Of the many quirks India has sacrificed at the altar of modernity, one will surely not be missed: the raw sewage scattered along railway tracks, even inside train stations.

It will not disappear overnight, nor will the rats, the rubbish and the people defaecating by the side of the tracks. However, by 2011, the Railways Minister has pledged, “green” toilets with storage or septic tanks on board will replace the holes in the floor on the 36,000 carriages in the country.

Lalu Prasad Yadav announced the £520 million plan on Tuesday in an overtly populist railway budget designed to win votes in the parliamentary elections, expected next year.

In a speech dismissed by opponents as “eyewash”, he also vowed to cut fares, build 30 world-class stations, introduce e-ticketing and provide internet access and television in railway carriages. The proposals are among dozens more designed to drag the 150-year-old Indian railway network into the 21st century in the face of competition from domestic airlines.

None will change the face — or the smell — of train travel in India more dramatically than Mr Yadav's “discharge-free” lavatory scheme. If it is implemented, health experts say, it could help to combat the spread of diseases including diarrhoea, typhoid and hepatitis A, which kill thousands in India every year.

Mr Yadav called the current facilities, of which there are four in every carriage, the “primary cause” of poor sanitation in India's 7,000 railway stations, which handle about 15 million passengers every day. “We have decided to put a permanent end to this problem,” he said.

The ministry, he said, was studying two models. Under the first, the sewage is decomposed by chemical agents in tanks on the trains and then released along the tracks as a harmless, odourless fluid.

The other one proposes storing the sewage in tanks on the trains until they reach a big station, where it will be transferred to a larger septic tank or a sewage system for treatment.

The ministry is expected to choose one in a few months.

Critics cast doubts on Mr Yadav's ability to fulfil his promises. He has yet to live up to last year's pledges to replace all wooden benches with cushion-covered seats, open 6,000 ticket machines and equip ticket collectors with handheld computers.

On line

— 40,000 miles of track in India; four times that in the UK and enough to go round the world one and a half times

— 14,000 trains run every day

— 1.54m staff look after the network

Source: Indian Railways

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