New Delhi Railway Station
As one of the largest railway stations in all of India, the New Delhi Railway Station is the sort of attraction that visitors are bound to see as some point or another, provided that they do enough moving about. The station runs over three hundred trains a day to destinations throughout the entire country, so travelers wanting to go just about anywhere, especially to destinations in the northern and eastern parts of the country, can get there from here.
In addition, busses and taxis exist for travel to local sites and establishments, making it not just an ideal point of departure, but arrival as well. Those with an interest in the history of the railroad should take note that the New Delhi Railway Station features the largest route interlock system in the world. Visitors waiting for connecting trains can even take a short walk south to visit the famous Connaught Place if they’re so inclined.
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
Friday, September 19, 2008
How to tell if you're Indian
If you're Indian...
* Freedom of speech generally exists, but is not guaranteed.
* The main characters of popular culture are gods of Hindu mythology. Depending on your demographic, you may also be familiar with movie stars such as Amitabh Bacchan, Rajesh Khanna, Madhuri Dixit, Hrithik Roshan, Rajanikanth, Mohanlal or any of many others.
* You know nothing of baseball, basketball or American football. You might play soccer, cricket and field hockey (or variants of them), in addition to domestic games such as kabaddi.
* Vacations usually consist of visiting relations (American-style "getaway" vacations are unheard of). There is no standard length of vacation time; it depends on one's livelihood.
* You almost certainly believe in God; for most Indians good deeds result in either heaven or promotion-type rebirth and bad deeds result in hell or demotion-type rebirth.
* McDonald's or KFC are for occasional outings for upper-middle-class folk in the big cities.
* You probably do not own either a telephone or a TV. The masses do not have bathrooms and do their thing in the open air. They have dirt floors. They eat sitting cross-legged on the floor.
You mean it's not all tandoori chicken?
* You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food. In fact it is very possible you are a strict vegetarian. If you do eat meat it is probably either mutton, chicken or fish. It is expensive and not something you can afford to indulge in everyday. Many people can only afford two meals a day anyway.
* It seems natural to you that the telephone system and railroads are either run by the government or by government enterprises; though things are changing towards more privatization. The train system is the only mode of long distance transport for over 95% of people.
* You find a multiple-party system natural. You expect politicians of all parties to be corrupt and inefficient. Socialism used to be taken seriously till around 1985.
* Instead of "black" and "white" there are thousands of castes forming an elaborate system which governs the social order.
* You think most problems could be solved if only people would be decent.
* You have a court system which is relatively clean and just, but immensely slow. Moreover the illiteracy and poverty of most people and the corruption of administrative and law-enforcement officials make justice-for-all a distant dream.
* You'd respect someone who speaks English, since it is a mark of the affluent classes. Other European languages are largely unknown. There is a great deal of glamor associated with Sanskrit and Persian; they are traditionally the languages of the learned and the well-read.
* School is nominally free or very cheap; but still beyond the range of many people. Infrastructure is totally inadequate and it is often an economic necessity for children to assist parents with earning money. Paradoxically, the best college education is highly subsidized.
How big would a lakh of those seeds be?
* Mustard seeds are bought whole. Shaving cream comes from solid round tablets. Milk comes in the milkman's aluminum cans and is decanted into your container at your doorstep, or at the dairy.
* The date comes first: 15/8/1947. (And you know what happened on that date.)
* The decimal point is a dot. Certainly not a comma.
* A billion is a thousand times a million. But you would be more likely to talk in lakhs (a hundred thousand) or crores (10 million).
* World War II is not terribly important. India's struggle for independence is a more passionate memory.
* You always expect marriages to be arranged by third parties. Getting married by a judge is not something you want to do; you might resort to it if you are eloping. Most marriages are religious ceremonies. All except Muslims are required to be monogamous; Muslims are allowed upto four wives if they desire it.
* For men to have sex with other men is almost totally unheard of. There is a very small number of genuine homosexuals in the big cities. On the other hand, there is a complete absence of American style homophobia in Indian society; it is very common for men to express affection by embracing each other.
* Once you're introduced to someone, you will call him/her by name only if the person is a peer, subordinate or junior. Anyone who is senior or higher in the socio-economic ladder must be addressed with great respect.
