Power and Privilege John Sergeant on Tracks of Empire

For many Indians, this may be the greatest legacy of the British Empire.

Their railway network is the biggest in Asia, running on

40,000 miles of track and reaching to every part of the subcontinent.

This is engineering perfectly matched to an epic task, feeding

and serving a sprawling country of more than a billion people.

'And the railways have played a crucial role in all the main chapters of modern Indian history.

The politics, the drama and the excitement which attended the birth of the Indian railways

are still very much relevant today.

'So I'm going to cross the length and breadth of India on these Tracks of Empire

'to discover how and why they were built.

'To try to understand why the simple idea of building a railway created a nation.

'I want to reveal how the railways brought triumph and

'sometimes tragedy to the biggest democracy in the world.'

The railways have always been more than a matter of nuts and bolts.

From the grandeur of their temples to transportation...

It reminds me a bit of the Houses of Parliament!

..to the ingenuity and beauty of their design,

coupled to a brutal pursuit of power.

I'll cross the fault lines of Indian history which lie beneath

the railway tracks in this glorious, impossible country.

I'll see how the empire builders harnessed the power of India

with astounding engineering and the irreducible logic of the timetable.

Looking out over this great sea of humanity, with its scores of languages and its thousands of gods,

what could be more satisfying than saying,

"I don't care, the train has got to arrive at 12.26."

160 years ago, India was a disparate collection of individual states.

Up until the middle of the 19th century, there were really only two ways to travel across most of India.

You could walk, or you could go by bullock cart.

Villages like this would be almost completely isolated.

The railways changed the way that time and space could be measured.

Journeys that could take weeks might be accomplished in hours, and journeys could be undertaken

which before couldn't even have been contemplated.

'And these are the tracks that transformed India,

'the largest single investment undertaken by the British Imperial regime in any colony.

'On my journey, I'll consider how this vast network developed,

'from the origins of its construction to the vital role it plays today.'

By understanding its past, I hope to gain an insight into India's future.

What do the railways tell us about the mindset of empire?

What is it about the railways that has shaped India today?

How is it there are striking similarities

between the way India absorbed railway technology in the 19th century

and the way it's tackling the problems of the 21st century?

I'm heading for Delhi, the most important city in India,

and the beating heart of the great railway network.

From there, I'll travel on to Mumbai and south to Bangalore.

'Delhi became India's capital in 1911, when Calcutta,

'after 140 years, ceased to be the centre of British rule.'

The British were keen to move their capital from Calcutta inland to Delhi.

Better placed strategically, and historically important,

it was the seat of power for the previous grand rulers, the Moguls.

And it was finally the railways which made that possible in 1911.

From this railway junction,

every part of the country could be easily accessible.

Delhi grew into the hub of the railway network,

and it's still from here that the Indian Government holds sway.

Ports were the trading hubs of the nation.

Today it's cities and their railway stations that have opened up the inland sea of India.

Where once all roads led to Rome, now all Indian railroads lead to Delhi.

Trains on 1,278 routes come through here.

Number 2820...

HE SPEAKS IN HINDI

All the tracks from India come to this junction.

So from Mumbai, Calcutta...

Local stations. Yes, it's all the local ones as well,

and it means there are more train movements through this junction than anywhere else, well, in Asia too.

The biggest in India, also the biggest in Asia.

And it was all down to one man,

James Broun-Ramsay, the 1st Marquess of Dalhousie.

He was one of the last of the great Governor-Generals to rule India

before the British Government took over from the East India Company and the Raj was born.

A Scottish aristocrat, he'd been President of the British Board of Trade.

When he arrived in 1848, Dalhousie had plans that would change India forever.

In 1853 he proposed a revolutionary modern railway network

designed to link up the four corners of the subcontinent.

His legacy today stretches all across India.

13 million passengers travel by rail each day.

14,000 trains go through 8,000 stations.

And 1,000 tonnes of freight cross India every minute.

This never-ending succession of arrivals and departures gives off an air of inevitability.

But there are forgotten stories which show how much luck played a part.

The ghosts of the Empire's network still haunt this train graveyard on the outskirts of Delhi.

These machines that once heaved and steamed across India

on Dalhousie's rail lines now rest on a journey to nowhere.

'I've come here to meet an author, journalist and old India hand, Sir Mark Tully,

'who admires the tenacity and efficiency of the Victorian pioneers.'

