Revenues from spitting not a piddly amount

The Rs 13,000 reportedly mopped up by a single railway station in West Bengal—Santragachi—in a mere six hours as fines for spitting shows how the reluctance of Indians to eschew their favourite pastime can prove to be very profitable for cash-strapped public services. Various reports on railway ‘earnings’ from spitting-related fines show that over Rs 5 lakh is routinely collected every month by Eastern Railway authorities alone from intransigent saliva regurgitators at stations— a figure undoubtedly worth salivated over.

It is curious that despite hikes in fine amounts and many nationwide awareness campaigns by Indian Railways and state governments warning people about the pecuniary perils of illegal expectoration, Indians continue to spray available surfaces with several types of body fluids including paan-dyed spittle.

Spitting even found resonance in Parliament in 2015—not as an activity, of course, but as a national menace that needed urgent intervention—yet there has been little progress in curbing the urge to splurge saliva. Given the sheer number of stations in India under various regional railway divisions, the potential annual moolah from sputum fines cannot be ignored. The Railways would do well to quietly identify the most splattered stations—as revenue centres—and not just proudly highlight the cleanest ones.