EDITORIALS
Do Railway Tracks Serve the Public Good?
Human anxiety and excitement produces conflict between public and private spaces.
R
esponses to railway accidents very often enter into what
could be seen as the slippery domain of the counterfac-
tual. Not surprisingly, the counterfactual necessarily
involves the blame game. Thus, in the context of the recent rail-
way tragedy near Amritsar on 19 October that claimed 60 lives,
such a blame game was quite prominently indulged in by some
interested parties. There were a number of assumptions and
statements about what could have been done to avert the tragedy.
These ranged from asserting that if the motorman had slowed
down or the railway police had been more vigilant or conversely,
if the Dussehra celebration enthusiasts had avoided climbing on
to the railway tracks, the tragedy could have been avoided. The
blame game reached an absurd level when there were obser-
vations that if the people assembled at the celebrations had
refrained from taking “selfies” on the track, the deaths would not
have occurred. It was also pointed out that if persons belonging
to a particular political party had not gone to the site to attend
the celebrations, the circumstances would have been different.
The counterfactual provides the ground for some people to fix
responsibility on others while at the same time escaping from any
responsibility themselves. This blame game that is played in the name
of responsibility is, of course, not without political motivation.
The question, however, that has to be raised is: What in pub-
lic perception is the significance of railway tracks on land and
especially the land in the close vicinity of these tracks? Why do
people either permanently or occasionally, begin to occupy the
land near the railway tracks? What are the implications of their
encounters with the railway tracks?
The material relationship between the railway tracks and
the land, particularly in the literary imagination as well as the
postcolonial writings has been perceived to be in a perpetual
state of contradiction. Some renowned literary persons, who
have been influenced by Gandhian thought, view the railway
track as piercing through the land and thus creating a deep crack
in its heart. Whereas scholars riding the postcolonial standpoint,
expectedly, hold the imperial state responsible for constructing
railway lines that cut through the mountains. The railway tracks
Economic & Political Weekly EPW octoBER 27, 2018 vol lIii no 43
and therefore the railways, that are seen as a public good, stand
on private land that once belonged to peasants. The land near
railway tracks is public land unlike let us say, military land.
The former is thus easily accessible to people who use it either
for “human” habitation or cultural celebrations. In many towns
and semi-urban towns, local people have treated the use of this
land as a matter of customary right for Dussehra celebrations.
As has been the case, people in India seem to have treated the
occupation (regular or temporary) of land near the railway
tracks as a matter of customary right. Regularly, in terms of
residences near the track, and temporary, in terms of using the
land for celebration of cultural events or religious festivals. Com-
pared to military establishments in India, the railways adminis-
tration has been quite flexible, if not generous, in making con-
cessions to those who occupy the land.
Let us take the case of commuters in Mumbai who are gripped
with anxiety to reach their workplaces on time. Their anxiety
forces them to underestimate the speed of the train when cross-
ing the railway tracks. Media reports suggest that in Mumbai
alone nearly 20,000 people were killed and an equal number
were fatally injured in the last four years. On the other side of the
spectrum, the railway coaches on the tracks also carry the middle
class whose attitudes towards those who reside by the side of these
tracks are often morally offensive. These commuters who other-
wise suffer from hardships in the local trains treat the slums at the
side of the tracks as everyday sources of disgust and repulsion.
However, in the context of the existing tension between the
railways and human beings, is it possible to argue that it is not
the arbitrary choice that people make to transgress the bounda-
ries and pile on to the tracks at their own peril? In fact, it is their
structural location to the land and the nagging sense of anxiety
produced by the working conditions that leave them no choice
to escape the risk. Similarly, it is not as if the railway engine
leaves the tracks and chases human beings, or runs berserk
into the residential localities or the mob that gathers near the
tracks. Tracks run on scientific logic, whereas human reason is
taken over by the force of anxiety and excitement.
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