How Indian Railways coped with displacement and staff shortage after the Partition

In the years after Independence, Indian railway workers faced many challenges. The first and most immediate of these emerged in the aftermath of Partition and had to specifically do with staffing. During the crisis, a majority of the running staff and skilled workshop labour left India for Pakistan. While many Hindu and Sikh railway workers came to India from Pakistan, a majority of these were clerical staff. This created a twinned problem of staff shortages in some areas and surpluses in others.

To manage the shortages, Indian Railways dramatically expanded recruitment, instituted intensive training programs, recalled retired staff members, reassigned skilled railway workers, posted railway workers on temporary assignments and finally, relaxed criteria for promotions. All these measures, however, created great challenges for the railway workers.

For existing workers, it created new responsibilities as new recruits required guidance, especially when usual training schedules were no longer available. The challenges were also great for the new recruits who had to take on difficult jobs, often without sufficient training. A glimpse into the difficulties and challenges faced by Indian railway workers at this moment comes from the memoirs of DV Reddy. Reddy described the accelerated recruitment and training procedures he introduced at Moradabad in United...

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