Old plans never die. In the narrow-gauge corridors of the Rail Bhavan, they just get reborn with less teeth. The 60-page draft of the new Railway Corporate Safety Plan (2003-2013) is nothing but an abridged and a much watered down version of an earlier plan which was junked by Railway minister Nitish Kumar. The earlier 170-page draft (2000-2010) had made the Chairman, Railway Board (CRB), responsible for coordination with various departments on safety projects. It had also recommended that he should hold meetings every six months on safety to monitor implementation of the recommendations of various committees and commissions, and other safety-related issues. The new plan has glossed over these important issues. In fact, it even absolves all Board members of the responsibility to ensure implementation of accepted recommendations on safety within the time frame laid down, ‘‘in both letter and in spirit.’’ Even Member (Traffic) — whose main reponsibility is supposedly to ensure safe train operations — has been freed from ‘‘ensuring compliance with standards set for train operations’’ and also from ‘‘setting appropriate safety objectives, directives and codes of practice.’’ The first draft, prepared by the Safety Directorate, was more hard-hitting and incisive in analysing Railways’ follies and suggesting tougher measures. Apparently not too comfortable with the earlier plan, Nitish had asked for another one. Some of the observations made in the 2000-2010 draft plan included: • All discussions on safety come up only when there is an accident. • Every major accident is followed by a flurry of safety drives, stern exhortations about the primacy of safety, threats of disciplinary action against officials down the line, followed invariably by an equally routine return to the normal safety-insensitive environment. • Unfortunately, 30-40 per cent of Indian Railways’ assets are prematurely condemned/renewed, thereby draining scarce resources. Premature asset condemnation is a sad and pathetic story of preventive maintenance management failure. The report had also described the possible accident scenarios — due to collision, derailment and fire — in great detail. The fire in Frontier Mail, for example, was disconcertingly similar to the fire scenario described in the plan. None of these inputs figure in the new plan, currently under consideration. The new safety plan merely reiterates the recommendations made by various safety committees. Like the earlier plan, it has tried to prioritise the safety-related measures in terms of urgency, to be implemented within 1-10 years time frame. It also specifies the target in terms of reduction of accidents and casualties. As per the set target, consequential accidents are to be reduced to ‘‘27 per 100 million passenger train kms by 31 March 2008,’’ and to 18 by 2013. Given the same criterion, the Railways hope to reduce casualties to 2.7 by 2008 and to 1.8 by 2013. Other train accidents are to be reduced to 175 accidents per 100 million train kms by 2008 and to 116 by 2013. The plan suggests a moratorium on introduction of new trains for the next three years on all saturated sections and terminals. It says that a section would be considered saturated at the level of 85 per cent utilisation of line capacity for single line and 90 per cent for double line. ‘‘All shortfalls in maintenance infrastructure should be made good during this three year period,’’ it says. To prevent collisions, the plan recommends the use of flasher lights in rear of coaches, flashing tail lamps for guards, and quasi-static hand signal lamps for all connected with train operations (all within two years). Incidentally, all these recommendations were first made after the Firozabad collision in 1995. To prevent fire accidents, the plan suggests rear view mirror outside the engine cab, audio visual passenger alarm system in coaches and replacement of cables with fire resistant cables in metro coaches (within two years). Among other things, the safety plan recommends creation of a detailed database on accidents, events leading to accidents, inquiry reports and their causes. And it suggests that a chapter on level-crossing safety be introduced in the school curriculum to inculcate safety standards among the children.
