Abhorrence

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• Indeed, to many Western observers, images of men and women crammed into overcrowded cars serve as a metaphor for modern India.
• Where does this enduring image in the West of Indian railways – and of India – come from?

A carrier of freight, not people

• In the pre-pandemic 2018-19 financial year, 7.7 billion passenger journeys in India.
• In comparison, even after a dramatic post-pandemic increase, airline passenger traffic was 123.2 million in 2022.
• Yet, when first planned in the 1840s, India’s railways were intended to primarily transport freight and livestock, not people.
• The trope interlocked with colonial thinking that railways would foster greater industrialization which in turn would further a capitalist economy.

Relegated to cheap seats

• However, British capitalists and shareholders in these private ventures did not have to fear for their profits, which were underwritten by the Indian taxpayer.
• The colonial government of India guaranteed these companies a 5% annual return on their investment whether or not the venture turned a profit.
• By 1900, annual passenger figures stood at 175 million and then almost trebled to 520 million by 1919-20.
• By the time of the partition of India in 1947 it had risen to more than 1 billion passenger journeys annually.

A tool for ‘self-composure’

• The generally British railway managers seemed disinclined to remedy systematic overcrowding, which included transporting passengers in wagons meant for livestock.
• Rather, they insisted that such overcrowding was caused by the peculiar habits and inclinations of Indian passengers: their alleged abhorrence of empty carriages and their inclination to follow one another “like sheep” into crowded carriages.
• These attributes were soon rendered into a more public narrative, especially among Western mindsets.

A continuing metaphor

• More than a century later, this depiction endures, though, ironically, it now serves as a foil to understanding contemporary India.
• As the coverage of Odisha accident reminds us, it continues to be a metaphor in the West for evaluating contemporary India.