To my knowledge, as a retired Railway official, what the Railway Minister has meant in his comments about ending the “VIP culture” in the Railways is to end the practice of having “bungalow peons” and “personal peons”, a reminder of the British legacy where senior British railway officers used people to cater to their personal needs (“Railways move to end decades-old VIP culture”, October 9). Undoubtedly, the number of ‘staff’ in this category should be about a lakh of people or about 10% of the staff strength in the Indian Railways. They still accompany senior officers on their travels and are generally used to look after the officer’s personal belongings. In officers’ bungalows, they are asked to clean floors, wash clothes, take care of children and guard the premises. They are hardly seen in offices.
Now that the Railway Minister has made clear his intention to stop this, it will be bitter news for those in the Indian Railways who enjoyed life all this while by wasting public money in this undesirable manner.
Subramanian Nagarajan,
Chennai