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Journalism of Courage
For the last five decades, 80-year-old Gaamiben Patni has been selling fruits outside the main train station of Ahmedabad.
A quick look at the locality and the congestion and the crowd of Kalupur stand out but that never seemed to bother Gaamiben, who has a family of five to fend for, until a few weeks back when a seemingly simple government notification triggered tension.
Hers is not the only story as the fate of hundreds of vendors have been tied together by the virtue of the place where they earn their livelihoods — in and around the Ahmedabad Railway Station.
The notification was issued by the Commissioner of Police, Ahmedabad, recently.
Due to the redevelopment of the Ahmedabad Railway Station premises, one side of the main road between Kalupur and Sarangpur Circle will remain closed for three years till September 10, 2027, said the notification.
The traffic has been diverted to three roads. The routes of seven buses of BRTS (Bus Rapid Transit System) Janmarg were also changed. A total of 1,516 trips of 161 AMTS (Ahmedabad Municipal Transport Service) buses were also impacted by the road closure.
Under the project, a new set of buildings and related infrastructure will be constructed. However, this is set to affect livelihoods.
“Earlier, I never faced problems in doing business…but things have been difficult since the road closure,” says Gaamiben, whose husband died five years ago.
“I raised five children on the income I gathered after selling fruits to passengers at the railway station. Now, more struggles have come my way at this age. If the situation gets worse, I don’t know how I’ll feed my family.”
When asked if her children won’t support her, she said that her “children still ask for money”.
Gaamiben lives in Meghaninagar and walks for almost an hour to reach Kalupur every day. She sets up her fruit stall around 9 am and wraps up her work by 6 pm.
She rues that her sales has “plummeted sharply” now compared to when she used to sit near the railway station’s exit gate.
Being forced to move to the opposite side of the road due to the ongoing construction, her apples and bananas are finding fewer takers.
Her business fell drastically after the 200 metre stretch of road in front of the railway station, largest in Gujarat, was constricted into a one way for the redevelopment of the station by the Railway Land Development Authority (RLDA).
Over a hundred shops and other businesses lining the road and interior areas opposite the railway station, all running allied services catering to railway passengers, have seen a drastic impact in the last one week after the partition walls to separate the road for redevelopment were put up on September 11.
The redevelopment of Ahmedabad Railway Station is taking place at the cost of Rs 2,383.59 crore and the contract was awarded to Dinesh Chandra Group and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Joint Venture on June 6 during the second tender.
The first tender was discharged in May 2023 after the bids were too high.
Notably, the new station has been designed keeping in mind the peak demand in 2075, which is expected to be around 3.2 lakh visitors per day. This is apart from the individual traffic for the Ahmedabad- Mumbai High Speed Rail (Bullet Train) and the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar Metro Rail.
Shamshad Shaikh, whose tyre repair shop has been in the area for 40 years, says , “Chaar anna dhandha, baarah anna kharcha ho raha hai (We are earning four annas and spending 12 annas on the business). Nowadays, we keep on sitting at the shop for the whole day only to go home with pennies. This started happening ever since they put up these metal sheets.Our earnings have been impacted and we cannot do anything about it.”
Shaikh (50) is referring to the metal partition walls surrounding the construction site for the redevelopment of the railway station. This has left only a small passageway through which only one two-wheeler can pass at a time.
Flipping hot chapatis on a blazing stove, Jagdishkumar Marwadi, who runs an eatery called ‘Shrinath Bhojnalay’, gives a call to passersby, coaxing them to step in and have a bite before moving on.
“I opened this business less than a year ago. The business is down. We need Rs 3,500 to reach the daily cost, and are struggling to reach this amount. Earlier, our daily collection was Rs12,000,” he says.
Shopkeepers ask why the partitions “were not put phase wise” to reduce the impact on local businesses.
However, an official of the Indian Railways, on condition of anonymity, says “We put up the partition walls only when they were absolutely necessary.”
“They were put up on September 11 and wasting any time, work started early morning on September 12,” he added.
For 30-year-old Hitesh Pandit, venturing into his first enterprise, this redevelopment has been an unmitigated disaster. Sitting on the stairs of his fast food joint with the shutter half closed, Pandit is despondent. Having rented the premises only three months ago, Pandit had spent Rs 3 lakh on its renovation.
