Sadly, no Indian Railways porter — I almost wrote ‘coolie’, the word I grew up with, then absolutely neutral but now horribly politically incorrect — reads Business Standard. Otherwise, this column would have assured him that the demands and discourtesy that the authorities so desperately want to abolish before next year’s Commonwealth Games are by no means a uniquely Indian phenomenon.
A Ceylonese friend visiting Italy in the mid-’50s told me that the Venetian porter into whose palm he had placed a few liras to put his suitcase in the gondolier looked at the coins, flung them far out into the Grand Canal and let forth a volley of excited Italian of which my friend understood not a word. I could believe him after my own experience with an English porter in 1954.
The boat train had taken me and my luggage from Tilbury to St Pancras railway station where a family friend would meet me and put me on a later train to Manchester. Having arrived before him, I got hold of a surly porter and watched with dismay as he manhandled the five pieces of luggage with which I had sailed from Bombay. Each was kicked and pushed to the wagon’s open door and given a mighty heave so that it hurtled clattering on the platform and bumped and bounced before coming to rest. No Indian coolie ever treated luggage so roughly was my unspoken thought.
“How much?” I asked the porter after he had wheeled the stuff to the left luggage office. “Gents usually pay half a crown a piece” he replied. A half-crown was two shillings and sixpence. I handed over five half-crowns, 12 shillings and sixpence, knowing I was being robbed. It was more than half a pound, a substantial sum in those days. The real value was much more.
Our friend appeared then, took me to lunch nearby and brought me back to the station. He got another porter to collect my five trunks and suitcases from the left luggage office and load them on the Manchester train, paying just two-and-six (half a crown!) for the lot.
The moral is that porters will take what they can get away with.
The Northern Railway authorities might fret and fume but human nature and adat — practice, custom, usage, call it what you will — won’t change just because some foreigners are coming to town. On the contrary, porters will see the presence of all those players, officials, spectators and supporters from all over the Commonwealth as an opportunity to make hay while the sun shines. It’s human nature.
Things might have been different if railway officials had kept an eye on what goes on at stations all the year round. Porters might still wear the regulation red shirt but the arm band with the per piece rate is often missing. Even if it is there, the porter insists rates have been revised since then. What does a passenger do in the circumstances? Hoist his holdall and suitcase on his own shoulders and stride out? Or seek justice from a railway official? The official is usually absent. If present, he is involved in too many other things to bother with complainants. If exceptionally lucky, the latter might be shown a dirty and dog-eared complaints book that no one ever reads. Even if an official is found and gives the passenger a fair hearing, he advises a compromise. Being in a hurry to get home at the end of a journey, few passengers want to waste time in argument.
Yet, a survey by the Comptroller and Auditor General showed that 80 per cent of passengers feel that porters demand more than the prescribed rate. A large number (66 per cent) grumbles of being “unable to negotiate a reasonable rate with porters”.
Many solutions are being mooted. The most obvious is to flood stations with an abundance of porters. Another is to install pre-paid booths outside stations for departing passengers. Similarly, officials on board trains should issue pre-paid slips to passengers who need porter services on arrival. It’s also been suggested that like airports, railway stations should have ranks of trolleys for passengers to wheel away their own bags. Meanwhile, porters are to be instructed in duties and deportment.
The measures are unexceptionable. But why only now? The concern with the Commonwealth Games shows again that no one is at all bothered about the quality of service or the comfort and convenience of passengers. The obsession is only with foreigners.
