Outline:
- Third class passengers comprise 90% of the entire number.
- Treated very badly and roughly by the railway staff.
- The condition of travel in the 3rd class must be bettered.
- There must be a civic minimum.
Third class passengers:
The poor millions of Pakistani bacon not afford to travel in any class higher than the third. There are very few who travel in second or first class. The higher class or the aristocracy is very limited in number. The masses are mostly agriculturists and extremely poor.
Treated very badly:
The treatment which is meted out to them is so rough and discourteous that a civilized or educated man can never bear. The poor Zamindar has by nature great regard for the ‘Sahib’ and tolerates these insults. The Sahib thinks no end of himself. He doesn’t behave as a servant to the 3rd class passengers who actually sustain the railway administration. If they struck travel by railway the conceited ‘Sahib’ would starve to death.[the_ad id=”17141″]
The main cause of this class hypocrisy in our “cash nexus.” We place too much value on the ‘coin’ which has become a demigod in our capitalist world. The essential values of things merely overlooked where the ‘Almighty Coin’ gleams. A man who on the merits of his own personal ability can never deserve to travel first class is privileged to do so because his grandfather leaves him a patrimony which he can squander at will. At the same time workers who labour day and night perspire with tropical heat and cannot enjoy a railway journey their only possible luxury, because the almighty coin is not in their possession.
The condition of travel:
The railway administration in its commercial zeal disregards all values except the monetary. It does not believe in other qualities because they are not ‘money. So much so that the minimum standard of travel which it lays down is so low and impossible that it much resembles the atmosphere of a death cell. The growing humanitarianism in the twentieth century should sooner or later direct its energies to the alleviation of poverty and raising the civic minimum which should be laid down with due regard to human needs. Men may believe only in that case that they command greater respect and power than beasts and animals. To-day the minimum standard of comfort and living is deplorably low. The great tragedy is that a large majority of people have to live at this inhuman standard. We must shift it considerably. It is the height indecency and discourtesy in the twentieth century which claims to have brought about a revolution in human society and thought. If all our scientific knowledge and research have not been able to provide more comfort and leisure to the man in the street, they are hardly worth a song.
