Non-accountability zone

It's yesterday once more for the Indian railways. The train collision near Punjab's Kauri village, that left over an estimated 158 people de...

It8217;s yesterday once more for the Indian railways. The train collision near Punjab8217;s Kauri village, that left over an estimated 158 people dead on Thursday morning, ran true to a familiar script. Wasn8217;t it just the other day that 302 people were killed when the Purushottam Express ran straight into a stationary Kalindi Express? In fact, of the 30-odd major train accidents over the last decade, at least six had the old story of collisions caused by a breakdown in communication. India has all the answers on how to ensure that such utterly preventable tragedies don8217;t occur. But, predictably, they exist only on paper. Armies of experts have cogitated for hundreds of hours and come up with sterling recommendations.

Battery-operated flasher lamps for use during emergencies? Yes, sir. Emergency sirens? Very good, sir. Tubular integrated coaches? Of course, sir. This nation certainly doesn8217;t take risks at least in theory.

But on the ground, amnesia and lack of accountability continue to be a way of life. As theydo in the air. Charkhi Dadri has reverted to the anonymity of being just another Haryana village, rather than the unlikely scene of a devastating mid-air collision that claimed 351 lives two years ago.

Last Friday, it was providence and some initiative shown by the pilot of an eight-seater King aircraft that prevented it from colliding with an Indian Airlines Airbus carrying 150 people and re-enacting a collision tragedy all over again. The Chandigarh Air Traffic Control had evidently informed the pilot to maintain flight level at a radial and height that the approaching Airbus was cruising at.

The inadequacy of India8217;s existing radar system was seen as a major contributory cause for the Charkhi Dadri collision, yet the intransigent tribe of air traffic controllers have thrice pressured the Airports Authority of India to postpone the commissioning of a modern Raytheon radar at Delhi8217;s Indira Gandhi International Airport, on grounds that they are paid inadequately and lack the expertise to operate such asystem.

Evidence, once again, of a complete lack of accountability. The system continues to remain critically impervious to correction, no matter the length of the inquiry report. Already, the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association has concluded that the international airports at Delhi and Mumbai do not conform to international safety standards.

Underlying the country8217;s cavalier treatment of safety concerns is a callous disregard for human life. In nations like Germany and Japan, even a single death in such circumstances is sufficient to trigger an angry public response. In this country, when hundreds die because the manresponsible for flashing a crucial signal fell asleep, or because it did not strike anyone to inform the driver of an incoming train that there are some derailed coaches that are lying on the track that he is hurtling down, or even because the pilot of a descending aircraft received poor audio feed from the radar tower, there8217;s not a whimper of protest. People get thesafety systems they deserve.