Lessons to be learnt from the Great Indian Train Robbery
Dear fellow Indians, let’s grow up and stop stealing public property. Let’s admit it. To steal seems to be in our blood. On October 2, we celebrated the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, whose 11 great pledges to follow in life included Asteya, or non-stealing. In his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi has a chapter — Stealing & Atonement — dedicated to how he resolved never to steal. No sooner had we celebrated Gandhi’s birth anniversary with solemn pledges to rededicate ourselves to the values espoused by the great leader, than the news of one of our shameful deeds came like a slap in the face.
We stole hand towels, bedsheets, pillows and pillow covers, blankets, toilet mugs, water taps, and flush pipes worth 40 billion rupees from longdistance trains over the last three fiscal. Indian media laughed it off as the case of a few people taking the adage — Railways aap ki sampatti hain
(Railways is your property) — literally.
A few people? Are you kidding? This Great Train Robbery is reflective of our collective consciousness. Over the years — nearly three-fourth of a century — various governments instilled the feeling that India is an extension of the Darwinian philosophy, Survival of the Fittest. Ministers, parliamentarians — 85 per cent of who are multi-millionaires — and officials plundered public wealth. So did the public. For Indians, corruption and theft are two components inadvertently left out of the Five Classical Elements. Knowledge of the two additional elements is an essential pre-requisite for living in India because they form the world we live in and the structure of our consciousness.
As a child, I have indulged in petty thefts. We stole cashew nuts from our neighbour’s property to buy candy during break time. I was one of the ruffians who ransacked mango estates on the way back from school. When denied an income certificate unreasonably, I went to the village officer with five applications from my neighbourhood and got them signed with the power of 50 rupees. My father was furious and said, “Never do that.” I never did, till I was lured to nicking unused toiletries and condiments from a couple of European hotels. Then I resolved not to, like Gandhi did to his ailing father, whose tear drops of love cleansed his heart and washed his sin away.
In the last fiscal alone, 195,000 towels, 81,736 bed sheets, 55,573 pillow covers and 7,043 blankets were stolen from Indian trains. In addition, travellers pick 200 toilet mugs, around 1,000 taps and 300 flush pipes every year. Between April to September 2018 alone, 79,350 hand towels, 27,545 bed sheets, 21,050 pillow covers, 2,150 pillows and 2,065 blankets were stolen, according to reports quoting the Indian Railways.
It’s an irony that when the Railways is busy rolling out world class facilities, we are resolute that we don’t really deserve anything good! Trains are now equipped with facilities such as sensor-driven taps and CCTV cameras but they don’t even last the maiden trip. Earlier this year, passengers of the country’s first high-speed semi-luxury train, Tejas Express, took away headphones, damaged LCD screens, soiled the toilets and littered the entire train on its maiden run. Most of the train’s Jaguar fittings were stolen and had to be replaced with cheaper ones.
Recently, the Mumbai-Manmad Panchavati Express that was upgraded with Linke Hofmann Busch coaches with better facilities was left vandalised with tray tables and upholstery damaged, armrests dislodged, curtains torn, and taps, trash cans, mirrors and faucets stolen.
Since patriotism is an unparliamentary word in the vocabulary of left liberals, I beg their pardon to say stealing and vanadalising public property are not only a criminal activity but also an unpatriotic act. Having lived in different parts of the world, I have seldom seen people savaging the comfort they are offered at the cost of their own tax money. Having hobnobbed with political leaders as a student activist, I am aware that the first instruction that goes out to party cadres during any protest would be to destroy as much public property as possible.
India needs to have strict legislation holding political parties accountable for their cadres destroying public property. Parties should also evolve a model code of conduct for their cadres and educate them about the need to respect the rights of the ordinary citizen.
Some Netizens argue that the Representation of the People Act, 1951, should have a clause requiring political parties to undertake not to disrupt normal life and damage public property, violation of which should invite deregistration of the party concerned.
I have a cousin who in his youth used to climb over a transformer and remove power fuses, plunging a vast area into darkness during prime television time. I also had a few friends who enjoyed knocking off street lights with their catapults. To mould future generations of responsible citizens, we need to catch them young. Schools must have a moral curriculum that inculcates a true sense of belonging so that tomorrow’s youth would take the entire nation as meri sampatti.
Patriotism is not something that we wear on our sleeve, or hang from our neck. It’s not the orchestrated lynching of some beef eaters. It’s the summation of our random kind acts and little good deeds. The 40 billion rupees we stole from the railways could have built houses for at least 100,000 homeless in the country. It could have ensured tertiary education of 100,000 poor children. The Great Train Robbery only underlines Gandhi’s words that much of the distressing poverty in this world has risen out of the breaches of the principle of non-stealing.
India’s enemy number 1 is not any country outside its borders, but its own rotten, selfish and venomous mindset. Let’s try and grow up.
India needs to have strict legislation holding political parties accountable for their cadres destroying public property.