Paper short abstract:

The paper studies policing challenges associated with fragmentation of jurisdiction between different layers of authority. By focusing on the unique disposition of centrally-governed railway spaces in the city, it explores the impact and outcomes that this holds for the city, the railway system and its users.

Paper long abstract:

Existence of multiple layers of governance (federal/regional/local) and consequently, of policing, are often sites with contested or taut balances of access, control and power. Railway spaces are particularly challenged here, harbouring a utility known widely for its enhanced public access and use, and a technology that is inherently rigid, land-bound and continuous. From its colonial inception, as the railway interfaced with the local and regional as also sped away from them, its related policing challenge has attempted to ease itself into territorial and jurisdictional fragmentation such as those under the District Police, Government Railway Police (GRP) and the Railway Police Force (RPF). This has been a forever uncomfortable arrangement, as indicated by the long drawn history of discord between the GRP and the RPF regarding authority and accountability.

What does this mean for the city? A lot. As the case of Mumbai indicates, this tangled jurisdiction has on the one hand allowed for the city to slip in (though precariously) and claim the railway's resources for shelter and commerce, but has also confounded the grave inadequacy of response to railway accidents along these suburban lines, which claim hundreds of lives every year. Through a qualitative study of particular railway vicinities, the study unravels some of these. It also traces various people's initiatives and vigilante trends that have stepped in to interface the resulting governance and accountability crisis (limited not just to policing), and observes critically how these reveal economic, social and spatial dynamics amidst a supposedly coherent constituency of commuters.