Putting the railways back on track

Let’s hope Gilani succeeds in turning the utility around. Too many people stand to lose their jobs.

It all started with an idea, which fermented in the mind of Sir Henry Edward Frere who had been appointed commissioner of Sindh. This was in 1847, when the sun never set on the Empire and Britannia ruled the waves. Frere sought permission from Lord Dalhousie for a railway line which stretched from Karachi to Kotri. To get to Mooltan, which is how they spelt it in those days, there would be a steamboat service on the Indus and the Chenab. And if the fellow wanted to get to Lahore, well, they could always lay another railway line.

These were men with vision, imagination and the ideas that created the enviable rail network of the subcontinent. In fact, the British laid so many tracks, both of the broad gauge and the narrow gauge variety that one could travel from Peshawar in the west to Rangoon in the east and from Srinagar in the north to Nagercoil in the south, making the hugeness of India graspable.

Pakistan inherited part of this bounty and, for quite a while, the railways, with a modicum of efficiency, worked quite satisfactorily, transporting passenger, post and parcel to the far-flung regions of the country and offering a satisfactory three-course meal on the station platforms. And then, gradually but surely, over a period of time, the higher-ups in the ministry of transport lost their grip and so, rephrasing Yeats from “The Second Coming”, ‘things fell apart, the centre couldn’t hold and anarchy was loosed upon the railways’.

During the last 20 years, it is deplorable what successive governments in Pakistan have done to an institution which has its own folklore and for which, some travellers, like this writer, still have fond memories. Who can forget those memorable 16-hour trips to Lahore by Tezgam, which were invariably spent in the air-conditioned dining car, those trips to the Northwest Frontier or into the rugged blue Balochi hills with their terrible beauty? It was a mode of travel that was affordable to the common man and had distinct advantages over road transport. But all that empathetic, feel good perception and spin has been mugged by a flagrant display of apathy, inefficiency and corruption. This once proud service is now totally bankrupt.

Things are different across the eastern border where, in the words of London-based journalist Monisha Rajesh, “the train journey is as important as the destination itself and the railways have entranced dreamers, intrigued authors and inspired film-makers”. The Indians, recognising the supreme importance of rail travel, made jolly sure that timetables were adhered to, trains were cleaned and the food that was served was appetising. I believe the Deccan Queen still trundles its way from Mumbai to Pune, slicing through numerous tunnels in the Western Ghats, as it did during my school days in Panchgani, and the old steam locomotives still chug and puff their way on their winding tracks in the Nilgiri Mountain Railway. To attract tourists, train services with exotic names like The Golden Chariot, Deccan Odyssey, Royal Rajasthan and Palace on Wheels have been introduced. They are a little pricey, but as a globe-trotter confided to me, they are worth it. Each journey is an adventure. One does hear reports of black-marketing of tickets and the difficulties wayfarers face in obtaining travel documents. But what the heck, south Asians still have a few things in common.

There have been mixed messages from the echelons of power about the future of the railways in Pakistan. The federal finance minister, Dr Hafeez Shaikh, is in favour of privatising the railways. The prime minister, with stiff upper lip and furrowed brow, who has a rare gift for patronising enthusiasm, who is utterly predictable and at times predictably utter, thinks the answer is to pump a few more billions into the enterprise. All one can say is good luck to him. Let’s hope he succeeds in turning the utility around. Too many people stand to lose their jobs.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2011.