Window Seat
| Mrinal Chatterjee
National Train Day
In USA this year National Train Day will
be celebrated on 13 May, Saturday (it is celebrated on the Saturday closest to
May 10, details in http://www.nationaltrainday.com/about/). Hundreds of
grassroots events would be held in communities across the nation. It is a
celebration of trains and the different ways trains touch the lives of people
around the country.
I strongly feel that we should also
celebrate an Annual Train Day in India. Besides being one among few other
national institutions which hold the country together, trains in India are more
closely linked to an average common man's life than any other mode of
transport.
Consider the scale of operation of
Indian Railways: it has 115,000 km of track length, runs 12,617 trains to carry
over 30 million passengers daily – equivalent to moving the entire population
of Australia – connecting more than 7,172 stations. It has the world's fourth
largest railway network after those of the United States, Russia and China. The
railways carry over 3 million tons of freight daily that is like moving 411
Eiffel towers daily.
Besides the gigantic scale of
operation- it is the pan-Indian character, that makes Indian Railways a truly
national symbol. But interestingly it was started by the British rulers for
commercial gain.
The plan for the introduction of a
rail system was first mooted in 1832. However, no action was taken for over a
decade. In the year 1844, private entrepreneurs were allowed to launch a rail
system by Lord Hardinge, who was the Governor-General of India. By the year
1845, two companies were formed and the East India Company was requested to
support them in the matter. The credit from the UK investors led to the hasty
construction of a rail system over the next few years. On 22nd December 1851,
the first train came on the track to carry the construction material at Roorkee
in India. With a passage of one and a half years, the first passenger train
service was introduced between Bori Bunder, Bombay (now Mumbai) and Thane- a
distance of 34 km on 16th April 1853. The train with 14 railway carriages,
carrying around 400 guests, left Bori Bunder at 3:30 p.m. that day. It was
declared a public holiday then. With
that the journey of the Railways in India began.
In 1880, the rail network acquired a
route mileage of about 14,500 km, mostly working through Bombay, Madras (now
Chennai) and Calcutta (now, Kolkata), three major port cities.
By 1895, India had started
manufacturing its own locomotives. In no time, different princely states
including Mayurbhanj in Odisha assembled their independent rail systems and the
network extended to the regions including Assam, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh.
In 1901, a Railway Board was formed though the administrative power was
reserved for the Viceroy, Lord Curzon. The Railway Board worked under the
guidance of the Deptt of Commerce and Industry. Later it became a separate
ministry and had the distinction of the only ministry to present its budget
separately in the parliament.
When India got independence 42
independent railway systems with thirty-two lines were merged in a single unit
and were acknowledged as Indian Railways. The existing rail networks were
forfeited for zones in 1951 and 6 zones were formed in 1952. By 1985, the
diesel and electric locomotives took the place of steam locomotives. The whole
railway reservation system was rationalized with computerization in 1995.
Railways touch more lives in India in
many ways than in any other country of the world. Therefore, a day should be
marked for its celebration annually. It could be on 16 April 1853 when the
first passenger train was run in India.
Hypocrite
We, human beings are basically
hypocrites; Indians particularly so. As Craig Olson writes in his book The Casual Christian, "We are
willing to believe that an inanimate, impersonal universe is more capable of
producing human life than Almighty God, yet we freely offer prayers to God
asking Him to shape events on our behalf and we hold firmly to a belief in the
human soul and an afterlife. We embrace the notion of survival of the fittest,
yet we ask for mercy for our weakness. We believe that a process called natural
selection spawned life out of chaos, yet we depend on the world to be
predictable and orderly every morning when we get out of bed."
In this book the author takes a look
at modern church practices and contemporary Christian ministry through the lens
of apostolic practices. He shows how biblical teaching has simply been set
aside in preference for the prevailing practices and values of a secular
culture.
Similar trend can be observed in
practically almost all religions, particularly in India. Rites and rituals have
taken precedence over spirituality. Places of worship- small and big and of all
major religions have mushroomed on government land, by the side of national and
State Highways. In Odisha at Manguli Chhak, a major intersection of two national
Highways, (NH 5 and NH52) where hundreds of commuters wait to catch buses, two
new temples have been constructed recently; but nobody thought of building a
toilet complex- which is a bare necessity there. We immerse our deities in
ponds and rivers, polluting the water body. We worship river Ganga and Yamuna
as goddess but do not flinch to discharge raw sewerage into it. The tanriks
and babas swindle us every day; and
we allow ourselves to be duped. We have witnessed countless babas and swamis
indulging in acts from sexual escapades to financial impropriety. But we seem
to never learn. We swarm near them, allow them to take us for a ride. And when
we are swindled we erupt in rage, ransack their ashrams and after a while again
fall prey to some other swindler.
Tailpiece: Bahubali Effect
Biwi: Suno, aaj office se jaldo ana,
Bahubali 2 dekhne challenge
Pati: Nehi aya to?
Biwi: Agar time se aye to BJP ke
chunab chinha se swagat karungi. Aur late kiya to fir Congress ki symbol se..
Aur jyada late kari to fir AAP ka symbol darwaje ke pichhe hai… Dhyan rahe…
(Courtesy:
Social Media)
***
The author, a journalist turned media
academician and fiction writer lives in
Dhenkanal, a dist. HQ town in Central Odisha. He can be contacted at
mrinalchatterjee@ymail.com
7.5.17
This column is published every Sunday in Gangtok based English daily Sikkim Express and posted in www.orissadiary.com
7.5.17
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