Lives on the Edge: Inside Vidarbha’s Railway Track Settlements

Lives on the Edge: Inside Vidarbha’s Railway Track Settlements

The morning routine begins before dawn at railway settlements across Vidarbha. Women rise in near darkness to fetch water, a task that demands traversing railway lines where trains rumble past every few minutes.

In settlements near Nagpur and Amravati, families wake to sounds that form the backdrop of their existence. The whistles of approaching locomotives, the rhythmic clatter of wheels on tracks, and the mechanical grinding of brakes.

This is daily life for thousands of residents who have built their homes on or adjacent to railway land across the region.

Nagpur, the second capital of Maharashtra, houses roughly 858,000 people in slums distributed across 446 notified and non-notified slum areas. Many of these settlements cluster along the Central Railway network that runs through the city.

According to housing studies conducted on Nagpur's urban poor, nearly 36 per cent of the city's population lives in slum areas with poor basic facilities and insecure legal tenure.

Among these vulnerable populations, those residing near railway lines face compounded hazards that shape every aspect of their existence, from the moment they wake until they retire at night.

Physical Proximity and Daily Navigation

The architectural reality of railway settlements defies conventional urban planning. In locations across Vidarbha, some structures stand mere feet from active railway tracks.

Makeshift shelters constructed from bamboo, plastic sheeting, corrugated metal sheets, and salvaged wood materials create homes that blur the boundary between residential space and railway infrastructure.

Families cook, sleep, and raise children in these structures, which offer minimal protection from weather or railway operations.

Water collection in these settlements involves a complex negotiation with railway geography. Women and children must cross tracks to reach communal taps or water sources, a journey that requires constant vigilance. The process of fetching water, once a routine domestic task, becomes a calculated risk assessment.

In Mumbai's railway slums, residents have described the anxiety of carrying water containers on their heads while trying to monitor trains approaching from both directions on adjacent tracks. They wake at four in the morning specifically to avoid daytime train frequency, but even this timing provides no guarantee of safety. With multiple family members requiring water for cooking and washing, women may make several journeys to the same tap, each crossing presenting the same hazard anew.

Sanitation access compounds these challenges. In many railway settlements, residents lack designated toilet facilities. The tracks themselves become places where residents conduct essential bodily functions, moving between rails when trains approach.

This practice generates multiple risks. The immediate danger of collision, the difficulty of escaping quickly from between tracks, and the constant psychological strain of timing movement to train schedules. Menstruation and the care of young children create particular vulnerabilities, as women cannot easily flee if trains arrive unexpectedly.

Noise, Sleep, and Physical Well-being

Scientific research examining noise pollution near railway lines reveals what residents of Vidarbha's railway settlements experience nightly.

Studies of railway-adjacent slums have documented noise levels reaching 120 decibels during train passages, with continuous exposure well above the Central Pollution Control Board's permissible limit of 55 decibels for residential areas.

At such volumes, sound becomes not merely disruptive but physically damaging. The World Health Organisation identifies 55 decibels as the threshold beyond which health risks, including sleep disruption, anxiety, cardiovascular disease, and impaired cognitive functioning, manifest.

In Vidarbha, where trains operate frequently on major routes connecting Nagpur to cities like Akola, Amravati, and beyond, residents experience repeated nocturnal disturbances. The effect accumulates across time.

Sleep fragmentation resulting from railway noise activates stress responses in the body independently of conscious awareness.

Heart rates elevate, cortisol levels rise, and the restorative functions of sleep diminish even when residents do not consciously remember waking.

Children in these settlements grow up with disrupted sleep architecture, affecting their capacity to learn and concentrate during school hours.

Healthcare Vulnerability

Railway settlements across Vidarbha exist within a region facing significant public health challenges.

Childbirth in railway settlements presents particular medical risks. Women often deliver with minimal prenatal care and frequently without skilled attendance.

