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You have just stumbled upon a blog/website committed to gathering support and starting a debate for issues facing the Mumbaikar of Today, particularly the inhumane conditions in which we travel in local trains & buses. Albeit the content here may apply to other big cities of the world but it’s a uniquely Mumbaish angle to everything here Any questions can be sent via email to rantingraj at mumbaiya.net OR rantingraj at gmail.com now, get yourself a cup of coffee or whatever is your thing and read on …

Let’s get the train rolling now shall we …

I will start of with the basic idea first but even before that, this is about the Mumbai Local Trains and the plight of it’s unfortunate users. Now, many of you I know are too lazy like me and don’t want to read anything which has more than 50 words, so, watch the video bellow made by a couple of Aussie’s about our local trains and then even if you aren’t a Mumbaikars maybe you will read on …

The Project

Nice thing we go through everyday don’ we? so, here’s the idea of this “project”:

If you read the whole rant from me bellow, you will have utilized 15 minutes of your entire lives in doing so but then you will feel nice that you read something nice We Mumbaikar’s need your help! (waise, it’s probably the largest thing I wrote my entire life, my essay’s in school language papers weren’t ever even half of this but oh well, it’s rage that’s pushing my fingers on) Now, I absolutely hate the inhumane conditions we Mumbaikar’s travel in in our red & yellow with stripes local trains and I feel (I know I am not alone in this) that something must be done about it, I am not the first one to think so but I was planning on being one of the last few ones with your help and the help of the rest of our clan which travels in the local trains of course.

Many of us have always regarded the situation as hopeless but let’s just for a few moments assume that the situation can be sorted. Now, there’s plenty of reasons that they should be sorted:

• More than half of the tax returns of this country come from Mumbai – we have a right to ask for some billion dollars or rupees from it at least to be used to make our travel easier or humane at the very fucking least, right? I think you will agree, so next,
• You should come and see how bad it’s become now, even the ladies struggle so bad to get into their ‘Ladies Compartments’ and it’s appallingly distressing and disquieting to see our delicate precious responsibilities in wrestling mode each day as they try to push each other’s fragile bodies out of the way to get into the trains. As a man I feel a mixture of dread and shame to see the fairer sex in this display of utter desperateness. The shame of course is when I realize that we men haven’t been able to protect the fairer sex from this monstrosity that only us men are supposed to go through. Even the Only-Female trains which are run about 3-4 times during rush hours don’t help <-,_->!!!

Now, can it really be done? Do we have the technology? Yes we damn well do! I mean the Gora’s/Firangis/Westerners do or at least come up with something, or a well paid team be it Indian or foreign can figure out something, don’t have to Einstein to figure it out! Yes, where does the taxpayers money go anyway? Incidentally the tax-payers are ourselves, so let’s just ask, right? So there are possibilities there as well. They have double decker trains everywhere in the first

world countries, they have it in India too for long distance travel. Sure, double decker’s won’t solve this but believe me if every single local became a double deck, the situation will ease quite a lot. But who cares about us local train travelers who
make the dope by working hard (Look at the picture, tells our story doesn’t it, most us feed them or ‘eat’/Consume for them and the one’s at top rarely look down and listen, they
have to be made to listen, sadly). Later in the rant below, as per my friends suggestion, there’s talk of using all the water-ways as well. Now, what about the huge ticket lines, morning, noon, evening and night? we have a solution below for that as well and feasible I think if we have the will to not suffer anymore. A friend of mine is a Mathematician (PHD in Math, yes, a total NERD who also travels in these trains) and he tells me every problem has n solutions where n=>1 which of course means that each problem has at least 1 or more solutions. Now, here’s the proposition: To all those who are interested, we would like your help, we don’t want your money, we just need your voice, if there’s enough of a voice, we can make sure the people who matter – the politicians are woken up from their slumber and made to listen and then to act!

To be exact now, we would appreciate your e-mailing us possible solutions for the madness of Local Train Travel especially the Western & Central lines, any interesting pics/videos you take or get your hands on and we will put them up here just as in the postsecret project.

Update:-

Of course, you can type away your solutions, opinions etc in the comments/feedback as well

Remember that if this takes off we are all helping ourselves, we benefit from this not somebody else. If you have a blog or a website or a forum, we will be happy to put up your link alongside your contribution as well.

