The twin train accidents one in the Delhi-Howrah route and another in Assam with the former claiming 80 lives last Sunday highlights the sheer hollowness of the safety claims quite often loudly made by the successive railway ministers in the past several years even after the creation and utilisation of the Special Railway Safety Fund (SRSF) of Rs 17,000 crore in October 2001 to clear the backlogs in safety-related shortcomings in the system.
It is not that mishaps in Indian railways take place rarely that the authorities should remain complacent to the compulsions of eternal vigilance in terms of track worthiness, maintenance of rolling stocks and signalling and telecommunication upkeep to keep pace with the high frequency and overuse of trains and coaches that had been resorted to by the successive railway ministers to use railways as the gravy train to build up their vote banks.
The net result is that at least a couple of hundred deaths in the railways became a common phenomenon with safety being the heavy casualty both in literal and metaphorical senses.
Cag report
While a recent report by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India (CAG) has found substantial shortfall in the performance of safety-related projects even after availing of the SRSF, the Railways own White Paper issued in December 2009 point-blank conceded of “a significant number of asset failures” albeit the creation of SRSF to wipe out the arrears of renewal of assets which facilitated renewals to be ‘more or less current'.
These are indicative of, according to the White Paper, “poor maintenance of equipment and installations, lack of adequate training for technical staff, shortage of skilled manpower and inability to adapt to new technology, particularly imported technology”. If its own officials blame themselves for lapses, who would bell them to provide any reassurance to travelling public or rail users?
Rlys Vision 2020
It is also interesting to note that along with this White Paper, the then Railway Minister, Ms Mamata Banerjee, also unveiled “Indian Railways Vision 2020” in which she made no bones about asserting that in 10 years' time, Indian Railways would target to banish accidents from its operations.
Her assertion that “renewal, replacement, upgradation and technological aids for early detection of flaws and mechanised, integrated maintenance of both track and rolling stock would be planned and managed from the standpoint of attaining the goal of zero derailments” rings empty when in the very same year, as many as 238 people were killed in train accidents and between April 2010 and January 2011, the figure touched 336.
It may just be a coincidence that a year ago a speeding Uttar Banga Express rammed into the Vananchal Express, just about 190 km from Kolkata that claimed 60 lives. In her second tenure of less than two-and-a-half years at the helm of Railways, Ms Banerjee spent most of the time working from her home State than from the Rail Bhawan here, immersed as she was in catapulting her TMC party into power in that poll-bound State.
Coalition compulsion
After having secured her goal, it was not meet on her part that the vacancy she left at the Railways should be reserved for her party nominee, considering that the arterial mode of transport could not be run in absentia. Yet, in the reshuffle the UPA Government made on Tuesday, the TMC Chief's writ ran with the choice of a TMC member, Mr Dinesh Trivedi, as the next Union Railway Minister.
It is rather unfortunate that the UPA alliance has succumbed to coalition compulsion than to a genuine desire to run crucial ministries such as Railways with persons of experience and expertise. The Railways suffers governance deficit.
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For the record, it would be germane to note that in response to a query in the Lok Sabha, the then Railway Minister, Ms Banerjee, said on August 19 last year that there was 92 per cent financial progress till March 2010 on the safety-related works set out in the Corporate Safety Plan (2003-13) as roughly Rs 29,376.06 crore was spent till 2009-10.
If that were so, the number of accidents that had supervened in recent years in the Indian Railways would have been far less and the casualties very few.
Rude reminder
But the ground reality of a raft of rail accidents is a rude reminder that the Railways, despite being Board-managed, is in thrall to political leadership which has ridden roughshod in carrying out populist policies and pet projects that only impoverished its Depreciation Reserve Fund (DRF) and capital fund for genuine development and safety work of the systems, experts wryly say.
It is a sad feature that the much-touted public-private partnerships in the railways remain confined to peripheral and non-core activities and not to maintenance of assets and rolling stocks that would have brought the much-needed efficiency gains over the long haul.