THE BLOATED #TRAIN

Even today people from Bihar, Odisha, UP, etc working in Gujarat often travel on top of trains – and buses – for want of space. We need many more inter-state passenger trains

Within Gujarat, people have to spend as many as 4-6 hours to travel 200 KMs to their villages due to bad connectivity

Hardly 5% people can avail of super-fast trains due to their high fares.

in everyday life you would be lucky if you get the ordinary train ticket for attending your sudden interview, duty travel, visit to a critically sick relative, or a simple family vacation. We need lots of more everyday trains, and other forms of affordable public transport.

So who is this #Bullet Train for?

How many will it serve? How often? And what percentage of these Bullet travelers will be ordinary Indians? [Ordinary includes the middle class, including me].

Then why all this hullabaloo? Indeed, why not vociferous protest at this gruesome misuse of public money for elitist pleasures?
At this aggrandizement of a miniscular population at the cost of the multitude?

And this doesn’t even count the suffering of the millions that will be displaced, dis-empowered and disturbed due to the laying of the tracks. As did the Expressways.

#Japan, I should like to think, first satisfied the demand for its normal train travel, and alternative public transport, before embarking upon speeding some of them up!

Think how easily people can be fooled and distracted. To their own detriment. Successfully.