Original subtitles

Indian Railways are the lifeline of the nation,

without them the country simply cannot function.

And nowhere more so than in Bombay, India's premier city.

In 2005, it suffered the highest rainfall recorded in the city's history.

A metre of rain fell in 12 hours.

The deluge could not drain away fast enough,

and the city suffered its worst ever flood.

The suburban network was paralysed;

trains marooned, stations cut off.

Over a thousand people lost their lives.

India's richest, most powerful city

had been strangled by the monsoon rains.

But amazingly,

in less than 48 hours, the trains were running again.

This is the story of the Bombay Railway.

Bombay was originally made up of seven islands of low lying swamps

and malaria-infested mud flats.

Gifted by the Portuguese to the British,

it had always been a trading city.

But with the coming of the railway, Bombay began to boom.

Today some parts of the city have a population density

of one million people per square mile..

By 2020, Bombay is set to be the world's largest city.

CAR HORNS BLARE

Six and a half million commuters

travel up and down the on the city's suburban rail network.

It's like a small country on the move, and every day

ten thousand new immigrants swell the city's population.

Alice in Wonderland type of situation.

You have to keep on going two steps to remain where you are.

We have no control over that.

We are.. our job is to provide transportation,

and if ten thousand people are coming here, then

they have better opportunities.

Mumbai is a land of dreams.

This is where dreams are made.

The dream of the British Empire was to criss cross

the subcontinent with a railway that would be the envy of the world.

ANNOUNCEMENT OVER TANNOY

In the heart of the city, they built Victoria Terminus,

a railway station of cathedral size proportions,

now the most photographed building in India after the Taj Mahal.

It stands on the site of the very first railway line to be

laid in India more than a hundred and fifty years ago.

The British Raj in India was just a blip in the history of the country.

The British were simply the last invaders

in a catalogue of occupations.

But the Indians themselves have never invaded

another country in over 5,000 years.

The British left in 1947.

They left behind the foundations of the legal system, the civil service,

the principals of democracy and the railways.

Today India is the world's largest democracy,

and it runs the greatest rail network in all Asia.

And it all started here.

But perhaps it was the British sense of time

which was most alien to the population.

Clocks and timetables were a difficult concept,

but the railway revolutionised travel and introduced

a British sense of time.

Today the Tower clock, made by Lund and Blockley in 1888,

faces the city from the dome of the station,

and it's still wound by hand.

They say that when the wire broke, the counter weight fell

through the ceiling of the General Manager's private bathroom,

destroying a fine collection of memorial plates.

The tower clock has been called the Big Ben of Bombay,

except it doesn't chime.

After Independence, the private railway companies were nationalised.

Bombay changed its name to Mumbai.

Victoria terminus became the headquarters of the Central Railway

and changed its name to Chatravaji Shivaji Terminus or CST for short.

Its sister station at Churchgate

became headquarters of the Western Railway.

Between them, these two railways must carry millions of commuters

in and out of the city everyday.

The railway is so heavily used here that almost 50% of all passenger

journeys in India are either to or from Mumbai.

Two nine, 25...

To help keep the suburban system running,

in the operation room, teams of highly trained controllers

keep the trains moving.

It's as complicated an operation as at any airport.

The TMS, or Train Management System,

is the very latest technology employed by the Indian Railways

to keep its trains running on time.

We have fairly good reputation for doing it very punctually,

our punctuality is around 97%, and we have very few cancellations,

that is about 0.1% of the total running.

OP Chaturvedi is one of 500 or so drivers and guards

on the suburban network.

OP joined the railway when life in the city was so much simpler.

BELL PINGS

OP had already gained a science degree

when he applied to the Indian Railways for a job,

a coveted government position -

secure, well paid, respected.

30 years on and now a senior driver on the Central Railway,

both the city and the job have lost a little of their glitter.

HORN SOUNDS

BELL PINGS

The motorman's lobby is at the back of VT station and

it's here that drivers and guards like OP report for duty each day.

Although there are numerous forms to fill out and daily notices to read,

on everything from track maintenance to signal changes,

there's more personal information

on who's retiring and who's due for a medical.

The lobby is a home from home.

Old friends, tea, a place to relax and reminisce about the old days,

when a rupee was a rupee.

