The World's Busiest Railway: might I suggest that Hugo Rifkind's bourgeois slip is showing?

I have to admit that, having only got home on Thursday, I haven't kept up with what's on television. And so, it was only yesterday that I found out that BBC2 are having an India Season, courtesy of Ann, who drives the Gipping North Suffolk Links bus on Friday evenings. She had found the first four programmes, on Indian railways, fascinating, and gave them a strong recommendation. And so, I made plans to watch them over the long weekend. After all, I am, deep in my soul, at least a part-time Mumbaikar.

However, household chores have a tendency to get in the way, and by the time I had picked up my copy of The Times, an opportunity had not yet come. That meant that I got to read Hugo Rifkind's review of the series first...

Now, normally, I have little against Hugo. Yes, he is the son of a senior Conservative politician, which may well have helped him in his career a bit, but life's like that. I tend to think that he is sometimes clever rather than bright, but when you're a columnist, you can"t expect be right all of the time.

But, I have to say that I disagree with his review somewhat. He thinks that the series is poor, delivered with enthusiasm rather than skill. And, I admit, I might not have done it the same way, but the series isn't really intended for people like the two of us, more as a peek through a curtain at a world unfamiliar to most of us.

And, in that sense, Dan Snow, John Sargeant (wearing my hat, I see), Anita Rani and Robert Llewellyn did their jobs well. Dan, Anita and Robert braving the morning rush into Victoria Terminus (yes, I know that it's now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus but I'm an old man and I treasure my childhood memories) demonstrated just how daunting it is for outsiders - I've always found that having a pale skin gives you a fraction of a second to take advantage of the confusion engendered by you being there at all.

Having done that, they then explored how what looks like chaos on first sight is actually an incredibly complex interplay of technology and people which is astoundingly efficient in delivering millions of people into one small area of a city of seventeen million.

In his review, Hugo tells of his year travelling around India on trains, and you sense that he thinks it would have been a far better programme had it reflected a similar experience. The problem is, that's tourism, and there are plenty of programmes already made that do that. Frankly, Hugo, your adventures in Uttar Pradesh are so far removed from most people's lives that they don't resonate, whereas millions of us commute. Seeing what a daily commute looks like elsewhere is interesting, if you're willing to suspend your privilege.

My friend Ann hasn't travelled the world on someone else's tab, she's a normal person doing a normal job, but takes an interest in the world about her, and she thought enough about the programme to want to tell me about it. Perhaps the two of you might like to swap jobs one week - it would give you something to write about, and she might get another experience to tell me about...