The Banana train of India

Who has not heard of the word “Banana Republic”. It is one of the most famous words in English and one that is used rather frequently to describe unstable economies and countries on the verge of social, political and economic collapse.

This is a term in political science, used for a politically unstable country whose economy is largely dependent on the export of a single limited-resource product, such as bananas. It was originally coined by the American writer William Sydney Porter (1862–1910), better known as O’Henry.

He used the term for the first time to describe his fictional Republic of Anchuria in the book Cabbages and Kings (1904), a collection of thematically related short stories inspired by his experiences in Honduras during the 1896–97, when he was wanted in the U.S. for bank embezzlement.

Well, if Banana Republic in political science also stands for a dictatorship that abets or supports, for kickback, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, how would you describe a banana train. Yes, a banana train that has been operational in India for a little more than two years.

Sadly, very few Indians outside farmers, horticulturists and officials of  Indian Railways and Horticulture Department have heard of the train, let alone seen it.

However, growers, traders and even consumers are happy at the launch of the Banana Train.

The Banana Train runs from Jalgaon in Maharashtra to Dehli.

Jalgaon is India’s biggest banana centre and Delhi one of the largest consumers.

The train operates once or twice a week and it unloads bananas at the rail yard of the Azadpur mandi in Delhi. Incidentally, this is Asia’s biggest market for fruits and vegetables.

The train has 80 insulated and ventilated containers and it can easily carry more than a thousand tonnes of bananas. It was launched in mid-September 2011 and it has proved to a boon to traders and  consumers alike.

It is also called the ‘horti train’, and it has not only reduced transportation cost for traders, but also seen a sharp drop of waste reported during transportation of fruits and vegetables by road. It is generally accepted that  20 per cent to 30 per cent of the horticulture produce goes waste because of lack of modern storage and transportation facilities.

The banana train was the idea of the National Horticulture Board under the Agriculture Ministry, Container Corporation of India (CONCOR) and the Indian Railways. Both the board and CONCOR have invested Rs 8 crore each for transporting fruits and vegetables across the country.

Each container can hold at least 12 tonnes and the train generally makes five trips a month from Raver  near Jalgaon to Delhi. The train has a travel time of about 26 hours, including eight hours for loading and unloading of bananas, in a one-way trip.

Both Jalgaon and Bhusawal in Maharashtra are the biggest banana producing regions in India and they mostly cater to markets in north India, including Delhi.

The horti train was first mooted under the Kisan Vision Yoyana launched by the Indian Railways in 2009. It had successfully conducted a dry run of the banana route from Jalgaon to Azadpur  and an onion route from Nashik in Maharashtra to Kolkata and Malda in West Bengal, which  terminated in Fatwa, Bihar.

A dry run of a potato train was also conducted from Kolkata to Guwahati and from Agra to Bangalore. However the banana train was the first off the block and by the looks of it, it has come to stay.

Enthused by the response to the banana train, the horticulture mission has proposed an expenditure of R100 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan (2012-2017) where the cost would be shared by CONCOR. It aims to launch ten such trains for carrying fruits and vegetables between growing and consuming regions during the next five years.

Do you want a reality check. So here it is.

The container rake docked at the Kherwadi railway station, north of the Nashik Road station, will receive the cargo. The Horticulture Express will deliver consignments to Chitpur near Kolkata, covering 1,800km in 36 hours. Currently, onions are transported by trucks that need at least 120 hours for the journey. The cost too has come down from Rs. 40,000  per container to transport 16 tonne of onions, to  Rs 32,000.

The ghost who spooked trains

The Railways are the life line of India. Railway lines crisscrosses the length and breadth of our country and several lakhs people are employed in  this behemoth.

They play a crucial role in the economy of the country. It is one of the world's largest railway networks comprising 115,000 km (71,000 miles) of track over a route of 65,000 km (40,000 miles) with 7,510 stations.

As of December 2012, Indian Railways had transported over 25 million passengers daily (over 9 billion annually). In 2011, the railways ferried over 8,900 million passengers annually or more than 24 million passengers daily and 2.8 million tons of freight daily.

Naturally, there are many legends and myths about the Railways. There have been legion number of stories about marriages being brokered in railway compartments, friendships being forged, children being born, trains coming late by a day or more, passengers travelling on roof tops and many more similar stories.

However, there is nothing to beat this story and even by Indian Railway standards it is a classic act, hard to beat, harder to believe and even harder to digest.

This story is about a railway station. Yes, a railway station which was supposedly so haunted that it remained closed for decades and no trains stopped by. The trains whizzed past the desolate station and some fearful and superstitious passengers even downed shutters of the windows to avoid looking at the haunted station.

This is the story of the Begunkodor railway station. Located in Puralia district of West Bengal, the haunted station is 46 kilometres away from the town of Purulia.

Unbelievably, the railway station at Begunkodor remained closed for 42 years. The reason was that the station was believed to be haunted by as spook and no employee was willing to serve or take a posting at the station.  The station remained only in name from 1962 to 2009.

Locals claim that a railway employee died after he witnessed a female apparition in the station in 1967. Soon, this tale spread and railway employees initially took leave and then sought transfers. None were willing to work at the station and within a few weeks, the station became deserted. Soon, no trains stopped and the station stopped receiving trains.

In no time, stories about the female ghost gained credence. The phantom woman would sometimes dance on the platform and on occasion take a walk along the tracks. The railway employees feared that she would come back to life and they expressed no desire to work at the station.

As the legend of the white saree apparition grew, the station fell deeper and deeper into disuse and soon no locals gathered courage to visit the station.

The first ray of hope of opening the station came when Mamta Banerjee was the Railway Minister. When she was told about the haunted station, she curtly remarked that she did not believe in ghosts. “It is all manmade”, she declared and ordered the Railways to take steps to reopen the now defunct station. This was in 2009.

Meanwhile, Basudeb Acharya, former chairman of the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Railways claimed that the ghost story was cooked up by railway staff  to avoid their posting at a remote location.

The railway station was reopened on September 3, 2009 when the Ranchi-Hatia Express stopped at Begunkodor, the first train to do so, in 42 years.

Begunkodor is 260 kilometres or 161 miles from Kolkata. The reopening was a red letter day for the locals who danced and sang with joy. Hundreds turned up to watch the first train in more than four decades pull to a slow and grinding stop at the station.  

However, the fear of the ghosts still persists. Even two years after the re- opening of the Begunkodor station, Dalu Mahato, a private ticket- selling agent, is the sole worker there. He is given a commission for each ticket he sells. Mahato too makes it point to leave when the sun is still shining. You can rarely find him after 6 p.m.

For passengers, they are still greeted with empty ticket counters, no station master, ticket checker or any other employee. You see, the ghost still instills fear and such is its tentacles that people rarely dare to go to the station on their own.