No Monicas here
* If you're a woman, you are very modest with your dress. In some Hindu and Muslim families you may feel pressured to avoid visual contact with unrelated men altogether.
* A hotel room has a private bath.
* You do not watch any foreign films.
* You never ever expect to be able to transact business, or deal with the government, without paying bribes.
* The nature of Indian conservatism being what it is, no Indian politican has ever cheated on his wife.
* Credit cards are unknown except in big and expensive stores in the big cities.
* A private sector company can fire just about anybody. For the goverment or for a goverment enterprise it is quite impossible to fire anybody.
* You do not eat bacon.
* There is no Labor Day.
Name that celeb
* Western pop culture icons are unknown to you unless you are an urban upper middle class youth. You would very likely know the following Indian figures, however:
o Sports: Cricket reigns supreme as the Indian spectator sport of choice. Some of the more popular players are Sunil Gawaskar, Kapil Dev, Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar.
o TV shows: a music game show called Antakshari and its anchor Annu Kapoor are extremely popular. There is a host of popular serials too numerous to name ranging from soap operas to comedy.
o Musicians: Classical: Bhimsen Joshi, Zakir Hussain, M. S. Subbulakshmi. Folk: Ila Arun, Shubha Mudgal. Movie soundtrack music (very popular in India): Annu Malik, A. R. Rehman.
* Good medical treatment is a luxury for the upper middle class. For the majority, it is very possible to die of cholera or other Third World diseases. You do expect very strong measures to be taken to save very ill babies or people in their eighties, but you know that such measures are in vain. You think dying at 65 would give you a long life.
* If you are upper middle class you went over Indian and world history in school; and the ignorance of college educated Americans amazes you.
* You expect the military to fight wars, not get involved in politics.
We got rid of the Brits too
* Your country was colonized by the British till fifty years ago.
* There is a lack of choices for almost anything you buy, but this never even strikes you until you visit the US.
* For the most part you measure things in metres, kilograms, and litres. Feet and inches are used almost exclusively for describing the height of people or small objects. Indian measures are still used in some contexts; e.g. a unit of weight called tola is widely used by goldsmiths.
* You are probably a farmer (or farmhand).
* Comics basically come in two varieties: newspaper comics and magazines; the latter either feature superheroes or Archie etc.
* The people who appear on the most popular talk shows are mostly entertainers, politicians, or rather strange individuals. Certainly not, say, authors.
* You drive on the left side of the road. Traffic lights exist only in the big cities. If you're a pedestrian you watch out for your own safety.
* Cars are a luxury of the rich.
* The police are typically not armed, unless they are guarding VVIPs, in which case they might tote submachine guns.
Girl, have a twinkie!
* If a woman is plumper than the average, it improves her looks. (i.e. what a person considers 'ideal' is likely to be plumper than the American ideal).
* The midday and evening meal are equally light.
* The ethnicity people most often make jokes about are the Sikhs (colloquially referred to as Sardars).
* Sikhs are widely considered to be dumb and good-natured; Biharis, loutish; Gujaratis, money-minded; Bengalis, impractical and talkative; Delhiites, rude and loutish. (Unless of course you belong to one of these groups.)
* There's parts of the city you definitely want to avoid at night.
* You feel that your kind of people aren't being listened to enough in New Delhi.
* You expect both inflation and unemployment to be very high (say, over 15%) at the same time.
Meet the parents
* You care very deeply what family someone comes from and what their caste is.
* When a couple dies, there are different ways to handle the estate: (1) it passes on to the eldest son, (2) it is divided equally between the male progeny, or (3) it is divided equally among all their children.
* Opera and ballet are unknown. Street plays or shows, singing and dancing are very popular, especially in the countryside. Many of these take place at fairs or festivals.
* Christmas is in the winter. If you're Christian, you spend it with your family, light up your house and go to church.
* You are used to not having a state church and the possibility of such a thing has never even occurred to you.
* You'd be hard pressed to name the capitals or the leaders of all the nations of Europe.
* You've never left a message at the beep.
* Taxis are generally operated by ordinary people; they only exist in the big cities.
