By George Mutholil
Rome, Jan 30, 2026: Who doesn’t enjoy a ride on the Vande Bharat trains in India? It is on par with some of the world’s best train services in terms of convenience, cleanliness, and service.
I enjoyed a trip in the Executive Class with revolving chairs that allowed me to relish the sunset over the backwaters of Kerala as we travelled from Kochi to Thiruvananthapuram.
So, it came as a surprise when I watched a viral video widely shared online, showing a group of young men placing wooden logs and cement pillars on railway tracks, causing a Vande Bharat Express to stop.
Were they merely miscreants, or were they challenging the culture behind these trains?
The incident reminded me of another scene at Kerala’s Kozhikode railway station where I was waiting for an Express train. It was evening, and workers returning home had no option but board a crowded, unclean, and poorly attended passenger train. I saw men and women crossing tracks illegally just to board from the other side and secure a seat.
The rich-poor divide on the Rails
The crucial question arises: Are the Vande Bharat trains reinforcing India’s growing rich-poor divide, favoring the affluent and upper-middle class while sidelining the lower-middle class and the poor?
Statistics are stark. The top 1 percent of Indians owns roughly 40–41 percent of total wealth. The top 5 percent hold around 60 percent, while the bottom 50% own only about 3–6% of total wealth.
According to the World Inequality Report, in 2021 the top 10% of Indians earned 57% of the national income, whereas the bottom 50% earned only 13%. More recent data indicate that the richest 1% earned around 22.6% of national income in 2022–23. A G20 inequality report noted that India’s top 1% increased their wealth share by 62% between 2000 and 2023. Clearly, the richest have grown significantly wealthier, even as the income share of lower groups stagnates or shrinks.
It is in this context that we must critically examine the fanfare surrounding the Vande Bharat trains, inaugurated by the Prime Minister himself on 15 February 2019. While reports suggest there are now at least 164 such trains, one must ask: Are there simultaneous developments in ordinary trains for the very poor?
Development for whom?
Larger debates are urgently needed. Amidst the hype surrounding India’s economy, it is not always easy to separate the wheat from the chaff. Official statements and some government figures claim that India has become the world’s fourth-largest economy in nominal GDP terms, overtaking Japan with a GDP of around $4.18 trillion (2025 estimates). Yet what is rarely highlighted is that India’s per capita income remains far below that of advanced economies, a stark reminder that aggregate rankings do not reflect average living standards.
Even more concerning, despite the overall economic size, India ranks 130th out of 193 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI) — a composite measure of life expectancy, education, and income per capita. India thus remains in the medium development category, far behind several countries with smaller GDPs. Those worst affected are the indigenous people, tribals, and fishermen, whose lands are often taken for “development” while they remain impoverished. One concrete example is the Great Nicobar Island Project, which critics warn will cause large-scale ecological damage and adversely affect the lives, lands, and cultures of the Shompen and Nicobarese communities.
Reflection on Development Models
Next time you travel on a Vande Bharat train, we must ask: At what cost? At whose cost? This should prompt reflection on the development model being promoted by a government that claims to serve the poor, but in reality may not.
Environmentalist Sunita Narain offered a timely warning:
“The western model of growth that India and China wish to emulate is intrinsically toxic. It uses huge resources — energy and materials — and generates enormous waste… India and China have no choice but to reinvent the development trajectory.”
Do we really listen?
Regarding the question: “Are the Vande Bharat trains reinforcing India’s growing rich-poor divide, favoring the affluent and upper-middle class while sidelining the lower-middle class and the poor?”, the answer is even in socialist and communist countries the affluent and upper-middle classes are given preferential treatment. So there is nothing surprising in Vande Bharat phenomenon. Even ‘Premium Tatkal’ (three times the charge of Tatkal fare) have been devised by the Railways (read the Union Government) to cater to these two classes. At least this will stop encroachment of reserved compartments by unauthorized people!
Regarding the observation that the so-called modern development eats up huge resources — energy and materials — and generates enormous waste, it’s absolutely correct and will lead to much faster depletion of natural resources than our all-knowing and omnipotent politicians can visualize. It could be they behave like Dhritarashtra pretending not to see. West Bengal is one such case where water bodies on Eastern Bypass have been vanishing very fast. The devastating fire at two warehouses on Nazirabad Road, off EM Bypass near Anandapur, early on Republic Day morning, where Police have recovered 25 body parts and received 27 missing-person complaints so far, is a case in point. These warehouses belonging to a well-known Momo brand, were built on illegally built on water bodies which used to served as the lungs of Kolkata, including promotion of fishes and natural vegetation. Most of these water bodies have now been converted into real estates thanks to builder-politician nexus.