The British built these things with huge determination.

They built the railway across the Sibi desert,

which is now in Pakistan, at the rate of one kilometre a day.

I remember what was happening on British Rail

when they were modernising the West Coast route, they seemed to be building one kilometre a year then!

And of course there's another thing, I think, which is very much part of the Victorian mind, was this idea of

going forward, of making progress, and building the railways, being part of a great Imperial venture.

'The old trains and carriages tell a story of enterprise,

'not just in India, but across the whole Empire.

'It was enterprise driven by the pursuit of profit.'

In the 19th century, there was no heavy industry in India,

so all the machinery had to be made in Britain and transported 4,000 miles.

Many of these locos started their lives in the factories and workshops of Sheffield or Leeds.

Glasgow's Finnieston crane was specially constructed to load trains onto ships at the Clyde.

Now look at this, this is the engineers, Jessop & Sons, in England, Leicester.

-Engineers, Leicester. And it can lift five tonnes.

-Yes.

And famous for accidents, in particular.

-Well, this is Thomas the Tank Engine, isn't it?

-Yes.

-It says here on it, there we are, look at that, "Engineering, England."

-Yes.

"Newcastle on Tyne." It's amazing that these great big heavy machines, transported all the way.

By 1870, over 1,000 British-built locomotives were puffing their way

across the subcontinent as the network rapidly expanded.

Each mile of track demanded 600 tonnes of material from British factories.

The same ships that brought the railway stock took back raw cotton from the plains of India.

British mills manufactured this cotton into clothing that was returned to India

by sea, and often sold back to those who'd grown and picked it.

British companies made huge profits.

But for the authorities in India, there was something even more

attractive than the millions of pounds worth of Empire Made.

The military advantages of the railway project.

Trade followed the flag, and the flag was made of steel.

The railways in India were hugely popular from the point of view of

military, of moving your troops around the place.

And also they were a symbol of power. That's very important.

These were, in a way, built to impress people, to give the impression of this hugely powerful

nation which has built these and which can therefore, in a sense, have a right, almost, to rule over India.

HORN BLARES

Today the wheel of fortune has turned.

Britain's technical advantage has long disappeared.

It's now Indian workshops who provide the rolling stock for India's nationalised railway.

Why did the Indians put up with the British?

Many Indians formed a partnership with the British.

There's one thing which is absolutely clear about the British Raj, that if there wasn't a partnership

with Indians, the Raj could not have survived. And that is perhaps the key point about it.

'This partnership offered many benefits, not least to the Indian aristocracy, the Maharaja princes.

'Their control over large parts of the country had always been

'acknowledged by the Government in London.

'Making up to the Maharajas was long-established policy.

'The railways would have to go right across the princely states. A deal was vital.

'I'm heading 190 miles south-east of Delhi to what was once

'one of the most powerful princely states of the Raj, Gwalior.'

This is the remains of the branch line from the centre of Gwalior to the Maharaja's palace. This is...

the track ends in a brick wall, but this would have been the railway line which would take

the Maharaja in their magnificent coach right the way through to his palace.

Like many of the princes, the 19th century Maharajas who ruled Gwalior state were true rail fanatics.

In the years since, people have thrown up walls and ripped up the rails,

but traces of the old tracks can still be found, evidence of how the Maharajas were kept on side.

This is obviously where it comes through the wall, and then it sets off towards the palace.

But where does it go?

'The railways quickly became the most obvious symbol of the British Raj.'

Just to hear the tooting sound of a train was a reminder of who was in charge.

The network had been designed by the British, in the interests of Empire,

and was almost entirely run by the British.

But the iron horse quickly became extremely popular with everyone, from Maharajas downwards.

I've got to be careful of snakes, apparently.

The place is riddled with snakes.

I think this is it.

You can see the gap here,

and the train would just come piling through here,

with steam and all the smoke and the sparks, everything.

What a way to... what a way to enter a palace, right?

Just right through, no messing around.

By allowing the railways into their princely states,

local leaders like the Maharaja of Gwalior had accepted the silver shilling.

They had signed up with the British.

Hello.

Well, thank you. Can you open the gate for me? All right.

Thanks very much.

Well, this is some palace, isn't it?

Built in the 19th century, the seat of the Maharajas of Gwalior. Fantastic, isn't it?

