A poor person is also entitled to the dignity of an individual

Stuck inside compartments Bhaskar Ghose Hindustan Times Thursday December, 8 2005

One of the most enduring legacies of British rule in India has been the concept of travelling third class in a train. Images from one’s childhood are still vivid — the crowds on the platform, the excited noise among the waiting passengers as the train slowly steamed in, and then the pandemonium as everyone tried to get into the third class compartments at the same time. Coolies milled about, shouts and cries drowned out all other sound, and there were many who climbed in through windows and then set about dragging their vast quantities of luggage in. It was fiercely, mercilessly hot in summer, and in winter the bleak cold wind whipped in through the windows that never closed properly.

True, there have been changes since then. The carriages are designed differently; there are cubicles with wooden bunks and more windows close fully, thanks to the new design and materials used. More importantly, the third class as it then was, has gone. We now have a variety of second class carriages, second sleeper, second sleeper two- tier and three-tier, and the refuge of the middle class the airconditioned second class sleeper. But there still are many ‘general’ second class carriages which correspond to the old third class — not in looks and design, but in the way they are filled with travellers who seem just as frenzied as before, just as desperate to travel. It’s as if their existence depended on it, like drowning people. The carriages are lifeboats or rescuers; they climb into them as drowning people would grab the boats.

You would have thought that half-a-century after we became a free country, we would have been able to provide a means of travel to people — yes, to the poor, to those unable to pay very much by way of fares — that preserves their dignity and gives them a basic degree of comfort. There’s nothing very wrong with the carriages, it’s just that there never are enough of them. And to say that no matter how many carriages you provide there would always be that mad rush to get in is nonsense. There is a point where travel in an unreserved second class compartment can be made decent by providing enough accommodation for everyone to get a seat and space. Yes, people bring in vast quantities of baggage. Some months of firmness (‘No, you cannot take those into the compartment! They must be put in the luggage van”) coupled with a user-friendly system of being able to stow luggage and retrieve it would change the concept of travelling.

One has only to look over one’s shoulder at another railway system that operates in the country — the Metro in Delhi. It has been designed and built with the comfort and safety of not just one passenger, but thousands and thousands of them in mind. They look on a passenger differently, very obviously. As a fellow human being, entitled to the same consideration that railway people give themselves and their relatives and friends. For some very admirable reason they have discarded the concept that the colonial rulers had, a concept that their successors in the railways have nurtured so assiduously, with such care, that the natives ought to be glad they have a railway system at all. Improvements seem to be provided more out of a sense of kindness and charity than an awareness that they are essential attributes of decent rail travel.

But why point a finger at the railways alone? The kind of State housing provided in different parts of the country is shameful. Again, those poky little rooms serve not to provide accommodation, but to destroy human dignity. It is unthinkably callous to assume that because people are poor they can live in such appalling holes, where there is no water and usually no sanitation. It’s no use saying: there’s only that much money, what can you expect? That’s a cop-out. The answer, surely, is to provide less if you must, but what you do, do to decent human standards. Those standards are easily set. Those who design and provide any service — be it a flat, a railway carriage, a bus or food — need to consider if what they’re providing would do for them and their family. If it would not, then what would be the bare minimum they would accept as adequate for themselves and their family? Whatever it is is what could then be the norm.

This is where all of us — in the public and private spheres — fail our fellow citizens. All of us assume that a poor person is not entitled to the dignity of an individual. So his housing, his transport, his schools and everything else is of a level where there is a constant sacrifice of individual dignity. Whereas that, tragically, is where it should have all begun, with the ensuring of individual dignity in all the plans for improvement, in all that is provided by the State and by private enterprise.