The stress associated with constant railway noise exposure and anxiety about safety generates measurable physiological impacts on pregnancy outcomes. Maternal health indicators in Vidarbha remain concerning, reflecting these combined deprivations.

Children born in railway settlements encounter educational barriers from infancy. Early childhood development suffers when sleep disturbance is chronic, nutrition is inadequate, and home environments are characterised by constant hazards.

Schools in Nagpur and surrounding cities remain distant from many railway settlements, requiring children to navigate railway crossings to reach classrooms.

This distance translates into reduced school attendance, as younger siblings require supervision, household labour demands children's participation, and the walk itself takes time unavailable in households where survival-related work consumes all available hours.

The experience of playing in railway settlements differs fundamentally from childhood in other environments. While children everywhere engage in play, children in railway settlements must simultaneously monitor trains. No recreational space exists free from railway operations.

The constant vigilance required during outdoor play creates psychological impacts that extend beyond immediate physical danger.

Adults in these settlements report ongoing anxiety about children's safety, describing incidents of near-misses when young children wandered onto tracks or misread approaching train sounds.

School participation suffers further when families experience residential instability or when children fall into informal child labour.

In settlements lacking employment alternatives, children may accompany parents to work sites or engage in street-based commerce. Access to education becomes irregular, undermining learning progression.

Housing Precarity and Environmental Hazards

Railway settlements occupy land where residents possess no legal property rights. Structures exist at the sufferance of railway authorities and municipal governments, subject to demolition orders issued with minimal notice.

Some settlements have existed for decades while remaining unauthorised, creating a persistent state of potential displacement.

The unauthorised status prevents residents from investing significantly in structural improvements, leading to continued reliance on materials offering minimal protection.

Fire risk in railway settlements remains elevated.

Structures crowded together with minimal space between them, constructed from highly flammable materials, and heated by cooking fires conducted over open flames, create conditions where fire spreads rapidly.

A single accident or careless moment can destroy an entire settlement cluster. The narrowness of lanes between structures impedes escape routes and prevents fire service access. Residents maintain awareness of fire risk but lack resources to eliminate the conditions creating the hazard.

Flooding presents another seasonal hazard in settlements located near water bodies or in topographically vulnerable locations within Vidarbha cities. Drainage systems constructed to serve formal urban areas often bypass informal settlements, leaving these areas vulnerable to water accumulation during heavy rainfall.

The June–September monsoon season brings consistent concern about flooding that might destroy accumulated possessions and compromise shelter.

Despite hazards that would seem intolerable to external observers, railway settlements persist and expand as migration continues to bring rural residents to Vidarbha's cities seeking employment. The combination of proximity to work, low or zero housing costs on unauthorised railway land, and established social networks makes railway settlements attractive relative to more distant authorised housing.

Families adapt to hazards through routines and practices that minimise but never eliminate risk. Experienced residents develop knowledge about train schedules, allowing them to anticipate which times require heightened caution.

Children learn before they can fully understand that railway tracks are dangerous, incorporating threat assessment into their developing understanding of the environment they inhabit.

Community bonds in railway settlements often prove strong, with residents sharing information about dangers, resources, and survival strategies. Religious observances, informal governance structures, and rotating credit groups provide social cohesion that makes life in precarious circumstances bearable.

Yet these strong internal communities function within external conditions characterised by limited access to formal services, minimal legal protections, and systematic vulnerabilities shaped by the simple fact of residence adjacent to or on railway land.

The lives of people living near train tracks in Vidarbha represent one dimension of urban poverty in Maharashtra's second-largest city and surrounding region.

Their existence reflects patterns of rural-to-urban migration meeting infrastructure that accommodates such movement only through informal arrangements, and economic systems that generate insufficient formal employment for migrants seeking work.

Railway settlements embody the spatial and social marginalisation that accompanies poverty in Indian cities, where residents navigate daily between the necessity of urban residence and the hazards inherent in that residence.

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