Madhya Pradesh Congress protesting against train cleaners handing out railway linen is new-age 'untouchability'
The Congress unit in poll-bound Madhya Pradesh has picked up a rather bizarre issue, one that hits out at the avowed 'egalitarian' messaging of the party. The party unit is apparently not happy with a policy change made by Indian Railways that allows train cleaners to distribute linen sets to passengers.
Linen sets given to railway passengers include a blanket, pillow, bed sheets and hand towels. These sets are distributed to people travelling in AC compartments of Indian trains.
The job is currently done by dedicated attendants.
The party has really taken the policy change to heart and launched a campaign against what it believes is an "unhygienic" practice. The enthusiasm with which the party has spoken out against the move is laughable at one level because of all things actually unhygienic in Indian trains, the Congress wants to go after people distributing "unhygienic" stuff.
Linen distributed on Indian trains is so awfully dirty that it actually puts human health in jeopardy. But the Congress seems to think that dirty things get dirtier when certain people touch them.
How dirty is railway linen?
In 2017, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) highlighted just how dirty bed sheets and blankets given to passengers to stay warm are.
The CAG report that was tabled in Parliament said that the washing and sanitation of linen as well as blankets do not follow the norms set by the railways. The Railway Board has instructed that the washing of linen (except blankets) should be done after every single use and blankets be dry-cleaned every two months.
According to a Hindustan Times report, the CAG has collected data on the number of blankets in use and those washed during the review (2012-2013 to 2015-2016) period in 33 selected depots of coaches.
The report said: "It was found that in 14 selected depots, under nine zonal railways, no blankets had been dry-washed in the said period. And except for seven depots under five zonal railways, linens had not been sanitised in the other selected depots."
"During 2015-2016, in respect of 12 coaching depots of eight zonal railways, blankets had been washed after an interval of 6-26 months."
The audit also found pillow covers being stitched out of used bed sheets.
The railways found itself so inept at handling the situation that instead of devising a mechanism to ensure blankets were dry-washed regularly, it decided to do away with them completely by raising the temperatures in the trains.
While that experiment started in 2017, the distribution of torn and dirty linen is a norm in trains.
And linen is not the only unhygienic stuff you encounter on trains.
Quite recently, India was shaken by reports of tea sellers using water from a train toilet to make tea. Complaints of rotten food being served on trains is so routine that media has stopped taking note of it.
Why the fuss
It is against this background that the Congress' objection to train cleaners distributing linen is deeply faulty.
The caste system, which has proved to be such a bane for India, is based on the premise that certain people do certain types of jobs and that is why they should be treated in a certain way.
It all starts with utter contempt for a particular kind of job and manifests itself in hatred for people doing that job.
Train cleaning is not as bad a job as dirtying it. Trains are cleaned by some people because some others dirty it. From positions of privilege, we get to decide that those who clean are worse than those who dirty.
The problem becomes bigger when political parties that are supposed to fight social biases try to further institutionalise them.
Indian households continue to have separate utensils to serve food or beverages to people of certain castes because they do jobs not considered clean enough. It has never mattered that after doing those jobs, people have had a bath. They were nevertheless branded 'untouchables'. A scourge we as a country are fighting till this day. Surprisingly, the Congress in Madhya Pradesh seems to be on the other side of this fight.
To say that cleaners will, of course, take care of hygiene when they switch from one job to the other also reeks of privilege. It assumes that only some people bother about hygiene.
Faced with the Congress protest, Jabalpur divisional railway manager, Manoj Singh, said: "Staff will be given proper gear and material so that they keep themselves clean. There is nothing wrong in one person doing the two jobs. Also, in this day and age, why should we expect that the job of cleaning should be reserved for only one section of people?"
No. The job of cleaning should not be reserved for only one section of people. Neither should we assume that accepting anything from people in the job of cleaning will 'defile' us.
It takes a railway official to remind a national party that.
It is proof that our professions don't make us who we are. It is our thought.