Why resumption of Mumbai local trains marks return to normal for city, not just its commute

On 1 February, the Maharashtra government allowed the general population to board Mumbai's local trains, with some caps.

Representative picture of commuters, many of them workers, at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminal in Mumbai | ANI

Mumbai: Over the past few months, while Mumbai continued to be under lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the civic administration eased up several curbs to help the city limp back to normalcy.

However, it was only at the beginning of this week when it felt like the city that never sleeps was truly about to return to its crazed bustling fast-paced normal self.

This was when the Maharashtra government allowed the general population to board local trains from 1 February, though with time restrictions, after a 10-month gap.

Mumbai stands on the foundation of its suburban railway network, which cripples the city if it crumbles for even a couple of hours. When it runs smoothly, people scamper from one point to another covering large distances in a reasonably short time at an affordable cost, albeit under congested, inhuman conditions.

But, for Mumbai, the local train system is not just a mass transportation system. It is the spine of an entire economy revolving around it, an integral part of the city’s social fabric, and a place where the best and the worst of Mumbai is on display.

“The local trains system has created community networks that psychologically bind the city. This is peculiar to Mumbai. Commuting in Mumbai is hard and trains are regularly overcrowded. But, there is a richness in the human interactions in the trains that helps people get through the drudgery. People were missing this aspect during the Covid lockdown,” said Sulakshana Mahajan, an urban planner.

While Mumbai’s first train ran in 1853, the phenomenon of the suburban railway system’s community networks is a part of the city’s modern history, Mahajan said.

“It is only over the last 30-40 years, as the city spilled over to its satellite towns such as Thane, Dombivli, Vasai and Virar, and people started spending a lot of time in transit, that these local train community networks grew,” she added.

The deadly, overcrowded suburban railway network

Mumbai has a suburban railway network of 459 km on which about 3,000 trains run daily to ferry roughly 75 lakh passengers. Since 1952, the passenger load has grown eight times, but the train capacity has increased only three times.

As a result, coaches are packed to 2.6 times their capacity on average. People rushing to catch the train, jostling to get in and out of the coaches, and almost hanging outside from the footboard is a common sight.

About eight people die on the railway network every day either due to falling off trains or while crossing railway tracks.

This is why the Uddhav Thackeray-led government was cautious in opening train travel for the general public, as social distancing is practically impossible.

Local train operations were suspended in March last year in an attempt to curb the spread of Covid in the city. The state government gave permission for trains to restart in June last year, but only for employees engaged in essential services. The list was gradually expanded over the next few months to include bank staff, government employees and so on.

The state government eventually opened local trains for the general population from 1 February, but imposed time restrictions to limit crowding.

Commuters not belonging to any of the essential services categories are now allowed to board local trains, but only during off peak hours before 7 am, between noon and 4 pm, and then after 9 pm. Passenger associations are pushing the state government to relax these caps.

Even so, over 30 lakh people have been taking the local trains every day since 1 February.

The ‘bhajan mandalis,’ casinos, and agony aunts

Scenes of pushing, shoving, and at times slapping and even pulling hair are not uncommon as commuters squeeze themselves into crowded Mumbai locals. Then, there are tiffs over who gets to cram into the “fourth seat” on a three-seater bench or why a fellow passenger has an unusually big bag strapped to his or her back, taking up two inches of valuable space.

But, once the rumblings settle, a few other scenes unfold that are also commonplace on this weary suburban railway system. People enquire about each others’ health, share their food and water, pass boxes of sweets to celebrate their child’s examination result and so on.

Rajitha Satish, a 34-year-old academician, who used to travel daily from Dombivli to Churchgate before the lockdown has a group of “train friends” — all people who she did not know earlier and met on the train.

“Throughout the long journey, we share what is happening in our lives. We talk about our children, our husbands. We all listen to each other and there is no judgement,” Rajitha said.

“In the morning rush, you barely have the time for breakfast. But, then in the train, someone passes around a tiffin box of something tasty that they made earlier in the day and even that feels like a delicacy.”

Rajitha and her friends have kept in touch throughout the lockdown through a WhatsApp group, wishing each other on their birthdays and enquiring about their well-being from time to time.

“All of them still have their jobs though some have faced pay cuts. I miss our train sessions and interacting with them in person,” Rajitha said.

Thirty-four-year-old Gautam Mengle, journalist and author, has been a part of several such train friend circles. For about a year and a half when he was in college, Mengle had a group of such friends from the 7 am local train that he would catch from Dombivli to Vidyavihar. “I was the youngest of them. But, the members of this group used to go for picnics together, invited each other for weddings in the family and so on.”

A few years later, Mengle jumped into the luggage compartment in his haste to catch the last train home, and found himself an eclectic group of friends — a singer in an orchestra bar, a waiter, and a roadside stall owner, among a few others, with whom he enjoyed singing and exchanging shayaris.

“They were all good people. One person would stand at the door and announce the names of stations so that none of us missed our stop,” Mengle said. He added, in another train, there used to be a group of people playing cards and were referred to as “the casino”.

“Trains are always crowded, but we try to make that experience too a sweet one for us,” Mengle said.

The local train system has also given birth to nearly 200 “bhajan mandalis” — groups of commuters who meet on the train every day and sing devotional songs with cymbals.

On festive days such as Diwali or Gudi Padwa, regular commuters decorate the compartment in which they spend over an hour of their lives each day.

The local train economy

In the 10 months that the local trains were gone from the city’s popular culture, there were many who suffered monetary losses too.

The railway network supports a string of businesses — the hawkers, though illegal, who hop on the trains selling an assortment of things; Mumbai’s famous dabbawalas who use the local train network to deliver hot lunch boxes from homes to offices; and newspaper vendors, among others.

Mahajan said, “You can see entrepreneurship, and resourcefulness on local trains.”

She recounted a story of how two girls selling clips, hair bands and pins on local trains were swapping information about where they buy their wares from. “One of them shared how someone would tip her off every time a container from China carrying these items lands at the port. She would buy these items at cost price.”

Over the last 10 months, the train hawkers, many of whom were migrants, have vanished from railway stations because of insipid business and stringent guidelines over who can board the local trains.

The dabbawalas too faced massive losses during the lockdown due to the suspension of trains for the general population.

Anant Talekar, a dabbawala, said, “Initially, we were not in the category of people allowed to board trains when they started in June. But, even after the state government permitted a certain number of dabbawalas to board the trains, it was pointless. The general population wasn’t allowed on trains. People are still working from home, so there are hardly any tiffins to deliver.”

Mumbai has about 5,000 dabbawalas who until the lockdown used to ferry close to two lakh tiffins from people’s homes to their offices using the local train network.

An editor of a Marathi language newspaper, which sells more from the stands than by subscription, said sales were negligible due to the lack of local trains for the public at large.

Hari Pawar, who heads the Brihanmumbai Newspaper Vendors Association, said, “A large number of Mumbai’s newspaper stalls are on either side of Mumbai’s railway stations because there are more footfalls. These stalls greatly suffered.”

He added, “Even now, trains have started for all, but there hasn’t been any significant improvement. We have requested authorities to relax time restrictions for the general population so that more people can travel and our newspaper vendors will have more footfalls.”