At the end of the month I would have saved bloody twenty or thirty rupees.

I used to save, after smoking, smoking, everything,

so it was very cheap.

Previously when I'm taking my bag and tell my missus I am going for duty,

I am very happy I'm going for my train, that I am a driver.

But now I'm 54.

God has given my fate - you have to bloody run the trains on the tracks.

Work like a bloody donkey.

You won't get anything.

So...

I am doing that.

More than 2,000 trains travel up and down

the city's 300 kilometres of suburban track,

24 hours a day.

During peak hours, the pressure on the drivers is so great

that trains cannot stop for more than 30 seconds at any one station.

CAR HORNS BLARE

With the city's roads in a state of almost permanent gridlock,

the railways are the most reliable, the most environmentally friendly,

the fastest and cheapest way of travelling around the city.

You will be surprised to know that our season tickets are so cheap

that I charge a person seven paisa for a kilometre in second class.

Seven paisa...

I mean, one rupee is 100 paisa, and I think 45 rupees is a dollar.

So you divide it by 45, and divide it by 100,

and then multiply by seven for one kilometre.

It works out so cheap that a ticket costs less than a penny per mile.

But as the working population expands,

the city's commuters have to travel greater distances to work,

and transporting them is stretching the system to its limit.

'We run an average of about 3,000 passengers per train.'

That is what puts a pressure on our system.

And since everybody wants to come in the morning,

we have a defined morning peak hours and evening peak hours.

Morning peak the movement is towards south.

People from north are coming towards south.

We run about 99 trains in about three hours period, carrying these people.

That is why the overcrowding is of such...

what we euphemistically call Super Dense Crush Load Factor -

as if we have coined a word for that..

Super Dense Crush Load Factor.

As the sun sets on another working day,

commuters begin their journey home in trains meant to carry 1,200.

At peak times, they often carry up to 5,000.

This is the Super Dense Crush Load.

Mumbai is the commercial and financial capital of India,

and it's booming.

But living in this city is tough, and expensive.

The railway is overcrowded, but the city could not function without it.

The writer Suketu Mehta calls Bombay the boot camp of the west -

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.

On the 16th April 1853, the British completed the first railway line in India.

It ran between Bombay's Victoria Terminus and Thane,

a small town 21 miles due north.

Thane has now become a major urban centre,

and the station one of the network's most important railway junctions.

Indian Railways officially employs one and a half million people.

But there are countless millions of unofficial workers

who rely on the railways to make a living.

MOBILE PHONE RINGS

Balu Dhokale arrived on Thane station as a penniless runaway kid,

and he never left.

Hello.

As he grew up around the station,

Balu became something of an entrepreneur.

Now he has fingers in many pies,

a regular jack the lad.

He collects licence money from the shoe shine boys on the platform,

and he's part owner of a juice stall.

Everybody on Thane station seems to know him...

or owe him.

Throughout his life, the railway and its passengers have provided him

with something of a living.

Now that Balu is married with three kids, a house and a pension plan,

he wants to put something back into the station community.

This city has been the favourite destination of runaway kids for generations.

There's a unique bond between them and the railway.

For Balu who survived and prospered, there's also a sense of duty.

So, as well as helping runaway kids like Shankar,

Balu is a volunteer driver for the station ambulance.

Railway stations and railway trains have been woven into the fabric

of Indian life for more than 150 years.

For traders, the railway is an inexhaustible marketplace.

For runaway kids it's a place where you can feel a part

of the railway family, and free to be yourself.

Whatever your skill, you can always earn a few rupees on the train.

And for poor kids, hawking or begging offers a practical,

but illegal, survival option.

Everyday, another 30 runaways land up at railway stations in the city.

Like everyone else, they've come to make a better life.

On the suburban railway,

women have always had the option of travelling separately from men.

Yet despite their liberal attitudes,

in this, the most modern of Indian cities

every suburban train has ladies only compartments.

Outside of peak hours, they provide a more secure and calmer environment

for lady commuters, and for professional hawkers like Lavinga.

In 1992, the railways introduced a new concept -

The Ladies only Special.

Running seven times a day,

the specials were a big hit with the ladies, and with Lavinga.

Have a nice day.

Have a nice day!

