Title - 10 lakh suburban commuters get the shunt from railways

CHENNAI: More than 10 lakh people use suburban trains in the city every day but Southern Railway does not appear to care about whether they have basic facilities or the trains run on time.Many stations in the city do not have drinking water or proper toilets and trains are usually not cleaned. But Southern Railway's Chennai division has not taken any steps to obtain feedback from commuters. Southern Railway's page on Facebook carries this warning: "This page should not be used as a complaint redressal mechanism." The message sums up its approach to feedback. Suburban and non-express trains are revenue generators, but the ticket-purchasing public do not have say in service quality unlike those who use similar utilities like Mumbai Rail Vikas Corporation, which proactively gathers data from passengers. Southern Railway follows an archaic method of gathering inputs from the travelling public: Through rail users' consultative committees at divisional and zonal levels. These committees, which have various representatives, including commuters who are either nominated or elected, meet more as routine and not for serious business. Suburban rail users consultative committees hardly ever hold meetings.

"Complaints presented in the meetings are never resolved," said S Mohanram, a member of divisional rail users' consultative committee. "Railways has asked members of zonal rail users' consultative committees to raise only two points. There are a hundred things to talk about. How do you identify just two issues?"

Most members only discuss problems that affect them personally and not about common problems that commuters face. "Southern Railway has not yet addressed suggestions and complaints discussed more than nine months ago. Officials agree that the suburban train network is not in good shape, but for some reason do not do anything about the issue," Mohanram said.

"Trains and stations are dirty, approach roads to stations are often encroached upon by vendors and people illegally set up parking lots outside," said P Loganathan, a regular commuter. "Things have gone from bad to worse over the past five years."

"We earlier had plans to collect feedback from commuters but they did not take off. Chennai division is too bogged down with operating long distance trains on time from two of its major stations at Egmore and Central. Everything else is put on the back burner," said a senior railways officer.

The railway ministry announced two years ago that it intended to hive off suburban operations so an autonomous body could operate the network, but it has not taken steps to implement the proposal.