* Welfare, unemployment payments, social security, and Medicare are unheard of.
* If you want to be a doctor, you need to get a bachelor's first.
* There are some lawyers; they do not particularly make a lot of money.
Space and time
* If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're an hour late.
* If you're talking to someone, you do not get at all uncomfortable if they approach closely.
* You expect to bargain for everything. When you offer a price, you aren't so much probing the seller's minimum, as signalling how much you really want the item.
* Even once you're past college, you might often simply show up at someone's place. People may invite each other but don't have to.
* When you negotiate, you may play convoluted games to get what you want. Also, in social situations, it is sometimes considered improper to be too direct.
* If you have a business appointment or interview with someone, you expect to have that person to yourself, but the business may take any amount of time depending on context.
* Freedom of speech generally exists, but is not guaranteed.
* The main characters of popular culture are gods of Hindu mythology. Depending on your demographic, you may also be familiar with movie stars such as Amitabh Bacchan, Rajesh Khanna, Madhuri Dixit, Hrithik Roshan, Rajanikanth, Mohanlal or any of many others.
* You know nothing of baseball, basketball or American football. You might play soccer, cricket and field hockey (or variants of them), in addition to domestic games such as kabaddi.
* Vacations usually consist of visiting relations (American-style "getaway" vacations are unheard of). There is no standard length of vacation time; it depends on one's livelihood.
* You almost certainly believe in God; for most Indians good deeds result in either heaven or promotion-type rebirth and bad deeds result in hell or demotion-type rebirth.
* McDonald's or KFC are for occasional outings for upper-middle-class folk in the big cities.
* You probably do not own either a telephone or a TV. The masses do not have bathrooms and do their thing in the open air. They have dirt floors. They eat sitting cross-legged on the floor.
You mean it's not all tandoori chicken?
* You don't consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food. In fact it is very possible you are a strict vegetarian. If you do eat meat it is probably either mutton, chicken or fish. It is expensive and not something you can afford to indulge in everyday. Many people can only afford two meals a day anyway.
* It seems natural to you that the telephone system and railroads are either run by the government or by government enterprises; though things are changing towards more privatization. The train system is the only mode of long distance transport for over 95% of people.
* You find a multiple-party system natural. You expect politicians of all parties to be corrupt and inefficient. Socialism used to be taken seriously till around 1985.
* Instead of "black" and "white" there are thousands of castes forming an elaborate system which governs the social order.
* You think most problems could be solved if only people would be decent.
* You have a court system which is relatively clean and just, but immensely slow. Moreover the illiteracy and poverty of most people and the corruption of administrative and law-enforcement officials make justice-for-all a distant dream.
* You'd respect someone who speaks English, since it is a mark of the affluent classes. Other European languages are largely unknown. There is a great deal of glamor associated with Sanskrit and Persian; they are traditionally the languages of the learned and the well-read.
* School is nominally free or very cheap; but still beyond the range of many people. Infrastructure is totally inadequate and it is often an economic necessity for children to assist parents with earning money. Paradoxically, the best college education is highly subsidized.
How big would a lakh of those seeds be?
* Mustard seeds are bought whole. Shaving cream comes from solid round tablets. Milk comes in the milkman's aluminum cans and is decanted into your container at your doorstep, or at the dairy.
* The date comes first: 15/8/1947. (And you know what happened on that date.)
* The decimal point is a dot. Certainly not a comma.
* A billion is a thousand times a million. But you would be more likely to talk in lakhs (a hundred thousand) or crores (10 million).
* World War II is not terribly important. India's struggle for independence is a more passionate memory.
* You always expect marriages to be arranged by third parties. Getting married by a judge is not something you want to do; you might resort to it if you are eloping. Most marriages are religious ceremonies. All except Muslims are required to be monogamous; Muslims are allowed upto four wives if they desire it.
* For men to have sex with other men is almost totally unheard of. There is a very small number of genuine homosexuals in the big cities. On the other hand, there is a complete absence of American style homophobia in Indian society; it is very common for men to express affection by embracing each other.