Hawking on trains goes on all over India, but it's illegal,

so whether you are selling toothbrushes or saris,

if you're caught, you will be arrested and fined,

and maybe even go to jail.

Bye, madam.

To protect the public and the system,

the railways has its own police, the Railway Protection Force.

The RPF is a paramilitary outfit.

They provide security on trains and stations

for dignitaries and officials, sometimes keeping public order,

and often on parade.

They are all railway employees.

And as railway employees, their police powers are limited.

Their normal daily duties involve the policing of petty crimes.

But the spirit of his paramilitary training

has never left RPF Inspector Dinesh Kanojia.

When morale needs a boost, he's keen to remind his men

that in the fight against railway crime, they've been trained to kill.

As public servants and guardians of railway property,

most RPF time is spent dealing with minor misdemeanours.

Travelling without a ticket, riding on the roof of a train

or crossing the track are all illegal.

And like hawking, if you are arrested,

you are liable to a fine and you could be sent to jail.

Commuters struggling home crowd the trains and the stations,

as the time of the super dense crush load begins.

For the railway and for the public,

this is the most dangerous time of the day.

People are willing to take all kinds of risks

to save time and to save money.

But commuters die.

They fall off trains, get electrocuted on the roof,

but most commonly, they are hit by a train.

HORN SOUNDS

Nearly everyone walks across the tracks

rather than cross by the foot bridges.

But when these trains are running at maximum frequency and maximum speed,

there's no room for error.

Thousands lose their lives each year on this railway,

the majority whilst illegally crossing the tracks.

And the railways seem unable to stop them.

In rural India, you can always hear the train coming.

But in Mumbai, trains run silently and fast,

and their approach is muffled by the sounds of the city.

For the victims, it is death.

But for the drivers, it is both dangerous and traumatic.

BELL RINGS

At the motorman's lobby in Victoria Terminus,

drivers and guards are praying to the goddess Durga on the full moon.

She's been adopted as the patron saint of railway operations,

and they believe she will remove obstacles from their path,

and keep them safe from harm.

As the rush reaches its peak,

OP Chaturvedi awaits his train allocation.

He knows that somewhere on the suburban system today,

up to ten people may be killed and many others will be injured.

They will mostly be trespassers,

illegally crossing the track to save time.

On the platform at Diva station lies the unidentified body

of a young girl killed on the tracks.

The authorities suspect suicide,

but the Railway Police cannot confirm this.

The body of the young girl is to be

taken to nearby Thane station where Balu's voluntary ambulance

service will take her to the nearest hospital morgue for a post mortem.

She has no identity papers, but they think she is a Hindu.

For Balu, it's just another routine pick-up.

For OP, running over a person is an occupational hazard...

a burden he has grown to accept.

Each year 3,500 people are killed by trains in the city

and the numbers are rising.

The suburban railway runs almost 24 hours a day.

The last train arrives at 2.40am.

The first train leaves less than an hour later.

Mumbai is a city that never sleeps

and neither does the railway.

For long distance travellers, platforms become waiting rooms

and the stations become sanctuaries for people with nowhere else to go.

For Shankar, ex-beggar, shoeshine boy, hawker, labourer and tea boy

life on Thane station has reached an all-time low.

Mumbai was once seven islands.

And for the last 300 years they have been joining them up.

The population has grown so quickly that living space and transport

systems have become the city's most urgent priorities.

On both systems of Central Railway and Western railway,

we carry more than six million passengers a day - a day!

I think this sort of traffic doesn't exist anywhere in the world.

Mumbai is the El Dorado of our country. It's a city of dreams.

We introduce 100 more trains, I think another 100,000 will come to

this town and start living somewhere,

saying the services are now available.

The railway plans longer trains more lines and even a metro,

but it all takes time.

There are grand plans there, but nobody to implement it.

For another 50 years, things will be like this only.

I will not be alive, but my children will be travelling.

Things will be like this.

It is the duty of the railways to provide adequate facilities

to the customers who are paying their hard-earned money.

A massive redevelopment and expansion programme has been launched.

But middle class commuters facing ever more overcrowding

and rising fatalities are not happy with the railway's progress.

Part of the problem for the railways

is the system cannot run any more trains.

There's just no more space.

And they cannot construct more lines

because much of the existing tracks are hemmed in by slums.

