The Trackmen (and women)

Dadar EAST 100 AMA young mother cleans up her infantrsquos business wraps him up in a fresh but worn triangle of fabric Almost ritualistically she leans in and rubs her nose against the toddlerrsquos and he squeals happily a sound which echoes through Dadar railway station at 1 am In the background screams the rhythmic sound of digging and instructions yelled back and forth between the supervisor and workers on the track at Platform No 12The platform is the infantrsquos daycare and his caretakers are the roughly 60 men and women who check in on him during their respective breaks as his mother digs plows and unearths ballast between Matunga and DadarDeep cleaning the tracks has been underway for a month or more The Railways has tried its best to cut costs by replacing human labourmdashwhat would ordinarily need a team of gangmen 500 to 600 strongmdashwith machines Only concern for the safety of lakhs of commuters using the tracks every hour has stopped them from complete mechanisationBallast rocks must be replaced on a timely basis to ensure the stability of the tracks This involves manually checking each metre of a sectionEvery track crossing point is inspected by a signal and telecom engineer while a mechanical engineer visually scans the track under his jurisdiction inch by inch for cracks in the track And sometimes they meet with a tragedy like the one on January 23 when three Railway men came under a train between Vasai andNaigaon stationsThough the ballast may be sifted through in bits and pieces each week its deep cleaning is undertaken every 10 years in the darkness of the night with thoroughness and efficiency by the Mumbai suburban machinery and its contractual workersMahesh 32 comes from Jhabua district in western Madhya Pradesh which has very few job opportunities for Adivasis such as him Three years ago he moved to Mumbai when his cousin told him of manpower needed to clean up railway tracks He had heard of and seen videos of local trains swollen with commuters An alarming to any nonMumbaikar But his only question was whether the income was a steady streamMahesh Shankar Meena Ramkrishna Yadav and Raju SinldquoWe get paid Rs 15000 to 16000 thousand per month so itrsquos actually pretty goodrdquo he says Is the work backbreaking ldquoItrsquos mere three hoursrdquo he shrugs ldquothen we head homerdquoHome for Mahesh and his fellow contract labourers is in Kalwa where rent is cheap and the demand for dailywage workers at construction sites plentiful The 5060person crew will get on the first train for Kalwa soon and scatter to other working sites after some rest in their one roomkitchen and breakfast Mahesh tells usHe seems worldlier than his peers He walks with confidence and is vigilant about the safety of his people whether they are too slow or over worked When one woman folds down in exhaustion on the sleeper he asks someone else to step in She has been digging ballast nonstop for one hour with a hand rakeOf the 60 workers present 19 are female contractual employees including the young mother This is work cut out for young bodies none of the employees are over 30 They donrsquot undergo any physical tests before theyrsquore hired but it is something of an unsaid rule to employ the young One of the female workers tells us what has prepared them for this strenuous labour foraging wood from the forest and cutting it back home in their villages where a few of them work as farm handsAfter the tamping of ballast for the three hours the pathway inspector gives the control room the green signal to run the first train of the dayThe trackman is the first point of Railway authority who monitors contract labourers and conveys instructions from the Permanent Way Inspector PWI in charge at each station Trackmen are classified as Group D employees and usually belong to SCST communities they are a level above the Adivasi or Khalasi whom they overseeTo put into context the sheer desperation for more trackmen the Railway ministry announced 10000 vacancies for them in 2024 with the new relaxed upper age limit of 33 years from the earlier 31 due to low applications in the previous age groupTwentysixyearold trackman Shankar Meena grew up next to Ranthambore national park A very different world from his rental in Kalyan where he lives with a couple of other ldquoI passed the physical test and examinationrdquo he says still a bit wet behind the ears from Rajasthan ldquoWe were made to carry 35 kgs of material for 100 meters in two minutes We were tested on mathematics general knowledge reasoning and sciencerdquoThough much of the tasks are done manually the tamping of the ballast as well as levelling of the crossover has been gradually undertaken with machinesUnlike the others Meena has the luxury of being able to sleep in a bit ldquoI get up at around 5 pm and head to my reporting head office at Sion station Sir gives us instructions at around 8 pm and we start to coordinate the labourrdquo he saysldquoSirrdquo is Ramkrishna Yadav Section Engineer between Dadar and Matunga who started his career 15 years ago as junior section engineer at Byculla station ldquoMeena is a fresh recruitrdquo says Yadav ldquoThey were hired in large numbers recently but most new recruits work on the line for just a few years and then request to be transferred to work machines which is a less physically tasking jobrdquoYadav explains the gravity of the work we see ongoing at Dadar ldquoThe ballast and rocks on the track get embedded into the mud and donrsquot provide a hard bedrock for the tracks and sleepers planks essential for the train to run smoothly with a pumping action When you are in the train sometimes you can notice the coach is bouncing a bit almost like a roller coaster If this is not maintained public safety is at riskrdquoMATUNGA EAST 230 AMAt Matunga station another group of trackmen and women work a machine that clamps down on the track pulls it to one side another end of the machine digs into the freshly laid ballast and seals it We meet PWI Raju Sin on Platform number 3 at 230 am who is racing against time to finish off two crossing points where the train switches tracks ldquoThis machine is specially used on crossing points and is crucial in avoiding derailment It lifts the crossing point levels it and places it back on the ballast that is simultaneously being dug up and compressed by another part of the machinerdquo he saysMidconversation Sin warns us to get off the track as the MumbaiKalyan trains will run soon ldquoThat is if you want to remain in one piecerdquo he adds with a macabre sense of humour common in the Railways