* Once you're introduced to someone, you will call him/her by name only if the person is a peer, subordinate or junior. Anyone who is senior or higher in the socio-economic ladder must be addressed with great respect.
No Monicas here
* If you're a woman, you are very modest with your dress. In some Hindu and Muslim families you may feel pressured to avoid visual contact with unrelated men altogether.
* A hotel room has a private bath.
* You do not watch any foreign films.
* You never ever expect to be able to transact business, or deal with the government, without paying bribes.
* The nature of Indian conservatism being what it is, no Indian politican has ever cheated on his wife.
* Credit cards are unknown except in big and expensive stores in the big cities.
* A private sector company can fire just about anybody. For the goverment or for a goverment enterprise it is quite impossible to fire anybody.
* You do not eat bacon.
* There is no Labor Day.
Name that celeb
* Western pop culture icons are unknown to you unless you are an urban upper middle class youth. You would very likely know the following Indian figures, however:
o Sports: Cricket reigns supreme as the Indian spectator sport of choice. Some of the more popular players are Sunil Gawaskar, Kapil Dev, Azharuddin and Sachin Tendulkar.
o TV shows: a music game show called Antakshari and its anchor Annu Kapoor are extremely popular. There is a host of popular serials too numerous to name ranging from soap operas to comedy.
o Musicians: Classical: Bhimsen Joshi, Zakir Hussain, M. S. Subbulakshmi. Folk: Ila Arun, Shubha Mudgal. Movie soundtrack music (very popular in India): Annu Malik, A. R. Rehman.
* Good medical treatment is a luxury for the upper middle class. For the majority, it is very possible to die of cholera or other Third World diseases. You do expect very strong measures to be taken to save very ill babies or people in their eighties, but you know that such measures are in vain. You think dying at 65 would give you a long life.
* If you are upper middle class you went over Indian and world history in school; and the ignorance of college educated Americans amazes you.
* You expect the military to fight wars, not get involved in politics.
We got rid of the Brits too
* Your country was colonized by the British till fifty years ago.
* There is a lack of choices for almost anything you buy, but this never even strikes you until you visit the US.
* For the most part you measure things in metres, kilograms, and litres. Feet and inches are used almost exclusively for describing the height of people or small objects. Indian measures are still used in some contexts; e.g. a unit of weight called tola is widely used by goldsmiths.
* You are probably a farmer (or farmhand).
* Comics basically come in two varieties: newspaper comics and magazines; the latter either feature superheroes or Archie etc.
* The people who appear on the most popular talk shows are mostly entertainers, politicians, or rather strange individuals. Certainly not, say, authors.
* You drive on the left side of the road. Traffic lights exist only in the big cities. If you're a pedestrian you watch out for your own safety.
* Cars are a luxury of the rich.
* The police are typically not armed, unless they are guarding VVIPs, in which case they might tote submachine guns.
Girl, have a twinkie!
* If a woman is plumper than the average, it improves her looks. (i.e. what a person considers 'ideal' is likely to be plumper than the American ideal).
* The midday and evening meal are equally light.
* The ethnicity people most often make jokes about are the Sikhs (colloquially referred to as Sardars).
* Sikhs are widely considered to be dumb and good-natured; Biharis, loutish; Gujaratis, money-minded; Bengalis, impractical and talkative; Delhiites, rude and loutish. (Unless of course you belong to one of these groups.)
* There's parts of the city you definitely want to avoid at night.
* You feel that your kind of people aren't being listened to enough in New Delhi.
* You expect both inflation and unemployment to be very high (say, over 15%) at the same time.
Meet the parents
* You care very deeply what family someone comes from and what their caste is.
* When a couple dies, there are different ways to handle the estate: (1) it passes on to the eldest son, (2) it is divided equally between the male progeny, or (3) it is divided equally among all their children.
* Opera and ballet are unknown. Street plays or shows, singing and dancing are very popular, especially in the countryside. Many of these take place at fairs or festivals.
* Christmas is in the winter. If you're Christian, you spend it with your family, light up your house and go to church.
* You are used to not having a state church and the possibility of such a thing has never even occurred to you.
* You'd be hard pressed to name the capitals or the leaders of all the nations of Europe.
* You've never left a message at the beep.