Now, we don't have the train, but we do have a picture of a train up against the walls of the palace.

'This accommodation with the occupying power was collusion,

'nationalists might say collaboration, on a grand scale.

The British liked to argue that the Maharajas were aristocrats,

lords of the manor, just like those at home.

As with all the most lasting political deals, it was based on mutual interest.

The Maharajas got the latest technology, the British, control of India.

It's as simple as that.

Everything was done to make sure that the princes were kept on side.

Because it made it so much easier for the British then

to rule the whole country if they didn't have to control, in detail, the princely states.

The Maharajas were very susceptible to flattery.

Anything to do with the Royals or the military, they liked.

Look at this portrait. A red coat, of course, British officer.

The Order of Merit. It's everything to say, "We think you're as good as we are,"

and then for the Maharaja, "I think I'm as good as them."

The palace stands testimony to the power of wealth and prestige.

It also contains one of the best examples of a rich man's fancy.

Imagine that you're here for a grand dinner at the height of the Raj.

Something special is about to happen.

Yeah, it's a train.

The Maharaja is not just interested in trains, he's obsessed by them.

You take a drink off, have a drink, absolutely fine, and then when you've poured out

your drink, you put it back, and it's only when you put it back that the train sets off again.

His showmanship appealed to the British, not least to the Prince of Wales,

who stayed in this palace on his visit to India in 1905.

On his accession to the throne, George V inherited the title Emperor of India.

It was a position only made possible through the acquiescence of the Maharajas.

And what could be a more symbolic display of political unity than a special steam train

to bring the royal guest to the Maharaja's palace?

The Maharajas go back to the 18th century here, but this is the one who was really keen on railways.

We go on further into the modern period, and this was a minister for

railways, and his son is the present Maharaja, now a junior minister.

And it's not surprising that the present Maharaja isn't very keen

to go on about his family's close connections with the British.

For a politician in India today, it's not very good politics to hark back to the Raj.

That's my great-great-grandfather.

'To me, the Maharaja comes across less as His Royal Highness and more as the local MP.'

What did the British give to your family, the Maharajas?

What what was the essence of that relationship from the British to your family?

Well, to be quite honest, there's not much that the British gave us.

-But didn't they give you...

-The British took a lot from India, but I don't think gave very much.

-All right.

-The one thing that they did give to India, which I think is a testimony which stands today as well,

is probably the railway system and the most extensive railway network in this country.

It is the cheapest mode of transport today in the country.

Now, there are some people who would be highly critical

of the role played by the Maharajas and the princely states.

Because they feel that the princes shouldn't have collaborated with the British.

Well, I don't...

I always have a habit, John, of looking forward and not looking back.

-India is...

-Is that because you're embarrassed about the past?

No, I'm not. I'm not embarrassed about the past at all.

I think India is a very robust democracy.

We're a growing economy. And I'm a product of 21st century India.

-But you're still proud to be a Maharaja, you're still proud.

-Well, I'm not. I'm Jiwajirao Scindia.

But do you never talk about yourself as a Maharaja?

-No, I don't.

-The people here treat you very much as the Maharaja.

That may be, but I don't. I never think about it.

The Maharajas may have had a passion for railways, but even princes weren't allowed to run the system.

The British insisted that in India, trains were their business.

Only when independence came were the locals put in charge.

'But in one surprising way, the British made a compromise.'

Close relations between the British occupiers and Indian women had produced offspring, Anglo-Indians.

These half castes, as they were called, weren't wholly accepted by either side.

But thanks to the railways, they weren't left without salvation.

They were taken on by the private companies, and the Anglo-Indians

became the backbone of the railway network.

There was a reluctance to give them high rank, that would have been going too far.

But they were given vital jobs in ticket offices and on the trains as drivers.

Pukka Indians, proud of their superior caste, would have been

cold-shouldered by the railways looking for senior staff.

The Anglo-Indians, such as George Knight, were welcomed with open arms.

Of the Anglo-Indians that you came across in your community, how many of them joined the railways?

About 90%.

-About 90%.

-90%.

-So almost all the men that you knew.

-All Anglo-Indians.

-They were all Anglo-Indians.

And all working on the railways?

-All working on the railways.

-And why was that?

Because at that time, the Anglo-Indians had a hold on the railways.

Yes. It was a place where you could do well.

