On the eve of the third anniversary of the Narendra Modi government, Tejas Express was launched to showcase the transformation in infrastructure and development that has been taking place in this country for the past three years. In many ways, Tejas Express is a cut above the rest. It is supposed to take the experience of travelling by train to an altogether new level, comparable in many ways to air travel.
With its capacity to reach 200kmph, much higher than Rajdhani Express’s speed limit of 130kmph, Tejas comes equipped with all kinds of passenger amenities, including Wi-Fi, tea and coffee vending machines, and on-board infotainment facilities. The inaugural run of the first rake took place between Mumbai and Goa. Tejas is going to be the norm, rather than the exception, when it comes to high-speed business travel between key Indian cities.
So much for the good side of the story. Now comes the sad part. By the time the inaugural run of Tejas was over, the inside of the compartments resembled a war-ravaged zone. The floor was littered, many of the LCD screens were vandalised and a large number of expensive headphones meant for passengers were found stolen.
When one hears about an incident like this, one feels saddened for several reasons. First, Tejas Express is not a free ride. Those who were travelling in it definitely came from well-to-do families with reasonably good educational backgrounds. If their behaviour is anything to go by, one feels sorry for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been working tireless as pradhan sevak of the nation for the past three years. He has been leaving no stone unturned to improve the quality of life of the average Indian, bringing all kinds of innovative concepts, be it providing LPG connections to five crore poor households or providing life and health insurance schemes at very low rates to billion-plus people. The PM and his team do not need any reciprocation; but they need the support of the people of India.
Seats of luxury: A Tejas Express coach, before it was vandalised | PTI
No nation can develop if their governments continue to develop infrastructure while some refuse to change their behaviour and continue to vandalise, steal or damage public property. The mass theft of expensive headphones from Tejas Express has forced the Indian Railways to replace them with extremely cheap ones. Can passengers blame the railways for it? Not at all. They have themselves and their fellow passengers to blame.
What happened in Tejas Express is not the exception, but the norm. One can witness the lack of civic sense among many, if not all, people on roads and in other public places. It is so common to see empty packets of potato chips, and even beer bottles, casually thrown from cars. One has to remember: the poorest of the poor don’t go for long drives in expensive cars. It is the elite who do it.
Spitting in public places doesn’t even need a mention. Worse is the manner in which people tend to remain as mute spectators when someone else does so in front of them. People seem to have given up their right to protest when public property is vandalised.
It is extremely important that the quality of politics, policing and governance improve. The Modi government has been striving to bring those changes at an unprecedented pace. But one cannot deny that national reforms can happen only when people change, too. If they don’t change, nothing would change. India’s greatest asset has been its human resource. It has done wonders for the economy and art. Indians now need to show some humanity towards public property.
Lekhi is member of Parliament.
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