Platform

Travel teaches tolerance.
An Indian railway teaches intolerance, perpetuates depression and invigorates frustration.

On way to the Himalayan Kingdom, I am stranded at Katihar station, for 6 hours now and will be perhaps another 6 hours before this iron horse budges.
Bengal is on strike and all trains enroute are stranded.

No train official in site, toilets are in bad shape, coaches are cockroach infested, vendors, beggars, rag pickers, pickpockets and snatchers congested.

Berths have become smaller.
But the railway’s Balance sheet is getting bigger.
Laloo knows what media buys and their intellectual bankcruptcy
He is making most of the India shining,
People ignore what they see with their naked eye.
They believe in what media has to show.
In what the politicians propose.

There has been so much of noise about the Indian railways doing great.
Just travel once to anywhere and you will know the truth.
But then you might be a super optimistic or a blind to say that, this is just one situation, others might be fine.
Balance sheets are fudged, and more over governments figures.
Anyway a socialist government is not supposed to make a profit that is what they say in their manifestos.

No competition. Will obviously lead to people being satisfied with what they get. Railways know it well.
People who make news or effect policies either do not travel by train or get a first class treatment in the trains.

For the rest of us, we just wait at the Platform.