Opinion A system under stress
The Railways need considered attention,not quick fixes....
the collision between Uttarbanga Express and the stationary Vanachal Express at Sainthia station is the latest in a series of large-scale railway accidents. The immediate cause will be known after the commissioner of railway safety publishes the inquiry he has to hold under the Railway Act. If experience is any guide,he is unlikely to go into the larger question of the extent the railway system has been stressed by railway ministers in their desire to introduce new trains every budget. Railway ministers have increasingly avoided addressing the issue of adequate manpower and maintenance facilities before announcing new trains. Accidents,where a train enters an occupied line,are not meant to happen. The whole system is designed to fail safe. The accident is explained only by gross system failure,not an aberration.
Symptoms of generalised failure are evident across the network. The simplest indicator of system stress is punctuality of trains. If the system is moving more than it can comfortably carry,the overload shows up in the late arrival of trains. In this case too,Vanachal Express was running five hours late. So Indian Railways (IR) needs to do more than just address the immediate cause of an accident. A new approach is essential.
The new approach can not be confined to technical fixes like the anti collision device (ACD) or other gadgetry as is being suggested in the media. The underlying cause of accidents is inadequate capacity to meet the increasing demand for movement of people and goods. This is not a technical problem but a problem of our democracy as practised. Railways ministers,and I do not mean only the present incumbent,have to take a large part of the responsibility for persistent under-investment leading to the present state of affairs.
IR has failed to adapt to a more complex world and this is partly because the administrative structure supports a rigid and conservative approach,which does not necessarily lead to good policy. Delay in installing the anti collision device,for instance,is shown as an example of red-tape by the media. Here I would like to point out that as the device,at present,is not fool-proof and can lull drivers into a sense of security,thus endangering the system further. The chairman of the Railway Board pointed out in the press conference that the device was not free from spurious signals and such could not be introduced without further improvements.
IR seems to be confronted by forces that it does not understand and it has failed to put in place a methodology to recognise what these problems are and how policy makers can master them. Some of the problems that the political establishment needs to address are how the investment rates can be raised to make IR a safe system,while ensuring 10 per cent plus growth. How to make the railway a preferred way of travelling and moving goods and how to make the total transportation effort of the country less harsh and more environmentally benign? These difficult questions need the best brains from within and outside Indian Railways and that there is a need to create a space for discussion and debate free of political posturing.
Over the years,Indian Railways has commissioned all too many studies and appointed committees to identify the way forward,but with little results in terms of safety,rise in market-share,or effective response to the demands of a growing India. It remains hostage to a business model and institutional structure around a network built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,which keeps it from becoming a dynamic 21st century system. Even the separate railway budget,introduced by the separation convention in 1924,has been degraded to a budget that pampers the political constituencies of interest to the railway minister,rather than providing flexibility to railways in managing their affairs.
The committees and other bodies that have studied IR have done so mainly to address specific issues or suggest drastic structural changes. The approach of these committees has been,to borrow Arun Mairas terminology,frontal attack. This has clearly not worked and Indian Railways needs to change its approach from appointing committees to nurturing think tanks,which will help it to establish strategic thinking,incorporate social and political context and and help it contend with the forces shaping the future of the railways.
The writer is a former general manager of Indian Railways and former member of the Central Administrative Tribunal
express@expressindia.com
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