Earlier this month, The Railway Men dropped on Netflix. The streamer’s latest drama, a Hindi-language four-part miniseries, makes for very grim viewing, but in terms of subject matter, plot, and production values, it can’t be bettered. Here’s why it’s unmissable viewing.
One of the worst industrial disasters in history
The inspiration for The Railway Men was the 1984 Bhopal disaster – a horrific industrial accident that led to deaths estimated by some authorities to have been well in excess of 10,000 people. The cause of the accident was the Union Carbide chemical plant in the Indian city of Bhopal. The plant was badly run and poorly maintained – a fatal combination given its use of MIC, or methyl isocyanate, a chemical that causes blindness and chokes the lungs, resulting in death.
On the evening of December 2, a leak was found in an overpressurized MIC tank. The multiple safety systems designed to cope with such a situation were either broken or not in use. By the early morning, over 30 tons of the gas had leaked out and spread across Bhopal, where it promptly collected at ground level, asphyxiating thousands.
The Railway Men – a tale of tragedy and bravery
If it feels like The Railway Men treads the same ground as HBO’s award-winning 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, that’s because it does. Although the circumstances behind the 1986 nuclear disaster were rather different to those in Bhopal, The Railway Men’s story of executive neglect leading to untold tragedy for ordinary people and workers alike is eerily familiar. And, like Chernobyl, The Railway Men features remarkable tales of courage and sacrifice in the midst of terrible danger.
Few of the ensemble cast are known outside of the Indian TV and film industry, but several ought to be. Veteran Bollywood actor Kay Kay Menon plays excellently in the leading role as Iftekaar, the station master at Bhopal’s train station, who gets hundreds of train passengers to safety as the gas cloud engulfs the station. His unlikely ally in this is Balwant, the “Express Bandit” – a robber who dons policeman’s clothes to rob the station’s safe, and is mistaken for a real policeman when the disaster comes. Balwant is played by Divyenndu, who can also be seen in the 2022 romantic drama Odd Couple, available on Prime Video. Babil Khan also stars as a novice train driver who attempts to get the passengers out of Bhopal on a train – and stop an express train laden with passengers from arriving.
If there’s one part of The Railway Men that could be improved upon, it’s the backstory of the plant’s poor condition. An exposé is hinted at, but kept at arm’s length – Sunny Hinduja stars as an investigative journalist who blew the whistle on the plant’s unsafe nature years prior – but the plant’s American manager (played with shiftiness and malevolence by British character actor Philip Rosch (Florence Foster Jenkins) is primarily present as a focus for the viewers’ ire. (In real life, the American CEO of Union Carbide flew to India after the disaster, was briefly arrested, released, and allowed to return to the U.S.)
But then again, the senselessness of the Bhopal disaster – the needlessness of it, its avoidable nature, and the fact that so few were brought to justice afterward – is part and parcel of what happened. Shiv Rawail’s sensitive direction and solid production values result in a tight, eminently watchable production that will leave you despairing at the unspeakable tragedy of Bhopal – and uplifted at the stories of human courage and bravery that resulted.