“Our business runs on breakfast sales from early morning customers. But since these partition walls were put up and all the streetlights from the divider removed, there is no light. Nobody ventures here due to the darkness. My business opens at 4 am, now nobody comes here till midday. Who wants to eat breakfast at lunch time?”
His elder brother Sandip who has been running an eatery here for the last 15 years, has, for the first time, had to post a man with a megaphone right near the ‘no entry’ signboard for the project. The man’s job is to advertise Sandip’s shop and draw customers to buy unlimited lunch at Rs100.
After his business “went behind the wall”, against a daily sale of 300 plates, he said it has come down to 150 plates. Sympathising that the “redevelopment was indeed causing pain”, a senior official of the Railways said that the “lack of space had led to difficult decisions especially when all options had been exhausted”.
“We made an elevated parking and corridor in the area first. Also, built a 50 metre road temporarily. Alternative roads and exits have been opened. We closed some areas only after all this was done”, the official said.
The railway station at Kalupur has on one end the Sarangpur Circle with the Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statue. The station has two pairs of ornate minarets belonging to mosques, at both ends which make the structure unique.
Railway officials describe this project as perhaps the most “comprehensive redevelopment in the country’s railway system”. “Having to demolish large buildings while taking extreme caution to not damage heritage structures or impact the construction of bullet train is proving a tough nut to crack,” the official said.
According to a project document shared by Senior PRO Pradeep Sharma of the Western Railway (WR), the Multi-Modal Transit Hub (MMTH) will be a mammoth 2.47 lakh square metres which includes the 90,460 square metres of railway station itself with segregated arrival and departure areas.
Additionally, it will have parking areas with car lifts, railway offices, ticketing counters, commercial spaces for four-star hotels, three pick up and drop off points, an elevated road network and two parcel handling buildings connected via a tunnel. Two Railway Over Bridges have also been planned over on the Kalupur and Sarangpur sides of the station.
Other features of the redevelopment include a solar plant on the roof, in-house sewage treatment facility, security upgrades, EV charging points, heritage sensitivity and interconnectivity with the metro and bullet train networks.
At the zonal level, planning for the diversion of trains to other stations is underway, which is a major undertaking in itself considering that Ahmedabad is the largest railway station in Gujarat and is located in the heart of the state.
With planned redevelopment of the platforms to begin with numbers seven, eight and nine, the timings of several trains are expected to change while others are likely to be diverted or their origination and destination points with changes likely in November or December. However, there is still no official confirmation on this.
The Sidi Bashir Mosque located opposite Sarangpur Water Tank near the entrance of Ahmedabad Railway Station is famous for its shaking minarets at Jhulta Minar, which have been built with bricks. Near the other pair of the shaking minarets, made of stone, at the other end of the railway station is where Malik Sarang Dargah is located: both remind of the city’s heritage and protected monuments.
Advisor at Gujarat Vidyapith Ahmedabad, Debashish Nayak, who has been involved in conservation of several historic cities for decades tells The Indian Express, “There were several minarets in Ahmedabad and most of them would shake because of the soil composition.”
“After the 1819 earthquake, many minarets in the old city collapsed, including the Jama Masjid’s. The two pairs of minarets around the railway station are near the entrance and the exit of the railway station. The actual mosque of the one near the entrance is no longer in sight,” Nayak says.
The railways want to redevelop Ahmedabad station while retaining the brick minarets. The minaret is said to be within the campus of the redeveloped railway station. According to the sources, the redevelopment work of the railway station will take place 100 metre away from the minarets, marked as protected monuments by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI).
Ruling out any funding from the railways for restoration or conservation of these minarets, Dr AMV Subramanyam from Vadodara circle of ASI tells The Indian Express, “All the restoration and preservation work of ASI monuments is done by ASI only. Also, conservation of these minarets is not required at the moment.”
Sources in the Heritage Department reveal that a heritage impact assessment by a team of experts, including those from IIT Madras, of these monuments had submitted its report last year.
-With inputs from Ritu Sharma
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