* Taxis are generally operated by ordinary people; they only exist in the big cities.
* Welfare, unemployment payments, social security, and Medicare are unheard of.
* If you want to be a doctor, you need to get a bachelor's first.
* There are some lawyers; they do not particularly make a lot of money.
Space and time
* If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you're an hour late.
* If you're talking to someone, you do not get at all uncomfortable if they approach closely.
* You expect to bargain for everything. When you offer a price, you aren't so much probing the seller's minimum, as signalling how much you really want the item.
* Even once you're past college, you might often simply show up at someone's place. People may invite each other but don't have to.
* When you negotiate, you may play convoluted games to get what you want. Also, in social situations, it is sometimes considered improper to be too direct.
* If you have a business appointment or interview with someone, you expect to have that person to yourself, but the business may take any amount of time depending on context.
Getting India's Railroads On Track
27 June 2008, TIME magazine, By Simon Robinson
Until the past few years, Indian Railways (IR) itself was sunk in a languorous snore. The state-owned company, the monopoly owner-operator of the country's rail system, runs 12,000 trains a day over 39,000 miles (62,750 km) of routes, making it the world's largest railroad under a single administration. It was also notorious for being slow, inefficient and requiring constant government bailouts. But over the past six years, India's most important form of transport — "the lifeline of the nation" as it is often called — has undergone a remarkable turnaround. In its fiscal year ending March 2007, Indian Railways made more than $5 billion. Services are improving and rail bosses have announced plans to spend billions on new rolling stock, faster lines and new stations. Though it still gets government funding, IR is now India's second most profitable state-owned company. "Earlier we were dragging the economy down," says Sudhir Kumar, whose official title is officer on special duty to the Railway Minister, and who has helped oversee the revitalization. "Now we are leading the economy from the front."
The resurrection of India's railroads was a three-step process that has been so successful it is studied by visiting business students from places such as Harvard, Wharton and INSEAD. The first step: speed things up — not the trains themselves but the turnaround time between the end and beginning of each new trip. In 2001 the average time to unload, repair, refuel and reload a freight train in India was 7.1 days. Now it is just five days, which means that 800 trains leave on a new journey each day, rather than just 550. Given that an additional trip can earn up to $15 million, the improvement made an important contribution to IR's bottom line. IR also made sure each freight locomotive carries more cars, hence more cargo. That brings in an extra $1.5 billion a year, according to Kumar, who compares the railroads under old management practices to "a Jersey cow that we forgot to milk fully."
Finally, passenger trains have also been increased in length. Until a few years ago a typical train had about 15 carriages. IR officials discovered that a passenger-train journey could earn a profit with 24 carriages, which became the target length. By pushing the "quicker, heavier, longer" mantra, rail bosses have also been able to improve services. For example, in 2006 IR began offering special express trains on certain routes such as the run between New Delhi and Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Tourists making day trips to India's most popular tourist attraction now can book online and sit in comfortable seats during a trip that takes less than two hours instead of almost three. Even on longer, slower trips the catering, which is now outsourced, has improved.
The man many people credit with rail's comeback is Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, a controversial figure, as his term as Chief Minister of Bihar was characterized by mismanagement and corruption. Yadav is certainly lucky that he's heading Indian Railways during a period of tremendous growth in India. The company is minting money hauling freight for mines thanks to the massive demand for iron ore in China, to cite just one example. Contracts with mining firms are now linked to the price of ore rather than "set in concrete like in the old socialist fashion".
Hoping to grab more of the long-haul freight business lost to truckers in recent years, rail bosses plan to borrow at least $15 billion to build a dedicated fast-freight corridor between Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata. They also have big plans for some of the 1 million acres (420,000 hectares) of land that IR owns along rail lines and around stations and shunt yards. Real estate developers are currently bidding to overhaul the first of 16 major stations. At New Delhi's central station, which is likely worth billions of dollars, developers plan hotels, wireless Internet services and food courts.