The Anglo-Indians were looked for,

-as a good worker on the railway.

-But wasn't it...

wasn't it racist to choose you to work on the railways, not on the basis of what you're like,

but on the basis of your background, you know, the fact you're an Anglo-Indian? It seems so strange.

Well, indeed it is.

And what do you think about that now?

My grandfather did it, my father did it, so why should I do it? And I did it.

With the Anglo-Indians and the Maharajas signed up,

and with the benefit of India's inexhaustible supply of cheap labour,

the pace of construction accelerated from the 1880s.

Large work gangs, known as the Navvies of India, pushed deeper into the interior.

Under the supervision of British engineers, native workmen

began to learn industrial skills and trades for the first time.

Blacksmiths, carpenters, riveters, mechanics, their skills being transmitted from Indian to Indian,

moved from one great railway project to another.

They'd soon be building thousands of miles of track every decade.

Protecting this most valuable of Imperial assets became a priority.

Train stations were turned into fortresses.

Lahore station, in what is now Pakistan,

incorporated machine gun turrets into its architectural plans.

The approaches to and from station concourses were kept deliberately open for wide arcs of fire.

And very soon, in the architecture of stations such as Old Delhi, this language of fortification

was incorporated as standard into their design.

For unruly elements, the message was clear - keep off!

Once the railways had been built, the British authorities were determined

that no-one should mess around with the railways.

The strict rules they enforced were really quite amazing.

This is from the Indian Railway Act of 1890.

"If a person unlawfully puts or throws upon or across any railway any wood, stone

"or other matter or thing, or takes up, removes, loosens or displaces any rail, sleeper

"or other matter or thing belonging to any railway, or turns, moves, unlocks

"or diverts any points or other machinery belonging to any railway, he shall be punished

"with transportation for life, or with imprisonment

"for a term which may extend to ten years."

Well, you can't get much tougher than that.

Protected by the full weight of Empire, powered by the Anglo-Indian railway caste,

and built with the hands of an estimated 10 million native labourers,

the Indian railways were soon in full bloom.

Welcome to Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, the city

where the empire builders would construct their crowning glory.

From small beginnings, an awe-inspiring monument

would arise, fit for an Empress and the world's greatest power.

The most extravagant railway station the Empire ever built.

It was called Victoria Terminus, after the Empress herself,

as a celebration of her Golden Jubilee in 1887.

Today it's one of the busiest stations in India.

1,000 trains come through here daily, carrying two million passengers.

'Looking up, you can take in the full majesty of the ticket office.

'No expense was spared by the architect, Frederick William Stevens.

'Boasting Italian marble and stained glass, the edifice took 10 years to build.'

Victorian Gothic. Church and state.

It's great.

It reminds me a bit of the Houses of Parliament.

It's the icing on the cake of British rule.

Impossibly ornate and topped with a statue of Progress.

Whatever you might think of the intentions of those

behind this great structure, you can't accuse them of not trying.

But when it was opened, there were some people who didn't like it at all.

A British commentator writing in the Calcutta Review complained

that it was "wasted on the 1.5 million passengers whose pride" -

would you believe it - "whose pride is to be half naked,

"but are favoured with these luxuries to induce them

"to improve a little upon their domestic architecture."

Well, you can't get more superior than that.

Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India in 1877,

as the Empire was reaching its zenith.

'For the British, it didn't seem to matter that she didn't make a grand tour

'to see the largest number of her subjects in a single country.

'Queen Victoria's power rested not on her physical presence, but on the tracks of her Empire,

'and the bricks and mortar of these secular temples.'

It's the architecture of power and confidence,

deliberately designed to keep the natives in their place.

And the message is obvious - her government, and her government alone, is in charge.

'The railway builders had connected the ports of Bombay,

'Calcutta and Madras with over 4,000 miles of railway track.'

The British had strengthened their grip on India with a high degree of political skill.

But this remarkable transformation, a practical partnership between

power and profit, had only been made possible by what happened right here in Bombay, just 24 years earlier.

High on the walls of VT, as it's called, is a bust in memory

of the founding father of Indian railways, the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie.

He granted licences for companies to build test lines in both Bombay and Calcutta at the same time.

But it was the one in Bombay which got started first,

giving the city a head start to the title, Gateway to India.

This was where it all started, in 1853.

