Monday 10th November 2008

The 3.45 pm train from Churchgate to Bandra is twenty minutes late. Not that it matters; the platforms are always crammed with people, the women pushing around each other, creating a kaleidoscope of sari silks, the men a throng of filthy shirts and sacks held up in the air. As the train pulls in, and passengers pour off, another load climbs in, elbows out, anxious to board, even though the train won’t leave for at least another ten minutes. It’s every person for themselves: God help you if you stop to apologise for treading on someone’s feet. If you’re lucky enough to land a seat, someone is bound to ask where you are getting off, and then say, assassin-like, “when you go, this seat is mine.” We get into the all-women’s carriage, and Elsa muses as we cower in a corner, is this some old-fashioned way of separating the sexes, or is it just to protect the women from the men?

While we are stationary, a couple of boys surreptitiously jump on the train, avoiding the train stewards, to sell snacks before jumping out the other side. By the time we pull out, it is impossible to remove your elbow from someone’s face without hitting someone else with it anyway. Some hang half outside the open doors, their scarves blowing precariously in the wind. The smell of fish floats disperses through the carriage as wives are bringing their groceries home from the docks. During the journey, old women with tattered saris tied beneath them like sparkling loincloths squeeze through impossibly small spaces between ladies, holding aloft oranges to sell, or costume rings, or sweets made from apricots, shoving them in front of faces that are practically eyeball to eyeball already.

India laughs in the face of the Malthusian theory. With a population of 1.2 billion and growing, the country is still growing fast. It is estimated to pip China by 2035. In addition, India has 25 million expats in 35 countries abroad. Its insatiable growth – around 25% in the past ten years alone – would, it is assumed, leave the country’s infrastructure staggering under its weight. In reality, sanitation and poverty is just as much a problem as it ever was, but no worse. The levels of starvation are no higher in this decade of population explosion than they have been before. The government are slowly raising levels of literacy, and more and more ordinary children from rural areas are speaking English as well as their regional language, giving them hopes of easier social mobility. More young people are studying abroad, only to come back to contribute to their country’s economy. There are as many hopes for India’s next generation. Malthus would be left scratching his head.

A corollary of India’s huge population is its employment situation. More people require more work. India’s job creation, and cheap labour rates, have made the country a service culture. There is someone to do everything for you: to hand you a hand towel in a high class hotel, to open the door on your way into a café. In restaurants, there are some waiters who simply stand all evening, backs pushed straight against the wall. Pull into any main train station and a dozen unformed men will descend, ready to take your baggage ten feet to the front entrance. Electronic ticket machines are few and far between, despite the length of the queues on the concourse. Instead, ticket clerks fuss behind clear plastic screens.

And yet in certain circumstances, it’s hard to see it happening any other way. In Bombay, hundreds of tiffin-wallahs are responsible for ferrying packed lunched from kitchens, cafes and even housewives to the desks and dens of workers. For want of a travelling lunchbox and a microwave for reheating, they deliver 600,000 meals each day, with a centralised sorting office co-ordinating the whole system. In another area of the city – one that has now become a tourist destination – is Mahalaxmi Dhobi Gat, where hundreds of people create a human washing machine, receiving dirty laundry from Bombay’s restaurants and hotels, scrubbing them and wringing them clean. When labour is so cheap, and jobs are so essential, machines will never interfere with what humans can do.

Neither, however, will India’s trains become any less crowded. As we leave the train at Bandra, the old lady who’d bagsied our seat is thrown off by a woman with a huge bag stuffed with sweetcorn kernels. Now we know, I say. The ladies carriage is not there to protect the men from the women; quite the opposite. With handbags like these, they wouldn’t stand a chance.