP, decided to take the Ranaghat-Sealdah local to attend a party meet. Photographs were taken and immediately uploaded on social networking websites to much approving comment. Comparisons were drawn with Aam Aadmi Party chief and Delhi's short-lived Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who took the Delhi Metro to his swearing-in ceremony. Local train travel is one of the ways in which the CPI(M) leadership is hoping to regain touch with its grass-roots support base, which was humiliatingly and dramatically lost to the Trinamool Congress. But whether this exercise will translate into votes is another matter altogether.