Frustrations, Fights, and Friendships: The Physical, Emotional, and Behavioural Effects of High-Density Crowding on Mumbai’s Suburban Rail Passengers

Crammed together in tight folds of humanity, the suburban rail passengers of Mumbai, India, experience the most densely crowded trains in the world (Basu & Hunt, 2012). Whilst the immediate physical descriptors of crowdedness in Mumbai are well understood (Hirsch, 2016), there is little knowledge of the effect this has on the multitude of passengers. This is an important omission, as the effects of crowding on passengers impact their attitudes, travel behavior, and travel decisions. This paper therefore seeks to discern the physical, emotional, and behavioural effects of rail passenger crowding in Mumbai, India. To achieve this, a qualitative methodology, including 49 face-to-face interviews and 48 hours of ethnographic and autoethnographic observations in Mumbai were conducted. Mumbai is an ideal place to study these effects as it has high-density crowding, the likes of which are not experienced elsewhere. Additionally, there is a limited understanding of the effect of crowding on passengers in non-Western societies. With increasing rail ridership worldwide, the experiences of Mumbai’s passengers within high densities may align with the future experiences of passengers in other Western and non-Western countries. For academics and service providers, understanding the specifics of the crowd, such as the density, passenger perceptions, and culture is important. With that knowledge, strategies to improve the experience of crowding would be more effective.