By Jason Burke /Mumbai
In a few decades’ time, when directors remake Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning 2009 film Slumdog Millionaire, they will have to find a new way to unite the hero and the heroine in the final scene.
Viewers of the original saw Jamal, the young call centre employee, glimpse secret lover Latika through the open doors of Mumbai’s local trains at the city’s most famous station. In future, those doors might be firmly shut.
Western Railway, which runs half the ferociously overcrowded but hugely popular suburban railway in India’s commercial capital, is trialling automatic doors in a bid to cut the number of casualties caused by falls from moving trains.
For decades doors have remained firmly open, allowing scores of people to travel while hanging precariously outside the carriages and - in another scene repeatedly portrayed on the silver screen - to leap on board with seconds to spare before departure.
But the first local train equipped with automatic steel sliding doors, which shut when it leaves a station, has completed eight successful trips earlier this week, officials said.
“With the first day going off nicely, we believe the era of trains with closed doors has finally started in the Mumbai suburban system,” a spokesman for Western Railway said.
The trains in Mumbai carry more than 7mn people a day and are among the most crowded in the world. In rush hour, according to some estimates, more than 5,000 people can cram into carriages designed to carry no more than 1,700.
Despite repeated efforts to reduce the death toll, around 2,000 people are killed every year on the network, many falling through the open doors.
However, commuters said that although they would be stopped from tumbling on to the tracks, they would face another peril if the doors remained shut between stations: asphyxiation.
Neha Naharia, 27, who travels daily from Churchgate station to Vile Parle, told the Midday tabloid that “ventilation might be a problem during peak hours when the compartment is crowded.” Others were in favour of better announcements of when and where the train was stopping.
Local authorities have systematically failed to invest in transport infrastructure in the city, which despite pockets of extreme poverty is one of the wealthiest in India.
The cheapest ticket on Mumbai’s train is a rupee while a year-long first-class season ticket for the most popular line on the entire network of 430km and more than 100 stations costs around Rs23,000.
Many residents of India’s “maximum city” are proud of their ability to master the daily assault course on the train. “But how will Mumbai’s famously frenzied passengers react to being denied their God-given right to hurl themselves into moving trains rather than wait for the next one?” asked Scroll.in, a Mumbai-based website.
“Mumbaikars are famously adaptable creatures, and are likely to devise ways to squeeze into the ten-second gap as the doors slide shut. If you can momentarily prevent an elevator from closing, a train should be easy enough,” the site advised readers.
There is hope yet, too, for filmmakers. Only the Western Line appears set to introduce the new closing doors in the immediate future, leaving several other lines - including the one running from the iconic Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus - still using the older, unsafe, but much more romantic open-door trains. - Guardian News & Media
Scenes of people hanging on outside moving trains could disappear with the introduction of sliding doors on suburban rail line.
