April 02, 2025 06:18 EDT
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| Dear FO° Reader, Let me begin with a candid admission: India is a very difficult country to understand. My family often says the country is so full of color and difference that even one lifetime is not enough to understand it. India can be many things at once. It has the largest number of poor people among major countries, yet it also ranks third globally in the number of billionaires. Languages change every 100 kilometers. The 28 states and 6 union territories have different languages, food and customs. Like many boys in middle-class families, I experienced these contradictions firsthand.  From 2002 to 2011, I traveled by train from Jamshedpur in eastern India to my birthplace, Coimbatore, in the south. The journey took 48 hours and covered about 2,000 kilometers on the Tatanagar–Alappuzha Express. As a child, I played, looked out the window and wandered around the train. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning about India. I grew up in Jamshedpur in a house that Tata Steel gave to employees. The housing complex also included single-room quarters for domestic workers. Employees were usually college-educated. Most domestic workers had left school after middle school. Despite the gap in education and income, we were friendly. Some maids picked me up from school and played chess with me during holidays. Porters and the struggle for survival Each trip started with my mother preparing food for the journey. She didn’t trust the pantry car food. At the station, we always hired a porter to carry our luggage. Over time, I noticed how hard their lives were. Porters wait at station entrances for work. Their income depends on whether passengers need help. This uncertainty affects their ability to manage household expenses or pay for school or medical care. That’s true for most of India’s poor. About 90% of the workforce is part of the informal sector. These workers do not have job security or steady income. Bad weather or illness can leave them without earnings. Like porters, they often cannot afford basic services. Even so, conditions have improved. A World Bank report from last year said the number of people living in extreme poverty in India fell from 431 million in 1990 to 129 million. The 2018 Human Development Index (HDI) said life expectancy in India increased by 11 years since the 1990s. More people own smartphones now. Of 700 million smartphone users in India, about 425 million live in rural areas. This would have been unthinkable when I was a child. But progress has come at a cost. In Coimbatore, one of our maids fled an abusive husband so her sons could become software engineers. My mother told me many poor women face violence daily. Some porters find other ways to earn money. One part-time porter in Odisha started tutoring children from low-income families in grades 6 through 12. Watching porters at Tatanagar station taught me what it means to be poor in India. As a child, I felt sad watching them carry heavy loads. Later, I started asking why they worked under such hard conditions. That led me to bigger questions. The Tatanagar–Alappuzha Express and the search for better lives The train itself became a source of learning. At Rourkela station in Odisha, the train stopped for 40 minutes. It waited to link with another train from Dhanbad, a city in Jharkhand. I loved watching two trains connect and become one. During the stop, we drank dip tea, which was new back then. People paid extra to try it, including my parents. Vendors also sold popcorn. I liked watching them fry it in front of us. These long stops gave passengers time to stretch their legs. Vendors sold everything from popcorn to bangles. At other stations, the train paused every 20 to 40 minutes. In some places, the gap was longer. I asked why we stopped in the middle of nowhere. My parents explained when they could. Sometimes, co-passengers gave answers. Usually, it had to do with local mines, factories or a state border. Many passengers were traveling to the southern states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala for work or medical care. That was common for people from eastern states like Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh — among the nine poorest states in India, according to the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Jharkhand and Odisha, both mineral-rich, have large numbers of people who work in mines for low wages and under unsafe conditions. Onboard, life unfolded in its own way. Adults talked, laughed, read newspapers or flipped through magazines. Children played games on their Hutch or Samsung phones. Groups of children played board games or dumb charades. I climbed to the upper berths for fun. Vendors moved through the aisles selling ice cream, tea, rice dishes and snacks. When other children received treats, we begged our parents for the same. Most parents refused because they worried about food safety. The only exception was tea. I still laugh when I remember how vendors shouted “KOOO-FEEE.” Everyone on the train seemed to want something better — whether it was a snack, a job or a chance at a healthier life. That desire was clear, not just on this train, but on all the trains I rode while visiting family across India. India is a work in progress India’s difference was everywhere on the train. The Tatanagar–Alappuzha Express passed through Jharkhand, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Each state had its own language and customs. Food changed with geography. At first, vendors sold chapatis and curries. Later, they sold idlis, vadas and lemon rice. Both vegetarian and nonvegetarian food was common. Train travel taught me not to make assumptions about people. My comfort with people from many communities started there. Those train rides helped me see more than poverty or corruption. I saw joy, struggle, ambition and change. India still has a long way to go. But conditions have improved since my childhood. Rome was not built in a day. A country of 1.4 billion people won’t be either. If you want to understand India, take a train. Aniruddh Rajendran Commissioning Editor |
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