How The Idea Came Across

I came across the postsecret project website a few days ago. and quite liked it. Basically, people mail in their biggest secrets which they haven’t shared on a postcard anonymously and then the author of this wonderful website scans them puts them up each Sunday, for me, along with millions of other Internet users it really has become a must Sunday read. They even have compiled the secrets and released books, watch this postsecret video about their 3rd book and what you will see will be the most moving thing, it takes courage to face up to such things on postcard! So, now what we are hoping for is to get solutions, opinions, complaints, rants, basically just anything you might want to express or contribute, we’ll be going ahead with a facebook group for Mumbaikar issues not just local trains but police corruption as well, mail us rantingraj at mumbaiya.net OR rantingraj at gmail.com Now, the Rant :-

<Rant> Okay, now, only since the last couple of years, I have had to travel regularly in the Mumbai Local’s since I started working in a Call Center in Malad. I stay in Sion or maybe more King’s Circle, at first, I worked in Malad and then in Andheri and honestly, I did not have any idea that conditions could be so gruesome, I had heard people talk about how crowded it is and people cracking jokes on it but experiencing it for the first few times and then regularly for almost 2 years now made me aware of the few things I was so damn ignorant of:

1. Why is it so crowded in trains in Western Lines? I found out the answer soon that since so many people migrated to the suburbs because of availability of cheap housing in those parts, a large part of Mumbai’s Middle & Lower-Middle class income class group stays in suburbs like Andheri, Malad, Goregaon, Vasai, Bhayendar, Mira-Road, Borrivali, Kandevali, Virar and the other’s I missed out in between. These are the Men & Women who make their work to southern Mumbai area’s like Churchgate, Chatrapati-Shivai-Nagar (Formerly Victoria Terminus or V.T)
2. Now, what follows is of course where do they all go to work? The answer is that most of the Government Offices & Private one’s including but not limited to Doordarshan, Air India, Customs,Police Headquarters, Bombay Stock Exchange on the Dalal Street (Also BSE or NSE), Diamond Trading markets, Good Outing spots, etc etc etc etc haven’t elected to re-locate their offices as per nearly all of their employee’s convenience but now they are at least talking about doing it so we can expect it to happen in the next 25 years.
3. Though the previous category has elected not to relocate, the new entrants in to the Indian markets which also employ hordes of young & old folks chose to establish themselves in these very suburbs chiefly Malad, Andheri, Goregaon and yes, I am referring to the IT companies and IT enabled Businesses like BPO’s. The trouble is, as an Article in today’s Mumbai Mirror article points out is that because of these offices, the number of people traveling on the western line has actually improved drastically. The western line now carries 87,000 people more each day than it did in the last 6 months. Though it may not sound much for a service which already carries over 3 million or 30 Lakh passengers daily but consider that it’s a jump of over 20 times over the period of 2005-2006. when the daily passenger load only increased by 4000-5000 and remember 2007-2008 has 6 months more to go [yes, that's my wicked smile over your gasp of exasperation]
4. It’s pretty much the same routine for the Central lines where people move to the south part of Mumbai for work every morning in rush-hours and come back in the evening in the rush hours, and many of the Multi-Nationals went for offices in the Central line Location of Thane as well, at the IT parks on Gorbunder road, so again, Central railway has been carrying more people obviously. I don’t have any official stats but just try it at 8,9 or 10 in the morning going towards South Mumbai and back towards Kalyan or whatever in 6,7,8,9 in the evening and you will know what I am talking of.
5. Now, when travelling in the western lines I have often come across groups of people traveling in these lines for 10,20,30 years to & fro for the same government jobs and many have found groups to avoid the boredom of the traffic, these guys, play cards on their brief-cases, joke around and do each other favours like getting seats for the group members. Talking to these folks I found out that it’s not just the last 2 years in which the situation has been this way, but has been as bad at least since 15-20 years!! (note that the number of lines earlier were lesser and the number of trains running lesser as well and the increase in the number of services has been far less than the increase in the number of passengers)
6. Don’t even begin to imagine that the actual traveling in the train compartments is the only concern, once you arrive at the station, the first of the hurdles you have to go through is of course the crowd outside the stations and the huge (and huge means huge here, at least 50-100 people for most ticket windows) the clerks still dispense tickets the old way so each person spends at least 60-90 seconds at the window this includes the person mentioning his destination, and paying the money, both the passenger and clerk are lucky if the passenger manages to shell out the exact change or else, there is occasionally a feud about change, once that’s done with the clerk proceeds to punch out the ticket and manually stamp it and give it to the passenger with the change.
7. At smaller stations like Wadala where I previously stayed, you can expect at least 30 ppl at the window in the line for tickets during mornings and evenings else it’s 8-10 ppl so in the morn’s and eve’s you spend about 15-20 mins to get tickets each day, if you are regular traveller, it’s better to get a monthly, 3 monthly, 1 year pass made which can cost anywhere from 250-1000 rs depending on the class you chose, time duration, destination etc, there is a one time investment of around 30-45 minutes when you make the pass and whenever you may need to renew it.
8. But the big trouble is at stations like ST, (V.T) ChurchGate, Dadar and god have mercy on you if you have to go through it at Virar, I remember going to Virar on a Sunday recently and even on this fucking Sunday, moving about after getting out of the compartment, then the platform, then the bridge which takes you out of the station was like moving out of House-full movie screen; Only baby steps allowed lest you want to to bump in to some woman who thinks you were just trying pinch her ass or something similar or into some guy who likes to pick fights and take out his frustration on random ppl he meets (don’t have to worry abut the second scenario if you are tall, broad-shouldered, can manage to look menacing like me though, lol, I do the scaring in such situations) While returning the ticket lines were so scary, I went straight to the ticket window pretending I had a big fever and ignoring the screaming people in the line.
9. Everyday, I move out from my place to office I hate the thought of having to go through these trains.
   1. To help with the lines fir Tickets, start selling ticket coupons/tickets at various locations like Prepaid Mobile Recharge vouchers, if it’s coupons, make punching machines available at many many locations.
   2. Why don’t we start using waterways, of-course, the water-ways on the other side, going to places like Vashi, Kanjur-Marg, Bhandup, Thane look very appealing to me as well …

