The Railways (Amendment) Bill, 2024: Much Ado About Something or A Comedy of Terrors!

Lo and behold, the Railways (Amendment) Bill, 2024! A piece of legislative pageantry introduced in the Lok Sabha with all the pomp of a king’s decree. For those hoping it heralded a transformative era for Indian Railways (IR), prepare to have your bubbles burst. It turns out that this bill is less of a revolution and more of a legal housekeeping exercise—a meticulous rearranging of bureaucratic furniture while continuing to have the house itself in shambles.

My esteemed great-uncle Shakespeare and my ever-witty chachā (uncle) Ghālib, stationed in their celestial VIP lounge, observed the antics surrounding the Railway Amendment Bill 2024 with a mix of bemusement and weariness. This time, they did not bother to engage in one of their characteristic verbal duels. Instead, they sat in contemplative silence, sipping their ethereal elixir (or perhaps ambrosia—who knows?) and merely took mental notes. As for me, I did not need to eavesdrop this time—my unique telepathic hotline to their grand intellects delivered their musings directly to my mind, like a cosmic WhatsApp message, but without the annoying ‘Feel Good’ or ‘Greetings Morning’ gifs. And so, dear reader, I humbly reproduce their silent yet sharp observations for your entertainment and enlightenment: 

The bard was the first whose mind remarked, with the weight of Macbeth and his words, “…a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

At first glance, the bill appears to modernize the legal framework by consolidating the Indian Railway Board Act, 1905, into the Railways Act, 1989. Sounds clever, does it not? Yet, much like our friend King Lear, reflecting on how dire circumstances can have both the government and the opposition finding purpose in even the humblest things, "…The art of our necessities is strange, That can make vile things precious...".

Oh, the irony! The central government is now officially empowered to decide the number of Board members and their qualifications, a pastime it has, in any case, always relished and indulged in, especially during the melodramatic misadventures of the Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS). The railways' big bosses will continue to enjoy their soap-operatic tussles, with the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) and Appointments Committee of the Cabinet (ACC) playing the supporting cast in this ever familiar bureaucratic drama. My great uncle recalled, with a knowing smile, what he had Isabella speaking in Measure for Measure, "…O, it is excellent to have a giant's strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.…But man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured—His glassy essence—like an angry ape Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, As make the angels weep…"

During the parliamentary debate, MPs performed their time-honoured ritual of discussing lofty themes like corporatization, autonomous zones, privatization, and even the possibility of independent regulation. Yet, the bill itself contains no such ambitions and that prompted the bard to mentally hypercorrect one of dialogues in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and whisper, “...Shall we their fond pageant see? Lord, how fantastic these mortals be!”

Independent regulation, corporatization of production units, and decentralization of powers—these lofty ideals have become the eternal bridesmaids of IR, never the bride. Expert committees and vision documents have long extolled these virtues, but the entrenched bureaucracy clings to its powers like Macbeth to his throne, unwilling to yield even a fragment. The bard recalled this time these words which he had lent to Hamlet, "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."

Ah, but there was a time when reform did peek out from behind the iron curtain! Suresh Prabhu's tenure saw decentralization efforts that helped team ICF in the swift realization of the Train 18/Vande Bharat project. As a witness to this golden chapter as the leader, I lament the untimely demise of the decentralization momentum, buried under layers of bureaucratic apathy. And what of corporatization? The 2019 plan to corporatize production units sank faster than the Titanic, perhaps due to union protests forcing a pusillanimous government to retreat. The dream of a corporate framework fostering efficiency and cost-consciousness remains just that—a dream. The bard smiled, recalling his lines through Prospero in the The Tempest, that life, as that sterling chappie Edgar Allen Poe later phrased as “a dream within a dream”, "We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep", and added with a know-all status, “Sir, I am not vexed”.

IR’s perpetual identity crisis as both a business and a welfare state continues. A rational solution—separating its social and commercial roles—could have emerged, but alas, the bill sidesteps this crucial conundrum. As ever, IR's cross-subsidization of passenger fares through freight revenues keeps the circus running. In its current avatar, the Railways (Amendment) Bill, 2024, is more paper tiger than roaring lion. Despite parliamentary theatrics, it is devoid of teeth to bite into the systemic issues plaguing IR. The bard thought of his lines from Pistol in The Merry Wives of Windsor to round it up, “Why, then the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open” and then soon realized that in IR’s case, the sword remains firmly in its scabbard. 

Lacking the courage to confront political sensitivities and entrenched bureaucratic inertia, this bill risks becoming just another pit stop on the endless loop of procrastination. For now, IR’s “reforms” remain as elusive as a punctual long-distance train—always promised, never arriving. The bard, watching from his celestial balcony, lends us this poetic lament from Macbeth: "When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"—a fitting metaphor for the tempestuous cycles of reform. And so, we are consigned to wait, popcorn in hand, for the next grand legislative spectacle to roll into the station.

Ghālib, lounging in his heavenly abode with a celestial cup of chai (or was it something stronger, like Old Tom?) tuned into the parliamentary debate like one would a particularly absurd soap opera. Cosmically connected as he is to Shakespeare, he couldn’t help but absorb the Bard’s silent but eloquent mental sighs, all while rolling his own metaphorical eyes. He then turned Shakespearean with "The world below is a stage where even the scriptwriters seem confused, and the actors, ah, they revel in their own chaos!"

Nevertheless, after much celestial eavesdropping and a touch of existential exasperation, Ghālib distilled his mental musings into a characteristically sardonic observation:

Thī ḳhabar garm ki railoñ ke uḌeñge purze, 

dekhne ham bhī ga.e the pa tamāshā na huā

(ḳhabar: news, garm: hot, railoñ: rails, purze: shards, pieces, tamāshā: spectacle. There was a hot rumour that rails would be torn to smithereens to fly, I too had gone to witness it, but the spectacle was a damp squib)

Then, with the wisdom of ages and the dry humour of one who has seen it all, he summed it up with a sagacious thought:

Ham ko ma.alūm hai jannat kī haqīqat lekin,

dil ke ḳhush rakhne ko Ghalib ye ḳhayāl achchhā hai

(ma.alūm: aware, Jannat: heaven, paradise, haqiqat: reality, ḳhayāl: thought. The reality of and about paradise although we surely know, but just to provide false comfort to this heart the thought is good.)

Smiling cosmically at each other, the bard and the chachā exchanged a knowing wink, their expressions a blend of bemusement and resignation. No words were needed; centuries of observing human folly, and particularly  of IR in recent years, had made such theatrics all too predictable. With a shrug that seemed to say, "same stage, different actors", they retreated to their celestial corners, nursing their respective pick-me-ups—Shakespeare with a glass of divine ale, perhaps quoting to himself from his sonnet 116, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments..." and Ghālib swirling his cup of heavenly sharbat, murmuring, "ye na thī hamārī qismat ki visāl-e-yār hotā" (fate did not ordain that my love be consummated).

Ah, the eternal camaraderie of the two masters watching the mortal world stumble along, ever hopeful, ever flawed, and endlessly entertaining.

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