The regular delays

Reached Hyderabad yesterday after a long and a highly delayed journey. Boarded the train from Delhi and with massive fog all over the plains, the train was on time for the first hour or so but then what happened god knows, it got delayed and delayed time and again. The train delay problem is a major issue during winters, especially in the plains where fog causes havoc and leads to disruption of the rail system.

Well, coming back to my train journey, the train had around nine stoppages in total but as i had to get down in between, the stations for me were reduced to seven, i guess. But it looked as if the train was stopping at actually every station that was coming in its way. And the winter famous "fog" excuse could not be given because the train got more delayed in the regions where fog is nowhere to be seen. It seemed that as the journey was progressing the train was getting more and more lazier! Everytime i asked the attendant that how much the delay was, i got the same answer, " two and a half hours". But in the night the lag had increased to three hours and till i got down at my destination, the train was late by four hours and the reasons are known best to the drivers.

What the funny part of it is that regarding any delays we people think of only one answer. Ask anyone and the answer will be the same, even if its not correct all the time! The answer would be, "train is late because it might not have got the signal to go ahead or some high priority train might be ahead of it". The situation has been the same for years and will remain as it is, for years. We satisfy ourselves by giving the same excuse time and again but its not the passengers' fault because  the so-called excuse is a legitimate one! Surprising, isn't it? Yes our train management system is inefficient to handle so many trains which leads to snags and long delays which could have been avoided if there would have been a better system to monitor. Even if a train is running on time it still unnecessarily gets delayed.

 I fail to understand why does the Indian Railway fail to develop a better and a fast system for train management. Hardly a train is on time as per its schedule, even the rajdhanis get delayed majority of times. It is a monotonous scenario where trains in India getting delayed whereas it is a surprising scenario where trains reach on time. But why is it so? why doesn't the govt and the rail officials look into this "delay" issue? why is it that the people take granted that their train won't reach on time? Have the people lost faith in the most massively spread inter-connectivity network of the country? And maybe the answer to it is a yes!

The country needs a more robust system which will manage the trains across the country more efficiently. Such a system is required which nullifies the delays in the non-fog regions and reduces the lag in the fog regions. Its upto the rail officials now to look into this matter and find the alternatives because it seems that they are finding it hard to manage such a mammoth rail network. The faith in the Indian Railways needs to be restored at the earliest. The snags must be minimised because the more of it happens the more peoples idea about the railways would change and that change would be better for both the people and the Indian Railways.