Opinion Learn by accident

The causes behind the Indore-Patna Express accident on Sunday, which led to the death of at least 140 persons, will be known only once the Railways completes its inquiry. Early reports have suggested that a fracture in the tracks may have caused the derailment. A large number of railway accidents in India are ascribed to derailment: Tracks are often old and overused and experts have made an urgent case for an overhaul. Clearly, the maintenance of railway infrastructure is shoddy. It is possible that the toll would not have been this high if the outdated heavy bogies had been replaced by the lighter LHB coaches. By all accounts, the authorities know why rail accidents take place and what needs to be done but that wisdom is not acted upon. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, who promised zero tolerance towards accidents when he took office, evidently has a tough job on hand.

The Anil Kakodkar committee set up by the ministry of railways in 2011 to review rail safety had come up with a slew of suggestions. The committee asked for Rs 1 lakh crore over a period of five years to improve safety and overhaul railway infrastructure, ranging from aged tracks to erratic signalling systems. It recommended that the Railways switch over from coaches designed by the Integral Coach Factory, Perambur, to LHB design coaches, deemed to be safer. The switchover was to cost Rs 10,000 crore over five years. Four years after Kakodkar submitted the suggestions, however, the LHB coaches constitute just about 10 per cent of the bogies in circulation. The problem may also lie in skewed priorities, which lead to a privileging of ambitious and money-guzzling projects like bullet and high-speed trains. No doubt, India needs faster trains. But in the pursuit of speed and spectacle, the government can ill afford to lose track of the basics. A depreciation reserve fund (DRF) had been set up in the last decade: Former railway minister Lalu Prasad points out that the provisioning for the DRF has come down from Rs 6,000 crore in 2008-09 to Rs 3,200 crore in 2016-17, against actual requirements now of Rs 15,000 crore to Rs 20,000 crore. On an average, 23 million commuters use the Railways daily and their safety is non-negotiable.

Advertisement

Railway accidents in India are also followed by shambolic rescue operations. Immediate rescue and relief is often carried out by residents in the neighbourhood of the accident site, who may be well-meaning but ill-trained and ill-equipped for the task. There has to be more urgency in reaching help — for instance, choppers could be used — and rescue and relief work must be more sophisticated and better coordinated.