As it happens after every mishap, the individual witch hunting has started for the collective failure of the system. In the wee hours of 20th November, 2016 one of the worst ever train accidents took place killing around 145 persons and injuring many others.
The commissioner of Railway Safety has initiated its enquiry at Kanpur and as a face saving exercise the DRM of the Jhansi Division was shunted to Ranchi.
Senior Divisional Mechanical Engineer/ Carriage and Wagon was suspended so was the officer concerned with the track maintenance of the section, Divisional Line Engineer. The concerned carriage and wagon supervisor and those with the line maintenance were also suspended. Many more may be axed.
Amidst all this, the question still remains as to why has it become a recurring phenomena. Precious lives are lost and the punctuality of the trains is lost.
Somewhere amidst all the razzmatazz, the priorities of Railways has got shifted from providing safer and punctual train services to providing Wi-Fi, catering, tourism etc. The core services it seems are taking a back seat.
The Bibek Debroy committee and the Anil Kakodar committee recommendations are yet to be implemented in spirit. The latter was related to safety exclusively. Add to it, the National Transport Policy is yet to be formulated and so goes the recommendations of the Rakesh Mohan committee too. Why are they being set up when there is hardly any intent to materialize them on ground.
Now coming to the administrative aspects, the Operating department is responsible for planning and giving shut downs to the various departments for repair and maintenance. At the same time, it is supposed to run the freight trains and maximise the profits of the railways. So, the conflict of the two purpose causes at times improper shutdown, planning and maintenance overdues. As a result of it, the accidents.
The staff crunch in Railways especially in the open line is also a paradox beyond explanation. An organisation with 13 lakh+ employees faces a staff deficiency of 30% in the safety department is beyond comprehension.
Coming to the cash crunch. There isn’t enough money in the depreciation reserve fund and the development fund. This means there isn’t sufficient money in the kitty to replace the worn out assets like tracks, rolling stocks etc. Despite of having a transfer of technology, the new LHB coaches are yet to replace the ramming and collision prone ICF make coaches. The buffer stocks of the ICF coaches are yet to be replaced with crash worthy ones. Apart from this the continuous track circuiting for the detection of the rail fractures is yet yo be achieved in full.
Worn out coaches, fractured tracks catapulted the Sunday Kanpur Train disaster that could have been averted.
Lastly, the mentality to find the scapegoat need to be weeded out. No division wants to detain any train on any account in its jurisdiction. The priority being to handover the train to the adjacent train rather than facing an unnecessary barrage of questions from the higher ups. The spirit to accept the challenges is gone.
Witch hunting may be a temporary solution and a face saving exercise but there was hardly anything that anyone could have done about it. Another disaster is waiting if we don’t learn our lessons well this time.