The Taj & The Train

My time in Uttar Pradesh has allowed me to see the best and the worst of India. UP as they call it here, is the most populous state in India, with 170 million people crowding the Northern strip of plains along the Ganges, the holiest river in Hinduism. It is a very rural area, and quite poor as well. Thousands of villages hug this precious source of life.
In the midst of this all is Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. I can't say much about the town - it is a very boring (but bustling) tourist town that is mostly a sidenote to the Taj. But the Taj itself is a different story. We have all seen images of this masterpiece of design, but it is only until one visits the place that true appreciation can begin...From afar, one will never notice the intricate marble inlay designs that covers this memorial, nor can one see the design of the entire space. The Taj is set in a large, beautiful courtyard, true to its Mughal (Muslim) design, and it is flanked by other gorgeous buildings that are sadly never noticed. And the beautiful Yamuna River (Hinduism's 2nd holiest river) that flows behind the Taj creates a whole new atmosphere of natural serenity that pictures will never capture. Both the intimate details and grand design can only be seen in person, and I will not try to describe the indescribable to you any longer. It is a futile effort. But the Taj Mahal is truly something to behold, and it is possibly India's greatest gift to the world...
But it was after my visit to this wonder of the world that I got to see a different part of India - the trains. India's railway system is the 2nd most extensive in the world, covering just over 39,000 miles (one of the few positive legacies left behind by the British). But the train situation in India is currently stagnant at best.
Let's start with a typical Indian train station - extremely crowded with people sleeping, practically camping out. To grab a plot of floorspace that is not covered with dead cockroaches, betel nut juice spit, or general garbage and filth, is a miracle. The stations almost feel like refugee camps, or sess pools. People jump down onto the tracks and urinate in front of everybody. Since many of these people do not live in areas inhabited by tourists, this is their one chance to inhabit the same space. I had numerous people just come up to me, and stand there - staring. Awkward to say the least...And it doesn't help at all that trains in India are ALWAYS late. I have taken two trains so far, and one was 5 hours late, while the other was a measly 3 hours late. One guy told me about his train being 12 hours late!! At that point I say cancel the thing...
So once I got on the train, I found my sleeper compartment. A slab of hard leather, which I have no problem with. But this slab of leather got really cold at night, especially when half of the windows in the car were missing! I was near hypothermia by the time the sun came up the next day. I saw a mouse scurrying around the car, as well as cockroaches. Not a pretty sight. The smell of human waste emanates from the bathrooms (in which the toilets merely open onto the train track below, a convenient but unfortunate short-term solution to the problem of waste disposal on the trains). These things I (and probably you too) take for granted in the USA and the West. I will, after this, discontinue any negative remarks towards the US train system...
It really makes me wonder about the state of Indian infrastructure if something as basic and simple as the windows of a train are missing...can the government not even try to keep people from freezing? Do politicians here even care? The roads of India are not any better...The harsh Indian sun and weight of millions of automobiles is constantly thrashing the roads and highways here, making road work an endless project. India has the highest ration of workers to miles of road in the world (one for every 1.25 miles of road), yet this still is not enough to prevent potholes that can sometimes be the size of a bathtub! Unfortunately, anybody employed by the Indian government can NEVER be fired under a certain article of the Indian constitution, so these workers never show up for work, since they will get paid either way. This also explains many problems in the country - rewarding people for not working may prove to be disastrous for this country. This all sounds trivial, until it is understood that up to 1/3 of all vegetables grown in India rot before they reach their destination, due to slow travel caused by poor road conditions. Similarly, up to 1/3 of teachers miss school each day here because they cannot reach their school on time, also due to poor roads.
The bad state of Indian infrastructure will only hurt India as a society and an economy, and it will make life difficult not just for a visitor like me, but for the rest of the country (that's 1.3 billion people and counting by the way). Fortunately, a massive highway project called the Golden Quadrilateral Highway is nearly finished, after it was begun in 1998. This highway connects all four of India's big cities (Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Kolkata), basically forming a loop around the edges of the country. Another highway is in the works to bisect India down the middle from the North to the very South. These projects should help things immensely in the long run. But the train system must be developed further and made more efficient, since trains are less energy-intensive than automobiles. Let's hope things start to seriously pick up, or else the added weight of more people with more cars will only drag this country down to the pace of a snail...