Bangalore Mangalore train - Lalu's admission?
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Written By silkboard - 9 December, 2007
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First off, thanks Vasanth for the informative update on the long awaited train. Hopefully they will complete the Bangalore Hassan line soon, the zig zag route via Mysore (go south) and Hassan (come back north) takes a bit too much time (12 hours).
BTW, I read a news-piece on this train in ToI this morning, and something in there just amazed me. The piece talks about Mr Lalu Yadav flagging the Bangalore train off at Mangalore, and how he kept the audience in splits during his speech. Now, for the interesting part:
"When Lalu mentioned that he knew the reasons behind the delay and put the onus on the bus and truck lobby, there was a loud roar of approval"
So whats our Railway Minister saying here? That he knew about the lobbying that was going on under the table to delay the start of this train? That he can just say he 'knew' about it and wash his hands off? Or is he only passing the buck, to local railway bodies or the previous railway minister?
Now that the train is on, it will be "forget and move on" as usual. But I hope some political opponents of Railway Minister will pick this speech up and make some noise. And before that let me hope that ToI has quoted Mr Yadav accurately enough, they do spice things up at times :)
[That quote is from a story on page 1, ToI Bangalore, Sunday Dec 9 2007]
actually its scandalous that for 12 years everybody sat silent on this.
no road, no rail. wtf?
even now, as vasanth pointed there are some concerns about safety.
i remember talking that train as a kid. i cant remember the station, but there was station high on the hills, right next to it was this deep valley with a river and then hills upto horizon. dream stuff.
Metre Guage and Narrow Guage trains are made for these kind of hilly regions as the trains are lighter and turning radius is smaller. Even in advanced countries like Switzerland, they have light rails running along Ghat sections. Problem with heavy trains is it causes more land sliding because of the weight.
In India, Government wants to have Uniguage as Broadguage to ease the freight movement especially through India. If it would have been just passenger movement, railways could have asked people to getdown Broadguage train at Hassan and take Metre Guage.
There was also a mention that goods train have started earlier(since few months) on this track and are carrying iron ore to mangalore port and getting petroleum pdts back from mangalore!
Is this done in full scale? and if so, has the traffic reduced on the roads??
The candid admission by Sri Laloo Prasad Yadav that the private bus operator lobby had been holding up the progress of the Bangalore-Mangalore train services all these years, is most intriguing. It has raised far many more questions than have been answered as of now.
Very obviously the Railways officialdom had known this from years ago. Why is it then that they failed to act on it until now? How much has been the revenue loss to the Railways on account of the neglect of this lucrative route, over so many years? Can anyone be held accountable for it? If not, isn't it also quite clear that the Railways have not been, and are not, quite equipped to go by compelling commercial considerations?
Simultaneously, though, neither have they been going by social considerations, subjecting as they have been such large sections of the lower middle class population belonging to this region, who form the core of the railway passengers, to hardships and financial loss, while pandering to the whims of the various influential lobbies.
Further, it requires no expert study by a Harvard MBA (on which programme, the honourable minister appears to have become an honorary faculty member) to unearth similar cases of neglect of other equally or even more lucrative sectors, Bangalore-Thiruvananthapuram perhaps topping the list.
Also, when government-run operations can be so easily hijacked by influential private sector lobbies, isn't the best way to counter it, privatisation of the train services itself (Railways retaining the network and infrastructure), in order to allow for market forces to come into play on a level playing field? May be a beginning could be made with the superfast expresses.
For more, read http://kerala-disconnect-tion.blogspot.com/
I took the train twice when I was in school and went to trek once when I was in Highschool and again in 2004. Of course the nature was beautiful both time but the train track and other infrastructure were literally rusted in 2004.
At several places the track went invisible.
See these pics of the Edakumeri station in 2004. The area where there is grass is supposed to be where the tracks should be.
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And look at the situation of a building (I guess it was a staff quarter).
[flickr-photo:id=2100528252,size=m]
I hope that now the things are put into good shape again.
The journey is really a wonderful experience and worth every bit of money and inconvenience.
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Tarle: the station you mentioned is Edakumeri.
-Shastri
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