Indians stuffed in train toilets, China moves billions with little fuss

India is a land of diversity and diverse are the images it throws up. If there are the shiny, comfortable Vande Bharats, there are the overcrowded express and mail trains. Videos and images of people packed like sardines in coaches emerge every holiday season, when millions get added to the number of regular travellers. It isn’t that India hasn’t added to its rail capacity, and these images tell a bigger story, which goes even beyond the railways.
The pictures of the festive rush, particularly in October-November, in India are in sharp contrast to what emerges from China during its annual Lunar New Year holiday in the month of February.
So high is the number of travellers during China’s Spring Festival, which is the world’s largest annual migration.
In February 2024, domestic travel traffic on Lunar New Year eve saw an increase by 27% as compared to 2023, according to a Xinhua report. The Chinese news agency said 195 million trips were taken across the Chinese transport system.
Rail traffic roughly doubled to 8.2 million trips, Xinhua reported. This is one half of the story, and we will get back to the other half after a comparison with the Indian railway system.
In India, as is routine, pictures of overcrowded trains started emerging close to Diwali, when people travel to their hometowns. The rush continues through Chhath and when people return to cities where they work. Most of the packed trains are Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh-bound, states that see most migrant labourers and celebrate these festivals with gaiety.
The festive season also coincides with the sowing of the Rabi season, when migrant labourers in thousands flock to the big farmlands of Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

During Chhath, an important festival in Bihar, lakhs of people travel to Bihar, causing trains to be overcrowded. (Image: PTI)

In October, a crowd of passengers gathered to board an unreserved train at Bandra Terminus, leading to a stampede that resulted in 10 people being injured.
“A thousand Vande Bharats cannot erase this blot on Indian Railways that manifests at the same time every year. The minister knows it, the babus know it, yet they do nothing because the poor man has no dignity in this fairyland,” satirist and columnist Kamlesh Singh posted on October 28 on X.
The post by Singh, popular as ‘Tau’ on AajTak Radio’s Teen Taal podcast, was accompanied by video in which people were seen travelling in the packed toilet of an overcrowded Bihar-bound train. The post went viral and also saw angry reactions from people, who pointed out the challenges faced by India.
No one is arguing against Vande Bharats. Indians need more trains like Vande Bharat, but the country also needs to fix the way millions travel, be it on suburban trains or on regular trains during the festive season. That’s what begs the comparison with China, which overhauled its rail network in the span of a decade.
“Those pointing out the sheer number and capacity constraints, please study how China manages the festival rush. Nearly 200 million people take a trip home and back. It used to be messy as hell like it is here. But then they decided that enough is enough and fixed it,” Singh replied.
In India, between October 1 and November 3, the railways ferried around 65 lakh passengers on 4,521 special trains, said Railway Ministry data.
The Indian Railways is the prime transporter of long-distance migrants.
The railways added 175 daily special trains that have made 7,724 trips during this festive season.
The trains are all for Bihar and UP from cities, including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Bhopal.
Though Bihar has seen multiple Union rail ministers from the state, what they have all done is just add trains as part of their populist politics. Trains can’t be added beyond a point when tracks are saturated.
Tackling the festive rush needs more special unreserved trains, like Jan Sewa, Antodyay, and Jansadharan, and expresses with more general coaches. However, the insertion of special trains into the already packed railway schedules results in their mistreatment and lower priority, leading to significant delays. Overcrowding is a persistent, and not a seasonal problem. Passengers in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh, lacking enough trains, have been encroaching upon reserved seats for decades. People can still be seen travelling on bus rooftops in some parts of Bihar.
India sees widening of highways to add capacity, but railway tracks haven’t been expanded beyond double lines, especially in Bihar and most of Uttar Pradesh, two of the three most-populous states.
For example, the highly-used Delhi-Howrah line, passing through UP and Bihar (via Gaya and Patna), still remains a double line, resulting in massive bottlenecks at Kanpur Central, Prayagraj Junction and Pandit Deen Dayal Junction. However, the Railways is building two Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) to take load off these tracks and keep them mostly for passenger trains, which is a welcome move.
Parts of the WDFC have already been made operational.

The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor would start at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and end at Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai, while the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor would start in Punjab’s Ludhiana and terminate at West Bengal’s Dankuni. (Image: Ministry of Railways)

Not long ago, perhaps until the 1980s, China was notorious for its festive overcrowding in February. But it has worked and managed it in the last two decades. It developed the world’s largest high-speed rail network in just a decade, according to a Xinhua report of 2017, thus “halving travel time for otherwise gruesome cross-country trips”. High-speed rail was introduced in China in 2003, and now boasts a network of more than 46,000 kilometres.
Now, it is time for the other half of the story.
Though China saw a near-doubling of rail travellers, the bulk of the traffic was on the highways, according to Xinhua. Over 184 million road trips were made on the eve of the Lunar New Year in 2024.
Though India has added highways at a breakneck speed, it doesn’t make economic sense for the migrant labourers to be driving back home. This is where the per capita GDP of the two countries, which shows the relative financial strength, is worth having a look at.

In the last two decades, China has invested heavily on a series of initiatives to improve transportation infrastructure and reduce congestion. (Images: Getty)

Per capita vehicle ownership is also higher in China than in India. In 2009, China became the world’s largest new-car market. China has 231 motor vehicles per thousand people, while it is approximately 57 for India.
However, it is the road network that facilitates more self-driven travel during the Lunar New Year holiday than in India during the festive season. This also takes the dependency off the railway and aviation network in China.
At $25,015, China’s annual per capita GDP is nearly 2.5 times higher than India’s ($10,123). A Rs 250 ticket for a 999 km journey from Delhi to Patna is, therefore, an easy choice, even at the expense of the migrant’s dignity and comfort being compromised. A video of passengers even ingeniously tying ropes to make a hammock-like seat between two berths on a crowded Bihar-bound train, went viral on social media.
Per capita vehicle ownership is also higher in China than in India. In 2009, China became the world’s largest new-car market. China has 231 motor vehicles per thousand people, while it is approximately 57 for India.
However, it is the road network that facilitates more self-driven travel during the Lunar New Year holiday than in India during the festive season. This also takes the dependency off the railway and aviation network in China.
Air travel for most during the festive season, when ticket prices are unusually high, makes no sense for the migrants either.
The number of air travellers during China’s 2024 Lunar New Year holiday also shot up by 138% to 1.8 million, Xinhua reported. This is just for domestic flights, and China also sees a boom in international air travel during the Spring Festival.

In India, as the dynamic ticket pricing takes train fares close to airfare, the lack of airplanes makes air ticket prices skyrocket.
“Every year, I travel to Bihar for Chhath, but the rising airfare to Darbhanga takes the joy out of the trip. The cost often exceeds Rs 1 lakh for a family, making us reconsider whether visiting home is worth it when international trips to the US or Europe cost about the same,” Monalisa, who landed in North Bihar’s Darbhanga Airport for Chhath, told news agency IANS.
The Darbhanga airport has come up under the Udaan scheme, which limits the number of airlines operating at a particular airport. Though there’s a price cap, airlines have gamed the system.
India needs to augment rail capacity as it boosts both the air and road network. Railways need to grow even as the load is shared by a boost in road and air travel.
India is a growing economy that is reaping a demographic dividend. The internal consumption of the country, because of the sheer number of people, keeps the engine revving. It’s the same people that need to be taken care of. Though India’s situation and capabilities are different from China’s, the will and determination can bring about a difference. And train toilets can be used for what they are really meant for.