By Rohit Vaid, IANS,
New Delhi: A spate of fatal rail accidents in India this year and two of them last week alone point to poor safety in the world’s second largest train network and experts blame poor fiscal outlay and standards in this crucial area for the mishaps.
“Indian railways urgently requires a robust safety policy and huge infusion of funds to upgrade its safety systems and devices,” said Vijay Kumar Dutt, a former member of the Railway Board, which oversees this giant organisation.
“What we urgently need is a policy, backed by resources, similar to the one that was initiated in the late-1990s. This had resulted in reducing the accident rates rather significantly,” Dutt, who belongs to the engineering cadre of railways, told IANS.
Sixty-nine people were killed in one of India’s worst train accidents Saturday involving the Howrah-Kalka Mail in Uttar Pradesh. This accident followed another four days earlier when the Chhapra-Mathura express train rammed into a bus, killing 38 people.
Basudeb Acharia, former chair of the parliamentary standing committee on railways, had another important observation to make — that around 120,000 posts, the bulk of it in key areas of safety and upkeep of the infrastructure were vacant in Indian railways.
“Thousands of posts for gangmen and other safety-related jobs are lying vacant in our Railways. This is a major cause of concern. We have been telling the government to take correction action. Now see what is happening,” Acharia told IANS.
Experts also point out that money also should not be problem for the railways — which is the only ministry that has a separate budget debated and passed by parliament. This apart, multilateral funding institutions extend for soft loans for safety systems.
“I cannot think of a possibility where if the railways approach the finance ministry or the World Bank directly for funds for safety equipment, it would ever be denied,” said Vishwas Udgirkar, senior director in India for global consultancy Deloitte.
“In fact, the railways in itself has the means and the financial muscle to tackle the issue. But for that, the need has to prioritised and a proper policy and framework must be in place,” Udgirkar told IANS.
Dutt added that systems that are critical to run and oversee the massive rail network in the country need to be automated as it would lower the chances of what are often called human errors that cause a majority of accidents in the country.
“Priorities should be made on what type of systems are required — like fully-automated systems that even help drivers, signalling people and others in smooth operations,” Dutt added.
Some experts maintain that the railway ministry has been without a proper minister at the helm ever since the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was sworn in for its second term and that has prevented crucial political direction in crucial areas.
Minister Mamata Banerjee was busy with the West Bengal politics.
In the process, having as many as the three ministers of state to oversee operations — K.H. Muniappa, Bharatsinh Solanki and Mukul Roy — proved to be of little significance, experts said. Roy, though, was shifted out in Tuesday’s ministerial reshuffle.
Due to the political vacuum, decision hangs fire in installing a major safety feature — anti-collision device (ACD) — despite a proposal to this effect over a decade ago and successful conclusion of pilot projects to test its efficacy.
Even the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report has pointed to burgeoning problems in railways including the failure to meet targets of corporate safety plan on modernising signalling system, installing anti-collision devices and filling safety-related jobs.
Now, with a new minister at the helm in Dinesh Trivedi, experts hope safety will top the agenda of policy-makers in ensuring safer journeys for the 19 million passengers who travel daily on some 7,000 trains over a network of 64,099 route km and 6,906 stations.
(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at [email protected], [email protected])