We're travelling on the route taken by the first train to run officially

in India, from Mumbai to what is now one of its suburbs.

For the 400 VIPs on board, it was an occasion for considerable excitement.

They'd been sent off with a band and a 21-gun salute.

Epoch-making? Well, they couldn't have guessed that.

But it was a great moment, and they knew it.

Covering just 21 miles, this first railway line

quickly became a roaring success, carrying half a million passengers in its opening year.

It changed the course of Bombay's future as much as it altered the history of the whole country.

Helped by the railway network, Bombay has grown into the second largest city in the world,

and the biggest in India.

It is now the country's financial capital.

By the turn of the 20th century, 50,000 passengers travelled its urban tracks every day.

For the first time people were able, and even encouraged, to commute in and out of a city to work.

This is where the first official train trip in India ended.

But it wasn't of course the end, it was just the beginning.

But four years after this momentous start, the project ran into its biggest problem.

45 miles south-east of Bombay rises the ridges of the Western Ghats.

Crossing this 2,000-foot mountain range would be

the railway builders' hardest task, and greatest achievement.

It would cost British lives as well as the lives of many more Indians.

One ridge in particular, Bhor Ghat, caused the most difficulty.

To get locomotives up and over the mountain, the railway builders used

dynamite and hand tools, excavating 54 million cubic feet of hard rock.

Engineers would produce 3,000 plans to provide 22 bridges and 25 tunnels.

'Nothing like the constructions of Bhor Ghat had ever been undertaken before anywhere in the world.

'Local railway experts are still excited by the towering achievement of those involved.'

This is a train that's going from Mumbai to what we used to call Madras.

This was a hard section, an inclined trail. Because of the difficulty

in the terrain, the line could not be built

with the same ease as the other lines on the plains.

So it was important that this missing link had to be built,

so that end-to-end connectivity from Mumbai, from Bombay, right up to Madras was possible.

So this effectively is the gateway to Southern India.

-Once you build this line, you can open up the whole of Southern India to trade.

-Precisely.

Bhor Ghat tested the Victorian engineers to the limit of their skills.

With such a steep gradient up these slopes, they had to build a vast reversing station

to enable the trains to navigate the mountainside.

'Welsh and Cornish miners were initially recruited to cut through

'the mountains, but soon, their work was carried out by Indians.'

-They're all so solid, aren't they?

-They have to be, yeah.

Just there's no... you don't feel there's any danger of the sides collapsing or anything?

-No, that's never happened.

-Never happened?

-Doesn't happen.

'For the workmen, it was dangerous and often lethal work,

'toiling under a burning sun or being swept away by monsoon rain.

'The pace of tunnelling was sometimes as slow as four feet a month.

'As a trial of strength and endurance, it was almost Biblical.'

It took about eight years for the entire line to be built.

Because it was so hard and lack of technology that we see today

made it all the more difficult.

But the clever building, the really intelligent building, are these viaducts.

-Yes.

-These are amazing structures, aren't they?

There's no flat piece of land. They had no other way of building it.

-And these are wooden structures, aren't they?

-They are.

Temporary scaffolding for raising the structures.

Like all Indian construction sites of the time,

women and children used head baskets to carry rubble away.

Accidents were common, and the real cost of this engineering project

should be measured in human lives.

In 1861, over 40,000 people were employed on the project.

4,000 were killed in accidents.

That's one in ten.

Accidents have happened and people have fallen to death from the height.

Even when constructing these tunnels like this,

they had to come down from the cliff and they couldn't walk there,

so they had to be suspended and ropes have broken and it has been recorded that they fell to their death.

According to records, three native workmen were considered to be worth one European.

In usefulness as well as replacement value.

'There was no room for moral indignation.

'This was a matter of pounds, shillings and pence.'

British investors raised the vast sums of money that were needed for this project.

But they got a guaranteed return of 5%.

And when the subcontinent was opened up to trade, British business made vast profits.

To the Indian nationalists, it was imperialism at its worst.

They'd gained from the wages of sin.

'Fatal risks were taken, and even if British engineers stood a better chance, they were often unlucky.

'On this hillside, at the remains of a British cemetery close to the Bhor Ghat line,

'there's a graphic reminder of how accident and disease took their toll.

'Malaria and cholera were the most frequent killers,

'with even the fittest of men cut down in their prime.'

