When Indian Railways announced in early March that linen service would be resumed ‘immediately’ in air-conditioned coaches in all trains, it sent a wave of relief to all passengers – relief that they did not have to lug around a pillow, sheets and possibly blankets for their train journeys. However, it did not take too long for the dream to turn into a nightmare for the passengers and the Railways. The latter had grossly underestimated its capabilities of taking such a monumental decision and implementing it across the board in less than a week or so. Were the zones/divisions ready with stocks? Were the old stocks reusable after a wash or some sort of rehab? Were there supply chains established to procure new stocks at short notice?
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The answer is a big NO as things turned out. Irate passengers started bombarding Twitter handles of Railway zones and divisions asking if trains had resumed linen services. The handles were overwhelmed with complaints / requests / enquiries and the stock reply was ‘The linen service is being progressively resumed. Please check with your local railway to see if service is resumed in your train.’ In addition, there were arguments between AC staff, TTEs, and passengers on board who were relying on the notification. The officers were hard pressed to convince passengers, but as is always the outcome, babudom always wins – passengers suffer.
Finally, it dawned on some sane soul that things cannot drift and IR set about compiling a list of trains that resumed linen service and published the list. The URL to this list (as of now, you need to CLICK HERE to see if the train has linen supply)
It is also surprising at the approach zones are taking in resumption – some not-so-important trains are providing linen to their passengers; some very prestigious trains are not. Some zones are handling this in a novel manner – one zone went to the extent of releasing a notification that linen would be resumed in multiple phases. The first phase saw resumption in a grand number of one pair; the second phase was also just two or three pairs, and the railways are slowly ramping up the number of trains. All premium trains have now been covered (pun unintended) and the superfast trains would soon be as well.
That said, it is still not very clear when IR will ensure that linen is supplied across all trains in the air-conditioned coaches. We are pretty sure no one in the hierarchy has a timeline – things are in such a drift.
Pics by Ashwin Gandhi and Indian Railways