By Amar Yumnam
Recently I had an opportunity to take a long distance travel by train within the country. I have been to Sambalpur University and as there is no airport in Sambalpur, I necessarily had to travel by train. I readily agreed to take this ten hours train journey for certain reasons besides the professional one. First, I have never been to this part of the country. I wanted to remedy this weakness in me by enriching myself with wider knowledge of the scenario around the country. Second, I wanted to experience the changes if any in the Indian railways as compared to what was there in the 1980s.
I felt many things during this trip and learnt many things too. Taking a more or less long distance train travel naturally made absolutely nostalgic about the many journeys I had taken from Howrah to Bombay and back during the early 1980s as a student with the nostalgia particularly enhanced whenever passing over bridges and long open spaces. Further the visit to Odisha reminded me again of visit to Madhya Pradesh during student days in Bombay. But more significant than this nostalgia, there are two experiences associated with the quality of train services and behaviour of people travelling by the train.
As regards the quality of services, I can say for sure that timing is more significantly respected now than earlier. This is definitely good. But, very unfortunately at that, one Indian negative feature gets reiterated still. I am talking about dirtiness. All the guys attending to pantry services wear stinking and stained clothes. Given the global awareness now with diseases and cleanliness, this is one feature that would certainly put-off any traveller. Further, all such services are spick and span in the developed and comparative countries around the world. The Modi assertion for cleanliness should be reflected in this sooner than later.
But the most significant experience relate to the behaviour of the travellers. One critical feature during my travels between Howrah and Bombay during the 1980s was that during the journey from Howrah to Bombay, the travellers would be behaving and responsive. But the opposite was the case otherwise during travels from Bombay to Howrah. This was always coupled by the ready indulgence by the Calcutta taxi-wallahs to indulge in cheating and befooling the travellers. What pains me most is that the scenario I had experienced during the 1980s still remain unchanged. During the journey from Howrah to Sambalpur, the travellers were behaving very wonderfully. Coupled with the improvement in respecting time by the Indian railways, this was a very morale enhancing experience.
But the return journey from Sambalpur to Kolkata made me recall the Howrah-Bombay experiences of the 1980s. Like the travellers did during the journey from Bombay to Calcutta in the 1980s, the passengers behaved exactly like they were in the 1980s. They were as unmindful of the fellow travellers as ever before, as self-centric as they were before, as ready to readily disturb the prevailing atmosphere for personal convenience and what not. As in the 1980s, the individuals do not feel any sense of remorse when their ill-intended attempts do not yield results and others retort very badly. It is this continuance of behaviour that has prompted me to correlate with the development scenario in this part of the country. We know that industrialisation in India was started in this part. We also know that there are no traits of this initiation and early comparative advantage today. The contemporary literature on economics of culture has something to tell us in this regard.
Development requires a kind of culture which is inclusive and cooperative in nature. This creates a kind of cumulative and cooperative learning in both skill and performance. It is something very different from the organisation of movements for personalised gains like strikes and bandhs in factories. Further, with the world increasingly globalised, every region should learn to be inclusive, cooperative and responsive in dealing with others. These are exactly what are missing in the land and people in this region for industrialisation and for sustained development.