A viral Vande Bharat video showing passengers spitting paan, dumping food wrappers on the floor and misusing the train’s automatic doors has reignited a very old Indian argument: do we actually deserve nice things? The clip, doing rounds on Instagram and X this week, ends with a caption that’s now a meme in its own right — “Maybe we don’t deserve it.”
Key Takeaways
- A viral Vande Bharat video capturing passengers littering, spitting and damaging interiors has crossed lakhs of views across social platforms.
- This isn’t the first such clip — similar videos from 2023 and 2024 showed torn upholstery, missing LCD panels and broken washbasins on the same train series.
- Railway officials have previously flagged maintenance costs running into crores due to vandalism on premium trains.
- The incident has sparked a wider comparison between Indian commuter etiquette and how passengers treat bullet trains abroad, from Japan to France.
If you’ve been on Instagram in the last 48 hours, you’ve probably already seen it. A shaky handheld clip, clearly shot by a fellow passenger, pans across a Vande Bharat coach — and it isn’t pretty. There’s a paan stain creeping down a cream-coloured panel. A biscuit wrapper sits wedged in the footrest. Someone’s propped the automatic door open with a suitcase, which, if you’ve ever used one of these trains, you’ll know defeats the entire point of the pneumatic system.
The person filming keeps their voice low, almost resigned, before muttering the line that’s now attached to every reshare: “Maybe we don’t deserve it.” It’s dry, it’s a little theatrical, and it’s landed exactly the way viral lines do — as a stand-in for a much bigger, messier debate.
What Does the Viral Vande Bharat Video Actually Show?
The footage itself is fairly short, under a minute, but it’s dense with detail. Alongside the litter and the propped-open door, viewers have pointed out scuff marks on the seat-back tray tables and what looks like a cracked window shade. None of it is dramatic on its own. Together, it reads like slow, casual wear-and-tear inflicted by people who simply don’t see the coach as something worth protecting.
That’s really the crux of why this Vande Bharat video has spread so fast. It isn’t a one-off disaster. It’s mundane. And mundane, everyday carelessness is far more relatable — and far more damning — than a single dramatic act of vandalism.
Why Is This Video Blowing Up Now?
Timing matters here. Vande Bharat trains have been positioned, almost from day one in 2019, as India’s answer to global high-speed rail — a point of national pride, rolled out route by route with considerable fanfare. Every time a clip surfaces showing that pride taking a beating, it hits a nerve that’s already sensitive.
There’s also a simple algorithm story underneath the cultural one. Short, moralising clips with a punchy caption travel well on Reels and X precisely because they invite an opinion — and everyone, it seems, has one about how fellow Indians behave in public spaces.
A Pattern, Not an Isolated Incident
Search your memory a little and you’ll recall this isn’t new. Similar footage has surfaced periodically since the network expanded — passengers pulling out mobile charging sockets, ripping off “Vande Bharat” branded headrest covers as souvenirs, even snapping selfie sticks off in-coach dustbins. Indian Railways has, at various points, spoken about repair and replacement costs tied to such damage.
How Common Is This Kind of Behaviour on Indian Trains?
Etiquette complaints on Indian Railways are hardly new — they predate Vande Bharat by decades. What’s different now is the stakes. A general second-class coach getting battered doesn’t generate outrage the same way, because expectations were never that high. A semi-high-speed train marketed as a showcase of Indian engineering is a different story; the gap between promise and reality is what makes the footage sting.
| Reported Issue | Where It’s Been Seen | Typical Passenger Justification |
| Littering / food waste on floor | Multiple Vande Bharat routes | “Cleaning staff will handle it” |
| Torn seat covers or headrests | Delhi–Varanasi, Mumbai–Ahmedabad routes (reported earlier) | Souvenir-taking behaviour |
| Doors propped open manually | General coaches, seen in this viral clip | Impatience during boarding |
| Spitting inside coach | Recurs across several viral videos | Habit carried over from older trains |
Vande Bharat vs Global Bullet Trains: How Different Is Passenger Behaviour?
This is where the comparison writes itself, and honestly, it’s one I keep coming back to whenever I talk to friends settled abroad. Japan’s Shinkansen network famously turns around a train for cleaning in about seven minutes flat, largely because passengers leave so little mess behind — tray tables wiped, trash bagged, seats reset. France’s TGV and Eurostar rely less on enforcement and more on a decades-old, near-instinctive culture of treating shared property as, well, shared.
None of this is about Indians being inherently careless — that’s too lazy an explanation. It’s newer infrastructure meeting older habits. Vande Bharat trains are barely six years old as a fleet; the Shinkansen has had sixty years to normalise its etiquette. Vande Bharat Express is still, culturally speaking, finding its feet — and clips like this one suggest the etiquette rollout hasn’t kept pace with the technology rollout.
What Has Indian Railways Said or Done About This?
Railway authorities have periodically responded to viral vandalism clips with statements about stepped-up onboard checks, penalties under the Railways Act for damaging property, and appeals to passengers to treat the trains as national assets. Enforcement, though, is inconsistent — ticket checking staff are stretched thin, and CCTV coverage inside coaches isn’t uniformly monitored in real time.
Some divisions have experimented with in-coach announcements specifically about not propping open automatic doors, since repeated manual interference can damage the sensor mechanism over time. Whether this particular viral clip triggers a formal response from the railway ministry remains to be seen — these things typically depend on how much traction the story gets in mainstream media over the next few days.
FAQ
Q: What train does the viral video show?
A: The video is widely captioned as footage from a Vande Bharat Express coach, though the exact route hasn’t been officially confirmed by Indian Railways.
Q: Is damaging Vande Bharat property a punishable offence?
A: Yes. Damaging railway property, including seats, panels, or door mechanisms, can attract penalties under the Railways Act, ranging from fines to potential imprisonment for serious cases.
Q: Has this happened before on Vande Bharat trains?
A: Yes, similar clips showing torn upholstery, missing fittings and littering have surfaced periodically since the Vande Bharat fleet expanded from 2019 onward.
Q: Why do people compare Vande Bharat to Japan’s bullet trains?
A: Because both are marketed as symbols of modern rail technology, comparisons naturally follow — especially around cleanliness and passenger discipline, where Japan’s Shinkansen is often held up as a benchmark.
Q: Does Indian Railways have a helpline to report such incidents?
A: Passengers can report misconduct or damage via the Railway Madad portal or the 139 railway helpline, which covers complaints across security, cleanliness and passenger behaviour.
Conclusion
This Vande Bharat video will fade from timelines in a week, the way most viral clips do. But the underlying question — whether India’s newest trains can survive its oldest habits — isn’t going anywhere soon, and it’ll likely resurface the next time someone hits record.