Great- GREEN Flag to the train connecting Mumbai and Rajasthan.
- Railway travel in Rajasthan
* At the time of independence, Rajasthan was an extremely water scarce state, without facilities of irrigation, devoid of industries, lacking in education as well as commercial activities. Lack of employment as well as agriculture has lead to a large scale migration from Rajasthan to almost all the regions of India. Migration to almost all regions took place including Mumbai, Kolkata, MP, Karnataka, TN, even Assam and NE states.
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more... Rajasthan Railway network was predominantly MG (Excepting 400kms of BCT-NDLS BG line and a few small stretches of other Rly lines. Major cities like Jaipur, Jodhpur, Ajmer, Bikaner, Udaipur, Bhilwara, Abu Rd etc all were on MG network. Kota was the only inportant city on BG network. Rly network facilitated rail travel only for intra-Rajasthan & to Delhi/Ahmedabad to some regions of Gujrat, Haryana, MP, & AP.
*However after construction of Rajasthan (Indira Gandhi) canal, scenario has changed a lot and the trend of abnormally high migration from Rajasthan has stopped.
* Due to very poor Rly connectivity with rest of India, the journey to home town was very difficult for the Rajasthanis migrated to far off states as multiple changing of the trains were required. As a result a large number of these Rajasthanis (especially the further generations) gradually got detached from their Rajasthani-roots.
* But after Gauge conversion, the rail travel to/from Rajasthan has got revolutionised and today there is train from major cities of Raj like JP/JU/AII/BKN (& Kota) to almost all the major destinations/states of our country. UDZ shall also get more benefits once UDZ-ADI G/C is completed in next few years.
* Many direct trains from various cities of Rajasthan to Mumbai, Kolkata, Guwahati, Banglore, Chennai, were a result of GC of Rajasthan MG network. The proposed train is just one more feather in the beautiful cap (rather crown) of Rajasthan!!