By DM Pariat
A few days ago, I had a dream. It was a dull cloudy day and I was standing on a railway platform waiting for a train. There was a distant whistle and after a short while, out of the swirling mist, a train appeared and pulled up at the station. It was a rather strange train for, after the passenger compartment behind the engine, the rest of the carriages were each named after a government department-Power, Education, Health, Water supply, Agriculture, Forest etc. What struck me though was the state of the carriages. They were dilapidated, rusty and had not seen any maintenance for a long time. Curious, I climbed up into the passenger carriage and saw it had quite a few passengers on board. On enquiring about the train I was told it was The Meghalaya Express heading, as one seemingly disgruntled person told me, probably for the ICU. The ICU? That seemed odd, and I asked why.
“Look at the state of the train,” a man told me. “We seem to be running around in circles, never reaching our destination” “Why, don’t you all know where you are going?” I asked. The passengers replied, “We all know where we want to go but these guys running the train don’t seem to have a clue.” An elderly gentleman mentioned that most of them had boarded the train in January 1972 with expectations of a great journey but, forty-two years later, were still nowhere near their destination. The train, they said, was run by a board consisting of the CM i.e. the Chair Man, and his elected members, but all these years they had only travelled aimlessly around the state as if they had no idea where they were going. In all that time there had been no maintenance and in fact, over the years, bit by bit, different parts of the train were ripped off for personal gain leaving what was now only a skeleton. “You should have seen this train in 1972,” said the old man. “It was well kept, clean and ran beautifully. The board members running it were well educated, came from good families and were not corrupt. It was the best run train in the whole country. In fact, we were the envy of everyone for having such an efficient train.” A younger chap chirped in, “But, yes, see what they have done to that beautiful train in all these years, you can see it for yourself.” The young man offered to show me the rest of the train and we stepped off and made our way to the carriage behind.
It had “Power” emblazoned on its side and that was the only thing that was impressive about it. It was in a terrible condition; most of the windows were broken and the ones that were not, had no glass. The door was hanging on for dear life held together by some electrical wires. The roof had big cracks, which the people inside had desperately tried to cover with an old tarpaulin. Inside, people were working by candle light as there was no electricity – up to nine hours of power cuts they told me. In one corner stood a brand new generator set, but that too was not working, grumbled one of the workers. The genset, which was a ‘run of the water’ type, had been bought at a price four times the actual cost, but was producing only a fraction of what it was supposed to. The only happy faces I saw in there were those of a couple of traders setting up shop and rubbing their hands in glee – their wares consisted of candles, torches, inverters, solar lanterns and other power-generating paraphernalia. It was stifling inside so we quickly got off and proceeded to the next carriage.
The ‘Education’ carriage was in as bad a state as the first one. People inside were busy, again working by candle light, with papers strewn all over the place. They were answer scripts and, looking at the haphazard way people were working, I thought to myself, ‘Boy, it will be ages before the students get their results.’ An almirah in the corner was filled with empty bottles, and on closer inspection, I saw they had once contained white correction fluid. Glancing at the officer’s table I saw a large unsigned indent for more bottles. In another corner teachers were staging a ‘dharna’ – no salaries for three months, they told me. Feeling disheartened, we made our way to the next carriage
This one was ‘Health’. Again the condition of the carriage was as bad as the others, and there was nothing remotely ‘healthy’ about it. The few doctors manning the place were surrounded by a horde of patients, young and old, and one could see they were overwhelmed. This was a rural PHC, a doctor told me, and they were struggling against the odds – most of the time they had no water, power, hardly any medicines, were short of staff, the roof was leaking, and it was only a matter of time before they would have to call it a day.
Shocked we hurriedly stepped off the train, and I decided not to explore any further as it only added to my disappointment and disgust. Then I noticed, further behind, a fleet of very well kept carriages with all the windows and doors in place, clean, freshly painted. Curious, I decided to have a look.
“How are these carriages in such good condition?” I asked. My young companion replied that these were owned by the Board members – the one in front belonged to the Chair Man and was recently renovated at a fabulous cost. The others had been refurbished as soon as the new occupants had moved in after the elections in 2013. Board members were elected every five years, he explained. I was struck by the contrast between these and the other carriages meant for the public. The young man told me that in recent years people had given the train another name and that was ‘The Gravy Train.’ ‘Gravy train?’ I exclaimed. “But there is almost nothing left except the skeleton,” I said. “Aah,” said the young man, “But these board members are expert cooks, they will make soup out of those bones.”
A loud clap of thunder woke me up and was I glad it was only a dream. But another clap of thunder brought me down to earth, and I realized that, like it or not, I was also a passenger on The Meghalaya Express and that was when the real nightmare started.
(The author is a former tea planter)
(Due to oversight, the edit page of Monday May 11 was repeated on May 12. We deeply regret this error)
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