In Summary

What are we saying here, you want to know that instead of these facts which you know anyway or maybe had an inkling of anyway right? well it’s this :- Since the episode in Virar I have been feeling this big big bad rage against the people who are in control. What’s the Government doing to solve this? to make traveling in these trains humane at least?

That day, I was with a friend who suggested a couple of possible simple solutions for the problem with ticket lines, like why not make available train Tickets, at Bank AT M’s, sell Ticketing coupons, at stores everywhere like refill cards for Mobile Networks of Prepaid schemes are sold everywhere, of course you get them punched only at the station, or at least the punching machines start on the way/bridge leading to the station itself, why do we have to keep suffering this way, the bubbling rage within me asks?

Is there something beneath the surface which I don’t see or is it that our governments don’t care about their citizens at all, the traveling system is not the only example. This country — India has been bled more by terrorists than any other country and Mumbaikars have had more than a taste of Terrorism but there is almost no retaliation, forget fighting for it’s people like America or Israel, if there is some reaction-a sense of anger, a need for vengeance, it’s stifled quite quick, makes me wonder if it’s all backed by big political, underworld powers which our free, fair and big-mouthed media even can’t take on (Just like in that classic novel One Way Ticket in which the very very Powerful Sicilian Mafia gets their backed candidate in the President of America’s office, through bribing, scheming, underhanded tricks and murder)My conspiracy theory on Terrorism aside, the multitudes of people who suffer in silence are of course equally to blame for this, where is the voice which screams we are through this, find us a solution, we refuse to travel in this madness like animals?

I blurted out one simple solution to ease the big big lines for purchasing tickets above, another easy solution for people who travel in this route is to use the waterways (come now, I know you thought about this sometime but you never really bothered much about it, isn’t it?) for now, take a couple of minutes, go to Google Maps. search for Mumbai, go north, and you should find that from the Vasai Creek, the water (from Arabian sea) runs directly to the average Western Line Traveller’s favourite destination – ChurchGate. people wishing to get to Fort, Nariman point can then uses Buses and other means to get there. Of course the the ship, boat, line over the water, can circle Colaba and make it’s ending destination Fort if desired. So this opens up the possibly of running ships/boats/ferries between Vasai creek and CGT doesn’t it? people beyond Vasai Creek please don’t despair, we can consider starting ships/boats/ferries from the coasts close to you can’t we? After looking at the Map, I think the coasts close to Aghashi, Nalasopara were excellent!

So, the 2 solutions are :-

Granted, these are just a couple of shoot-from-the-hip solutions I propose but which are in my view entirely feasible and may been implemented had the Britishers stayed a decade or two longer here till 1957 or even better 1967, they use the Thames which runs in London may had used the Arabian sea better but whatever they did till 1947 has also been useful to us … and we insist on relying on that and only that, at best trying to scale it up to our scaling population but failing miserably!!!!! again, a big why??</Rant>

P.S:-

Traveling like that every single mother-fucking day can get you frustrated and this rant was a result of that frustration, but the reason for this space is to discuss any solutions no matter how far fetched or how simple in it’s approach.
(Yes, you may suggest mass genocide of Ghatkopari’s and Virar-walla’s or anything you can possibly think off!, now are you happy?) We can if we wish help ourselves and of course immigration from other states is a very real issue as well, but it’s time we heard some real solutions not petty sentiments from the politicians … You can send your suggestions to rantingraj at mumbaiya dot net OR rantingraj at gmail dot com thank you …

Also, do help spread the word, a thumbs up in stumble upon, bookmarking in delicious and a digg in digg.com along with other bookmarking sites will be very very appreciated