Still, IR has miles to go before it can be called a first-class operation. Train travel in India remains infuriatingly slow for the 18 million Indians riding a train on any given day. A 1,378-mile (2,217 km) trip from New Delhi to Goa just before Christmas, for instance, took me 35 hours, almost a day longer than a train trip over a similar distance in Europe would take. Because of a lack of equipment and tiny station platforms, freight is sometimes thrown from trains in heaps. The heavier loading, critics charge, has caused more breakdowns. Older carriages can be dirty, shabby and full of cockroaches — and that's in upper class.
"Railways were in a denial mode, living on past glories from when we were a natural monopoly," Kumar says. "Now we have to compete — and we are."
Until the past few years, Indian Railways (IR) itself was sunk in a languorous snore. The state-owned company, the monopoly owner-operator of the country's rail system, runs 12,000 trains a day over 39,000 miles (62,750 km) of routes, making it the world's largest railroad under a single administration. It was also notorious for being slow, inefficient and requiring constant government bailouts. But over the past six years, India's most important form of transport — "the lifeline of the nation" as it is often called — has undergone a remarkable turnaround. In its fiscal year ending March 2007, Indian Railways made more than $5 billion. Services are improving and rail bosses have announced plans to spend billions on new rolling stock, faster lines and new stations. Though it still gets government funding, IR is now India's second most profitable state-owned company. "Earlier we were dragging the economy down," says Sudhir Kumar, whose official title is officer on special duty to the Railway Minister, and who has helped oversee the revitalization. "Now we are leading the economy from the front."
The resurrection of India's railroads was a three-step process that has been so successful it is studied by visiting business students from places such as Harvard, Wharton and INSEAD. The first step: speed things up — not the trains themselves but the turnaround time between the end and beginning of each new trip. In 2001 the average time to unload, repair, refuel and reload a freight train in India was 7.1 days. Now it is just five days, which means that 800 trains leave on a new journey each day, rather than just 550. Given that an additional trip can earn up to $15 million, the improvement made an important contribution to IR's bottom line. IR also made sure each freight locomotive carries more cars, hence more cargo. That brings in an extra $1.5 billion a year, according to Kumar, who compares the railroads under old management practices to "a Jersey cow that we forgot to milk fully."
Finally, passenger trains have also been increased in length. Until a few years ago a typical train had about 15 carriages. IR officials discovered that a passenger-train journey could earn a profit with 24 carriages, which became the target length. By pushing the "quicker, heavier, longer" mantra, rail bosses have also been able to improve services. For example, in 2006 IR began offering special express trains on certain routes such as the run between New Delhi and Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Tourists making day trips to India's most popular tourist attraction now can book online and sit in comfortable seats during a trip that takes less than two hours instead of almost three. Even on longer, slower trips the catering, which is now outsourced, has improved.
The man many people credit with rail's comeback is Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, a controversial figure, as his term as Chief Minister of Bihar was characterized by mismanagement and corruption. Yadav is certainly lucky that he's heading Indian Railways during a period of tremendous growth in India. The company is minting money hauling freight for mines thanks to the massive demand for iron ore in China, to cite just one example. Contracts with mining firms are now linked to the price of ore rather than "set in concrete like in the old socialist fashion".
Hoping to grab more of the long-haul freight business lost to truckers in recent years, rail bosses plan to borrow at least $15 billion to build a dedicated fast-freight corridor between Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata. They also have big plans for some of the 1 million acres (420,000 hectares) of land that IR owns along rail lines and around stations and shunt yards. Real estate developers are currently bidding to overhaul the first of 16 major stations. At New Delhi's central station, which is likely worth billions of dollars, developers plan hotels, wireless Internet services and food courts.
Still, IR has miles to go before it can be called a first-class operation. Train travel in India remains infuriatingly slow for the 18 million Indians riding a train on any given day. A 1,378-mile (2,217 km) trip from New Delhi to Goa just before Christmas, for instance, took me 35 hours, almost a day longer than a train trip over a similar distance in Europe would take. Because of a lack of equipment and tiny station platforms, freight is sometimes thrown from trains in heaps. The heavier loading, critics charge, has caused more breakdowns. Older carriages can be dirty, shabby and full of cockroaches — and that's in upper class.
"Railways were in a denial mode, living on past glories from when we were a natural monopoly," Kumar says. "Now we have to compete — and we are."
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