Phulpur has a railway station, which at the time was operating on a narrow-gauge railway line with services running between Meerut to Shahganj. Poor farmers travelled to and from Banaras and Azamgarh on that line—the fare was cheap. Phulpur station had been named Khorasan Road station, after some foreigner. One day, the government issued orders for the station to be pulled down, because according to them there was no need for a railway station in Phulpur. Consequently, work began on ripping out the tracks. The poor of the area came to Kaifi with a plea that the station should not be demolished because that would cause them a lot of hardship. Kaifi became anxious, he could not think straight, but arrived directly at the station, and had his wheelchair placed in the middle of the tracks. The stationmaster, worried now, halted work. The young men who were demonstrating against the demolition were being thrashed rather brutally by the police. Among them was Hari Mandir Pandey, a comrade from Kaifi’s communist party. This brutality came to an end upon Kaifi’s arrival.

Immediately, Kaifi left for Delhi and met Jaffer Sharief who was Minister for Railways at the time. Kaifi said to him, ‘Your police have beaten up people from my village so heartlessly that their bodies are drenched in blood. I have brought one of their shirts, I can show it to you if you wish.’

Jaffer Sharief Saheb looked worried and said, ‘No, let it be. I’ll just give an order that the railway tracks of your village should not be dismantled.’ Consequently, taking the order with him, Kaifi returned to the village.

The narrow-gauge line was reinstated, but Kaifi did not remain silent. He demanded a broad-gauge line. By now, a new minister, Ram Vilas Paswan, had taken over. He decided that the narrow-gauge should be converted to a broad-gauge line. As a result, Kaifi and I were invited for the inauguration of the broad-gauge line by Mulayam Singh Yadav. Nevertheless, for Kaifi, this was not enough, because the train did not stop at Phulpur. And, by now, Nitish Kumar had become Minister for Railways. Kaifi made an application to him that trains passing through Phulpur must stop there. Consequently, a superfast train, called Godaan Express—a direct train from Azamgarh to Bombay—stops at Phulpur for three minutes. It operates twice a week—on Sundays and Wednesdays. The villagers have a facility they could not have conceived of in their wildest imagination.