Title - The all-powerful Mumbai Railway hawkers and a system failure

This is about right to walk on a footover bridge built by railways out of tax-payers' money
There cannot be an as insignificant place as the common railway footover bridge at Parel and Elphinstone station on Mumbai railway to highlight the "disconnect" of top cops vis-a-vis small conveniences of city's commuters. No matter how higher up officer you are, the hawkers' lobby in Mumbai is all powerful.Here's the story--The bridge connecting at Parel and Elphinstone stations has been a narrow one and the crowd at the stations has increased manifold after the rise of towers and malls from the mills. At Parel-end, the crowd is so great that the railways have had to deploy policemen and home guard constables to monitor the crowd so that there is no stampede. Theoretically for the media, there have been proposals pending to have more infrastructure and fancy plans to boost up the station, but nothing has happened in reality, but that's a different subject.



Naturally, with such heavy crowds, the presence of hawkers on the bridge here is quite natural. One can openly see cops in uniform chatting with them in a "friendly" manner. There are CCTVs and it is a matter of common knowledge. But we can ignore them till a point.



Last Thursday evening, the crowd on the bridge at Elphinstone-end was so huge that it was jostling for space and there was no place to walk; the reason -- there were more hawkers this time selling everything from raincoats to mobile phones and umbrellas to jackfruit with a huge crowd blocking the walkway to buy the wares. A cop was dealing with one of them about God knows what.



I thought something had to be done and called up the senior divisional security commissioner, who heads Railway Protection Force Mumbai divison. He is the head of RPF and supposed to have control over officers and team with the primary job being "protection of railway property." He assured action, but asked me to send him a text message. A message was sent immediately.



The next day, there was no change and I alerted him. The top cop told me that the bridge falls under senior inspector at Dadar and that he had confirmed him that hawkers had been cleared and asked me to alert him.



I skip a day and take the bridge on Sunday. The hawkers are still there. I send a text message to the top cop. "No change. Have given up."



We have been reading news stories about how powerful the hawkers' lobby on Mumbai railway has been. This is proof. I am very well aware that removal of hawkers is not the commissioner's job, but it is reflects badly on a system if  things don't change even after alerting the highest authority. A system failure. The incident highlights how disconnected the top brass can be from ground realities. These are small conveniences Mr Commissioner, for the Mumbai commuter about right to walk on a footover bridge built by railways out of tax-payers' money. That's all.