At 6:30 on Saturday evening, several coaches of the Puri-Haridwar Utkal Express derailed near Khatauli in the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh. At least 10 people have been killed and over 50 others injured.
This is the fifth accident caused by derailment this year alone. And repeated promises by successive railway ministers to revamp the Indian Railways have done little to assuage doubts over the systemic rot that plagues the decision-making process of the government.
Here are excerpts from an article published on The Quint on 24 November 2016 that examines the findings of the 2011 report submitted by a High Level Safety Review Committee. The high-level review panel headed by Dr Anil Kakodkar was convened after the Maoist attack on the Gyaneshwari Express that left 170 people dead.
It made 106 recommendations and set a 2017 deadline to implement them.
So far, only 68 recommendations have been accepted – of which only 22 have been fully implemented. The rest are a work in progress, while some others have been rejected.
Dr Kakodkar Told Us So
Train derailments are filed under “consequential rail accidents”, which also include sabotage, fire and collision as possible causes.
Rail fractures are the result of increased rail traffic on already laid down tracks at the end of their service lives. If the total tonnage (passenger trains, freight) carried surpasses the track’s capacity, there is an imminent danger of a rail fracture.
Statistics made available by the Railway Ministry show that in the last two years, the focus has not been on strengthening the flaws in the system, but on initiating campaign-friendly policies.
Since coming to power, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has said he is also going to increase the average speed of passenger trains by 5km per hour and commission heavier 25-tonne axle load wagons on freight routes.
This, on the existing rotting infrastructure such as tracks, rolling stocks, signalling systems etc, by a government that has little or no money to renew or upgrade any of it any time soon.
When Lives Could Have Been Saved
During initial investigations in the November 2016 Indore-Patna Express derailment in which 150 people were killed, railway officials had confessed that the scale of the disaster could have been reduced greatly had stainless steel LHB coaches been used instead of the older ICF coaches.
While the ministry’s deadline is set at 2020 to fulfil this Kakodkar recommendation, various Railway officials contest that it simply is not possible before 2040. Apart from the usual red tape, all coach-making factories are filled with materials for ICF coaches. They’re worth crores, so they can’t be discarded and besides, the lifespan of the existing coaches is 25 years, so they can’t be discarded either.
Four years away from deadline, only 14 percent of all rolling stock constitute LHB coaches. They are twice as expensive as regular ICF coaches, but the in-built safety features such as shock absorbers, disc-brakes, better coupling and anti-telescopic technology (they don’t turtle on derailment or collision) make it worth the price.
Show Me the Money
While answering a question in the Lok Sabha in March this year, Minister of State, Manoj Sinha pegged the total cost of implementing the recommendations at Rs 1,11,683 crore under the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh – a sanction denied by the Ministry of Finance, citing a lack of funds.
Not only is the Centre claiming to have no funds to ensure the safety of passengers, the Railway’s pockets aren’t very deep either.
Former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi recently shed light on the grave financial situation of the Indian Railways. Trivedi declared it to be on the verge of bankruptcy, losing up to Rs 25,000 crore annually with a depleted Depreciation Reserve Fund (DRF).
To simply maintain old assets, money needs to be allocated to the DRF, which needs approximately Rs 20,000 crore to Rs 25,000 crore annually, given the state of our existing infrastructure. In 2016-17, Suresh Prabhu only allotted Rs 3,200 crore to the DRF.
Not Another Statutory Enquiry, Please
The result has been criminal negligence with death and destruction to property – and yet another statutory enquiry, which will take months to commence and then some to conclude, is going to help no one. The report will be compiled by the same officials who are in charge of making sure such accidents don’t occur. To expect an unbiased, objective report from them when the government is complicit would be naive.
According to a White Paper released last year by Prabhu, 4,500 kms of track of the total 1,14,907 kilometres need to be renewed annually. But due to financial constraints, as of March 2016, 5,900 kms of track is up for renewal and the arrears are only accumulating.
Instead, a judicial probe should be ordered with cooperation from local and central police forces. Ideally, it should be a third-party agency like the NTSB in the US; but that is a Kakodkar committee recommendation that is currently “under consideration” – still.
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