Chi-Chi Train

It’s not the stuff of dreams. The Indian Railways spends Rs 70 lakh on each saloon car — about 10-15 are manufactured each year, depending on the demand — a Raj relic championed fiercely by railway officials and used and misused by successive railway ministers. The justification is the huge window at the back of the coach which, claim officials, helps them inspect the tracks and the signalling system.

And while they carry out their duties, their families could well be lounging inside the car, waited on by railway attendants. As per rules they can make for themselves, railway officials are allowed to take along their families on official inspection tours.

The practice hasn’t gone completely unnoticed — questions have been raised in Parliament; even the Comptroller and Auditor General has objected to the expenditure on the continued manufacture of these special coaches — but railway officials are unanimous on the utility of the saloons while vehemently denying any luxe angle.

‘‘Let’s not call them saloons, that gives a wrong impression. They are actually inspection carriages required to carry out statutory safety inspections — what we call trailing window or rear window inspections,’’ says a senior official.

In defence of the saloons, another officer says that there is no alternative to these carriages for inspections and also in case of accidents. ‘‘We have to go to all kinds of places for inspections, including various road-side stations, where there are no hotels. If there’s an accident, senior officials have to be at the site for days. Where do you expect us to stay in such cases?’’ he asks.

To emphasise that saloons are no easy ride at all, officials point out of the 220-odd such coaches, only 30 are air-conditioned. ‘‘And those are the ones used by railway ministers, board members and general managers of various zones. The ones used by other officers — including the divisional railway managers and heads of various departments — are, at best, air-cooled. Given a choice, they’d rather travel AC First Class, which they are entitled to,’’ says an official.

But isn’t there any scope for misuse of the saloons? Maybe a GM allowing a favoured DRM to use an air-conditioned inspection carriage for a jaunt…?

The official is firm. ‘‘There is no way an official could misuse a carriage, the rules are stringent in this regard,’’ he says.

Then he adds, ‘‘And, even if they do have to go for a personal trip, it is not very difficult to show it as an official inspection tour.’’

There is also scope for minor ‘‘mistakes’’, he admits, like the officer forgetting to carry his food rations for the journey. ‘‘The meals during the trip are supposed to be cooked in the self-sufficient saloon by the accompanying cook. But since that can be quite a bother, most officers end up eating from the railway catering service. Free of cost, of course,’’ he adds.

While protecting their own, railway officials claim that if anyone can be accused of misusing the saloons, it is the railway ministers. And that’s probably the reason why no railway minister — with the exception of Mamata Banerjee — has tried to abolish the anachronism on wheels.

Perks of the job

RA-1, RA-2, RA-3 could seem meaningless terms to you and me, but for railway ministers, they are the biggest perk of their job, the numbers of the special saloons reserved for them. RA-1 is the railway minister’s special domain, the others are earmarked for the ministers of state.

All find use in criss-crossing the country. ‘‘The ministers can order the saloons attached to any train and hop into it. They don’t have to justify its use,’’ says an official.

Ironically though, the saloons cannot be tagged on to any of the prestigious fast trains, the Rajdhanis and the Shatabdis. The saloons can at best do 110 kmph, while the trains do 130 kmph on an average.

Three months into the job, Laloo Yadav is making up the miles in other ways. ‘‘Most of his trips are in the saloon, even his regular week-end trips to Bihar,’’ says the official. ‘‘He obviously likes the comfort of the saloon.’’

For his first-ever ministerial inspection tour of UP-Bihar — with stops at Aligarh, Etawah, Lucknow, Barabanki, Siwan, Chhapra and Hajipur — Laloo ordered not just the saloon, but a special six-coach train. ‘‘It cost the railways more than Rs 25 lakh.’’

But Laloo’s excesses are still to catch up with those of former railway minister Jaffer Sharief. Saloon folklore has it that Sharief, fond of the ‘‘good things’’ in life, made maximum use of the saloon. Other Bihar-born railway ministers — Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar — also used the saloon frequently, but usually only for genuine inspections.

It was only the maverick Mamata Banerjee who steadfastly refused to use the saloon as minister. Officials love narrating how, in January 2001, she travelled overnight to a bomb blast site in Jammu in a sleeper coach with the security personnel, while the general manager of Northern Railway travelled in his own saloon attached to the same train.

But when she proposed ministers and officials emulate her, ‘‘the resistance she met was amazing,’’ according to an official. ‘‘Officials wrote her long notes, explaining how important they were to railway functioning and safety. Finally, she decided to earn some revenue from them, asking Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation to rent out the saloons to interested parties.’’

Since then, the saloons have been available for rent for Rs 1 lakh a journey. But there’ve been few takers, apart from some foreigners and some honeymooners. Once the Chief Justice of India hired it to go to Rajasthan,’’ he added.