"In affectionate remembrance of Charles Henry.

"Will the memory fade?"

Well, it has faded.

Oh, this is sad.

"In memory of Edward, the dearly loved child of Charles and Edith,

"who departed this life aged four years."

Almost certainly from the fever.

That's the terrible scourge of this part of the world at that time.

One engineer was Solomon Treadwell.

He started his career with Brunel, building the steamship Great Eastern

before heading to India to work at Bhor Ghat.

From an established family of British railway contractors,

Treadwell arrived with his wife and children at Bombay in October 1859 to start work at Bhor Ghat.

'But he died just one month later.'

You see, the problem was that when the fever gripped a construction camp,

they didn't know that it was going to be so virulent.

And that proved just a terrible, terrible killer.

'Solomon's wife, Alice, took over.'

With two young children, and despite having no engineering experience,

she became the project manager.

'So much had been invested, and payment only came at the end.

'But she still completed this section against all the odds, on time and under budget.'

Pioneers like Alice Treadwell are the forgotten few who saw this project through.

I wonder, without the local workmen and the single-minded colonials in charge,

could anyone have ever managed to complete such a task?

The Britishers who got this project done, they would have cajoled them,

they would have forced them, they would have used all sorts of things to make it happen.

At the end of it, the line was constructed and the train ran and people who were walking

up the Ghats on foot, they were able to sit in a train and have a comfortable journey.

So the fruits were good. The fruits were sweet.

So somebody has to put in effort and some people have

to give their... had to give their lives.

But I guess that happens in all sorts of projects, this not being any exception.

'The railway builders refused to be daunted, whatever the difficulties.

This was a truly pioneering era. They were in a headlong rush to prove

that even faced with the extremes of India,

technology that was the best in the world would finally win through.

Never, though, anywhere else did the Victorian engineers have to overcome problems

on such a scale as they encountered in India.

100 trains a day now pass through Bhor Ghat.

Any sense of bitterness at the brutal way in which these projects were forced through has now faded.

The railways made cities possible.

Delhi became the nation's new capital, and Bombay an industrial powerhouse.

Along the rail lines, whole communities live and work just a few metres from the tracks.

Their forebears first built these railways,

and now they work in the associated industries

sustained by this river of rail running through their midst.

From the trains, 4,000 bedsheets, 2,000 blankets

and 5,000 pillows need washing every day.

Thousands of portions of food are prepared every morning.

'A local journalist, Rajendra Aklakar, has studied the impact the railways made.'

People think of the railways as giving jobs to people who actually worked on the railways.

But what we're seeing here are all the other people who got jobs.

Why do you need the laundry?

What is so important about the laundry for trains?

So to keep the trains clean,

you've got to have a very efficient laundry system.

1.5 million people are directly employed by the railways.

But it's estimated half a million more work across the country in these related industries.

So the railways brought lots of jobs.

And this is all over India, not just here in Mumbai?

And they want the food from their area?

To taste the whole of India. Get the taste of India, go on the railway all the way through.

-Across the country.

-Amazing. So for some people here,

their whole life really revolves around the railways.

Just off the tracks in Daravi, a leather workshop churns out

400 gloves and 150 toolbags every day for use on the railways.

All this by hand, in one small factory.

OK.

What does that do?

Oh, from tickets, money from the tickets goes in here.

They're amazingly well made. And it's so intricate.

You think, what would they need to be made of in leather

for a railway, and here we are, there's a great pile of things. The money bag, the gloves.

It's a British design?

People think they understand how a railway works and then you realise there are all these extra jobs.

I mean, tens of thousands of jobs created just because of this amazing railway system, isn't it?

-Precisely, yeah.

-And these... and these, all these designs, how old are they?

150 years old?

So what we're seeing here is a whole host of articles all made of

leather, all made in the same way as they always used to be. This is...

-this is for a toolkit.

-Toolkit.

So that's then for Northwest Railways.

So there we are.

Has been for, I should think, many, many years.

Alongside the railway, life in the raw.

It sort of takes your breath away, the contrast between the big city of Mumbai and this.

It looks chaotic, but the more you look at, you look down on it and

it's like looking in the past, it's something which has happened for hundreds and hundreds of years.

I don't know, it's wonderful, but it's also... it's also very shocking.

Having the manpower to operate and support the railways was important.

But so too was running them on time and in good order.

