When a young manager had to fly back to Patna from Mumbai after his wife died here hours after giving birth to the first child just six days before Diwali he had to buy plane ticket at many times higher price.
Similarly, sometimes back a couple had to pay Rs 25,000 for each passenger to rush their seriously ill child from Patna to Delhi for emergency treatment.

These are just two examples of the cruel joke being played against those in distress by the concept of ‘dynamic pricing’––an idea borrowed from rich western countries. The Narendra Modi government had introduced this in the railways, which faced the first real test during the recent Diwali-Chhath rush.

What is strange is that our rulers are talking of promoting tourism and introducing Bullet trains when they can not afford to provide seats in trains and planes at affordable prices for those facing personal tragedy or emergency situation. Till now plane tickets used to be sold at a premium, now train tickets in some ‘premium trains’ have been fixed under this criteria. 

So after Tatkal the concept of Premium has further reduced the number of seats in the reserved category. Tickets were sold at four to five times more than actual price recently.

Thus instead of providing more reserved seats we are actually squeezing the space for poor passengers. Unlike in the West, where one can travel by one’s own car––if the tickets are sold at a premium––in India the pocket of 95 per cent of the passengers–– specially like those travelling back home for Chhath––do not allow it.

True, the railways announced 300 trains from various places in the country for Bihar, some of them fully unreserved. But a top railway official, while talking to this correspondent, doubted whether so many special trains did actually run. He cited the excuse of shortage of coaches. He further said that if these trains had actually run there was no advance planning and no prior information to passengers. Therefore, there was complete chaos and mismanagement. 

If political parties can hire dozens of trains to fetch lakhs of supporters to attend rally on one particular day at one particular place, be it in Patna, Lucknow, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata or elsewhere, why can not such arrangements be made for passengers travelling to whole of Bihar in so many days before Chhath? 

If the Indian Railways can not handle the challenge in festival and examination seasons there is no point developing tourist centres. How will the tourists reach their destination if we have no trains and planes.
We can afford to spend thousands of crores––may be more by the time it is built––for just one Bullet train route between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, when the fact is that much cheaper plane link already exists between these two cities. Instead these thousands of crores, if invested properly, may go a long way to improve the entire Indian railways.

The biggest problem is that we do not understand as to where lies the problem. We use to run Holi, Durga Puja and Summer Specials but till recently had little idea of Chhath, which is observed in a big way in eastern India, which has in the last couple of decades emerged as the labour exporting zone.

There is another problem which we do not take into account. The seasonal migration of agriculture labourers to west UP, Punjab and Haryana from this very part of India also compounds the misery. These labours start moving to north and west India from May. But the railways never announce any special trains for them. This period coincides with the marriage and competitive exam seasons. Besides, people do want to move in summer vacation. 

As broadcasting of seeds, transplantation and harvesting are done much earlier in north India than Bihar, farm labours start returning by late October. It often coincides with Chhath. As the trains coming from Punjab, Haryana and west UP are already packed they can not accommodate a single passenger by the time they reach Old Delhi station––most of these trains by-pass New Delhi. 

As the number of east Indians living in national capital region is increasing every year the pressure caused by them only add to the problem.

Thank God, the number of migrant farm labourers has, of late, not been rising, possibly because of mechanization of agriculture––for example introduction of transplanters and more use of mini-tractors. Besides, MNREGA has, to some extent, also checked the flow of labourers from east India to the Green Revolution zone.

Without understanding our own social milieu we borrow ‘Bullet’ like ideas from abroad, not knowing that in Japan there is no problem of massive seasonal movement of millions of passengers on the eve of festivals, or to appear in competitive examin or take admission. Such movements are totally different from daily commuters or ordinary passengers.