It's been estimated

that over 50% of the city's population live in slums -

more than seven million people.

With their plastic and bamboo hutments,

generations have grown up living beside the line.

To expand the network, these railside shanties -

for so long a part of the city's landscape -

will have to go.

Today's operation to remove slum dwellers from this section of line

is the result of months of preparation.

It involves railway police,

city police, municipal officials and contract labourers.

Legally, families who have lived in a slum for more than a decade

are entitled to be rehoused by the State Government.

CHILD WAILS

Faced with the destruction of their homes...

almost every slum dweller claims to be a long-term resident.

The slums have created a major bottleneck

in the expansion of the railways in Mumbai.

And the process of clearing them, rehousing the people

and building new lines will take another ten years.

At Central Station, the women's division of the RPF -

known as G77 - are planning a raid on the Ladies Special.

Dressed in plain clothes, they are on the lookout for

ticketless travellers and illegal hawkers.

The first victim of the raid is a young girl selling bangles.

Lavinga's been arrested.

At Central Station, she's formally charged.

She knows the procedure - she's been here many times before.

Special Constable Ananpurna has heard it all before.

Lavinga is to appear before the magistrate the next day.

As his 15th birthday approaches,

Shankar is taking a long hard look at his life.

Thanks to Balu and the railways,

he's survived in Thane for more than two years.

Most major stations in Mumbai and throughout India have their own railway courts.

They mainly deal with victimless crimes and minor misdemeanors.

The magistrate today in Court 36 is Prakash Rahule -

a human rights lawyer and a published poet.

The whole process takes about 15 minutes

and Lavinga has been fined 400 rupees.

For her it's just an overhead -

but more importantly she's also lost a day's business on the train.

Being a magistrate I have to be a magistrate.

I have to go by the evidence which comes before me.

And I have to deliver a judgement,

pronounce a judgement as by the record before me,

even though the poet is not happy with that,

I have to do that as a magistrate.

Balu's is one of life's natural survivors.

But the railways have been his life,

and today he's grateful for that.

For the less fortunate, who have fallen through the net,

there is just one option left -

charity.

Having survived on the railway for more then two years,

Shankar has decided to join Aasra, one of the many charities

who look after the city's orphaned and runaway kids.

It is not a bad life, but it is not a satisfactory life.

Not bad life.

It is...

I can say...thrilling job,

but up to a certain age, it is all right.

But after crossing that period, it is very horrible.

Now I am 54, all the bloody joints are loose.

So tomorrow morning, I have to go for duties,

bloody I am going to think from night,

I have to go for duty, but I have to go.

OP has already completed more than thirty years of duty.

And when he does retire, he'll lose his subsidised railway flat,

but he has no worries about the future.

Suppose if I retire today,

I should get not less than 8,000 rupees pension.

So 8,000 rupees is sufficient

for two persons, myself and my missus.

Money is no problem,

money is no problem, but I won't remain in Bombay.

That is final.

As soon as I retire, I take myself up from railways and I...

BELL RINGS

After retirement he'll receive his railway pension,

free rail passes and free medical care.

Since he'll lose his railway flat,

he's decided to move to the country, to his native place.

One stop from the end of the western suburban line, Lavinga

and her family are about to step onto the property ladder.

Amazingly after 12 years of hawking on the railway, she's saved

enough money to put the deposit on a new-build two bedroom flat.

It will be their first ever property and the start of a new life.

Railways actually is a microcosmic form of the country.

Indian Railways is something what our country is.

We're everywhere. We've followed all the tenets of our constitution.

There's no caste, no creed.

We treat everybody equal in this organisation and probably the working

atmosphere that we have created

shows what this country wants it to be socially.

In July 2006, a series of seven terrorist bombs exploded

on Mumbai's rush hour trains.

200 people were killed and 700 injured.

The attack brought all suburban trains to a complete standstill.

We knew that the loss of life which must have taken place

cannot be reverted,

but what we can probably do is to give a semblance of

normalcy to the town,

so that when the town functions normally

there would not be law and order problem.

We had announced that we will run almost all the services the next day.

So the schools were not closed, the offices were not closed,

the markets were kept open.

By 12 hours in the noon, and we were back 100% on the rail.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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