Victorians, with their rules and regulations, gave the railways a sense of purpose.

The railways pioneers didn't baulk at complexity. They embraced it.

And this love of detail lives on.

Even now, on each journey, a record of every passenger is kept -

where they get on and off, their carriage and seat number.

Everything is covered by regulation. How do you travel, for example, with a box of tortoises?

Well, you've got to make sure that their baskets are soaked with sufficient water,

otherwise don't accept the booking. Quite right!

And another thing, make sure their necks do not protrude from the baskets.

All this is an example of that Victorian love of detail,

carried through in the 21st century on the Indian railway.

Railway policy still covers everything.

The contents of every carriage is itemised and classified.

They're talking about all the various things that they've got.

For example, in the compartment, you've got to have one swivel-tag coat hook.

Oh, no, there are 46 of those. A bottle holder. Window curtain with rods. Folding table with brackets.

Automatic door closer. Bay curtain with rods.

And so it goes on. Mirrors and luggage racks, everything.

What's in the doorway, what's in the lavatory, what's in the linen room.

Vestibule bellows, that's quite useful.

That's it. J Sergeant, number 22.

'And class of travel is carefully preserved.

'Air-conditioned first class, sleeper class, second class, unreserved, women only.

'The ticketing system reflects the Empire's obsession with hierarchy,

'and the way that fitted in with the caste system of India itself.'

It's a system of organisation peculiarly suited to running a railway

in a country so diverse and so vast.

'But how do the majority of India's population travel?'

Should I be calmer? Probably. All right, let's go this way.

I can't see any space here! We'll get on.

'The poor, officially about half the population, have always travelled third class.'

So most of the train you reserve with tickets. This is unreserved.

But the key point to remember is that for many of the people here,

the cost of travel is the key for them.

If you can get the cost right down, they'll come. That's it.

It's always been like that on Indian railways, and it still is like that.

'There are hundreds of people packed in here.

'In the days of Empire, conditions were worse. The carriages were often double-decked,

'with no toilets, no drinking water, and no seats until 1885.'

There are people everywhere.

But the doors are open and it's actually not that hot.

It's just very overcrowded.

Thank you!

Third class passengers have always been the most numerous travellers on Indian railways.

'There were 200 million passengers in 1905. One billion in 1946.

'And today, five billion.'

About another hour, isn't it?

I'm now travelling 600 miles south to the city of Bangalore, the powerhouse of modern India.

Bangalore is one of the richest cities in the country, the centre of new technology.

£20 billion worth of IT equipment is exported from here every year.

'And it's the railways which make this trade possible,

'just as they were designed to do so in Lord Dalhousie's earliest proposal

'for a rail network across the subcontinent, all the way back in 1853.'

Freight generates the enormous revenue which subsidises the cheaper passenger tickets.

And it's this freight which today drives the wider Indian economy.

I'm here to find out how the modern Maharajas do business.

Bangalore has become the great computer city of India, where trains meet high tech.

The booming computer business is now the magic carpet of India's economy.

As in the past, it's the vast reserves of cheap labour which gives India its strength.

But the difference now is that the labour has become increasingly skilled.

10,000 tonnes of freight is carried in and out of Bangalore

every day, by 500 freight companies.

India's phenomenal economic growth is being driven by manufacturing and export.

'Yogesh Ariya manages one of the biggest transport companies

'here in Bangalore, and the railway is at its heart.'

It's the lifeline of India. I would say it's the vital part of distribution industry today.

Now the biggest thing happening in Indian railways is the dedicated freight corridors,

where we'll have the tracks only for the freight trains, which the British never built.

Where we'll have only freight tracks, where we have large logistics park,

industrial parks, and large container depots and dry ports.

So this is what the modern India has built and this is what has

transformed the business at a greater height.

160 years ago, it was Dalhousie who first harnessed India

to the iron horse in the railway revolution.

But today, it's the Indian entrepreneurs who benefit from his legacy.

Now, this old railway system and all sorts of other things have made you and your family very rich.

HE LAUGHS

Do you sometimes feel that you are now the exploiters?

You are a successor of those British authorities? Do you ever think that?

India is growing, so you need to grow with India,

and it's just the business mindset, it's the strategies.

Indians are famous worldwide, they are the best strategists, the best analysts.

And the age group which we have between 18 to 35 is the largest in the world today, which are ready

to be entrepreneurs, which are ready to be big industrialists.

HORN BLARES

The more things change, the more things are the same.

What's interesting is that the way that this businessman has been talking is exactly the same way

as a businessman would under the British Raj.

He's talking about the movement of goods, making profits,

making sure the goods arrive on time,

making sure that the system works.

Because the key thing about the Empire

is that it always was, in India, about profits and about trade.

And what's interesting about modern India is that that idea is now central, it's absolutely mainstream.

And what's very interesting is the system through which it flows is the dear old railway system.

So we are back to Tracks of Empire.

All across India, the railways are still vitally affecting the lives

of one billion people in ways which would have delighted their colonial architects.

I think they'd have been pleased.

They'd think, well, these are our successors,

our natural successors, and if they're Indian, well, that's surprising, but they're very good.

'Where previously the concept of time would have varied with distance

'from village to village, now trains all over India come and go on a prearranged schedule.'

Railway clocks punctuate the day, and the old phrases remain.

Going places, racing the clock, and full steam ahead.

Once the railways were established, a modern economy became possible.

The tracks laid originally by the British are now being lined

with fibre optic cable, connecting India's broadband system.

And the Indian railways are now expanding their network to meet the increasing demand.

Progress has been earned the hard way by India.

But now the 40,000 miles of track has helped to turn the country

into a real force to be reckoned with in the global economy.

It's also become, in a very direct sense, a force for good.

This is the world's first hospital on rails.

This train travels to stations deep inside rural India

to deliver life-changing surgery of the most up-to-date kind.

One of the reasons it's been so successful

is that it's part of the trusted fabric of the nation, the railways.

'Zelma Lazarus is the head of the Railway Hospital Project.'

People would, in a way, prefer to have an operation done on a train...

-Certainly.

-..than in a hospital.

-The train is part of their lives.

The hospital is an alien being. It's gone away, it's something, you don't know what's going to happen there.

-The train is theirs.

-Yes.

-It's part of their life, they know it.

And they will connect immediately. They would prefer to come to the train.

100 operations a day can be performed on the train.

The railway has brought science and medicine into India's ancient heartland.

The beneficial effect of this new use of the railway can be dramatic.

Cleft palates were once seen as a curse, and the children who suffered were often hidden from sight.

'Now the train brings access to a simple operation that

'not only transforms a child's life, but the attitudes of family and village.'

THEY TALK IN HINDI

What is she saying, Zelma?

She said that she got the news about the train and she wasn't sure, but she decided to go.

And she's very, very pleased and she's grateful and she says God is good to her.

Yes. How old is the child?

She was the youngest.

-Just three months old.

-Just three months old?

And how well... it looks as if it's healing very well.

Yeah, it is healing very well. Just a bit of scab is there.

-It needs to be cleaned up.

-How pleased is the mother?

SHE TALKS IN HINDI

She's very happy. Her child is going to be beautiful again.

And she's happy she made the decision to go on the train.

So much of what we see today and the life today, putting it simply, depends on the railways, doesn't it?

Yes, I would like to think that. The train is an integral part of village life.

Everything happens when the train arrives.

The vegetables come, the food comes, the people move.

And it connects the world, practically, the world outside the village, it connects.

So it is a way of life.

-That is a revolution, isn't it?

-It is, it is.

The railways are India.

Without them, India wouldn't be India.

'I've travelled the length and breadth of the nation to discover

'the amazing story behind the construction of the railway network.

'I've glimpsed into the heart of a nation that not only depends on its railways, but loves them, too.'

This ceremony is, amazingly, the retirement of a train driver.

Now, doesn't that show you how much pride there is in the Indian railways?

When they retire, they're still in love with the railways,

they want to make a big show of it. It's wonderful.

Working for the railways has become a sign of status and prestige,

because today, it's the railways which provide India with a chance to take on the modern world.

'Hundreds of thousands died in the railways' construction, from accidents and disease.

'But the railway pioneers moved mountains.

'The engineers bridged the largest rivers in the world,

'struck across flood plains and drove through deserts.

'They made great cities and created entire industries, supporting communities across the nation.

'The Victorian engineers brought new technology to harness the strength

'of old India to buttress the might of the British Empire.

'But in the end, they helped a new India to emerge,

'an independent India, proud and free.'

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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